The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Electronic Teaching

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ROBERT MacNEIL [voice-over]: This may look like fun and games, but it's part of the fastest growing craze in education -- computers in the classroom.

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MacNEIL: Good evening. The computer craze has so captured the American imagination that they've even started computer camps for children to go to this summer. And when they go back to school this fall, many children are going to find that a computer has moved into their classroom. Schools across the country are rushing to exploit children's fascination with computers and to harness it as a teaching tool. The idea is spreading so rapidly that Congress is considering legislation to give tax breaks to companies which donate computers to schools that can't afford to buy them. Proponents believe they help educate children in many ways, from individual instruction to teaching them how to think. But some educators are worried that computers may be harmful to education. They want more research before making computers a routine part of classroom life. Tonight, the benefits and dangers of computers in the classroom. We recorded this program recently. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, there are already an estimated 100,000 computers installed in classrooms around the country, roughly one computer for every 400 students. But that is only the beginning. Various projections from the computer industry say the number will be up to 300,000 by 1985, and maybe as high as 650,000. The computers now being used are small and mobile, usually consisting of a television screen and a typewriter-like keyboard. They're used in a variety of ways, but mostly for drilling students in math, English grammar, geography, science, foreign languages and other staples of the basic education curriculum. Some go further than that, and the classroom computers of the future are expected to go even further, to helping students grapple with the most complex of mathematical and other concepts, even subjects like philosophy. Their potential appears limited only by the imaginations of those devising ways to use them, the cost of buying and servicing the computers, and, as Robin said, the resistance from those who say it's still not certain it's the best way to teach. Robin?

MacNEIL: One place where educators are studying the response of children to computers in the classroom is the Bank Street School of Education in New York. To sample the reactions of children and educators, we visited several classes in the school.

STUDENT: We're trying to make realistic simulations of the battles in the Falkland Islands. Just at this very moment we're programming in -- just asking the Argentine commander what things he'd like to put at Port Stanley, like how many Mirage III fighter bombers do you want at Port Stanley, etc.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Through foundation grants the Bank Street School Center for Children and Technology has begun a three-year experimental project designed to assess how computers affect both pupils and teachers. The only program of its kind in the United States, it's set up in two classrooms with six computers in each. Students themselves program the computer with a special language called logo. George Burns, a third- and fourth-grade teacher, explains how the computer works.

GEORGE BURNS: [unintelligible] instrument micro-computer with a logo language modular attachment, which feeds the logo language into the computer. The computer is actually inside the keyboard here and uses the keyboard as a typewriter to feed information into the computer's central processing unit, and then the information that you type in is carried out and displayed on the screen here, which is a regular color television. And the computer works as a calculator. You can also use it to createdesigns by telling something called the cursor to move around on the screen and draw lines for you. There's also an animation capacity to the computer called sprite, and you can design and create objects in different colors and move them across the screen.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Karen Sheingold is director of the Bank Street School's Center for Children and Technology.

KAREN SHEINGOLD: At this point schools are buying computers because they have this sense that they're good in some way. You know, they're good things to buy; everyone's buying them, the school system next door has them, we should get them, too.And there is a tremendous amount of excitement about using computers in schools. We're using the computers in one way, which is the kid in a sense learns how to be in control of the machine, and presumably learns some powerful skills in the process of learning how to be in control of the machine.The most common way in which computers are used in schools is for drill and practice in math and language arts. Now, in that situation, the teacher has mainly to turn on the computer, and the student sits in front of it and answers computer-generated questions, and is told whether her answers are correct or incorrect, and then goes on to some new problems.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Teacher Michael Cook explains how he uses the computer in his classroom.

MICHAEL COOK: I use computers a little bit the way I use writing. The point of it is to develop the skills for a final product. And in the writing they write their own stories, and in computers they have their own projects. And the things that I'm after are figuring out how to achieve a certain goal, what tools you need to achieve that goal, how do you program it? And I've found that the kids who are most active are very excited about what they're doing. I mean, excited in ways that they rarely are about other work. I see them dealing with all kinds of concepts that are very exciting concepts, like variables. What does a variable mean, which is sort of the basis of algebra, which most kids go through school never really understanding even though they can do the problems on a test. Kids who had a hard time working before and who did not have areas where they felt successful or competent or happy have found work on the computer very exhilarating and very rewarding, and I think are much more committed to learning generally.

Ms. SHEINGOLD: We do see children becoming tutors of each other and helpers of each other in these classrooms, as well as in other classrooms where we have looked at kids using computers. And that seems to be a very interesting and important phenomenon. Children are really helping other children to learn, and it seems, at least sometimes, to be the case that the children who are the helpers are not necessarily the children who were recognized as very able in those classrooms before the computers came in.

Mr. COOK: I have seen my role as a teacher change since the introduction of computers, particularly around the computers. It's hard to know whether that's something related to the fact that computers are new, but certainly, insofar as kids are thinking of their own projects and needing help in ways that often other kids are as good at providing as I am, my role has become much more that of a consultant.

Ms. SHEINGOLD: Learning how to master these machines is increasingly going to become a very important skill, and that those kids who have had the opportunity to learn how to be in control of this powerful technology, I think, are going tobe way ahead of kids who haven't.

MacNEIL: One educator who is worried about rushing this new technology into the classroom is Joseph Weizenbaum. He's professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of the book computer Power and Human Reason. Professor Weizenbaum, what worries you about this craze?

JOSEPH WEIZENBAUM: Well, a lot worries me, and a lot that we've just seen in the film I think makes a very good trigger for those things. If we start off, for example, by noticing what the children played with in the initial segment, as they played with the simulation of the Falkland Islands crisis, and what aspect of it did they consider? They considered the military aspect of it -- how many Mirages are there and so on. Now, if you think seriously about the Falkland Islands situation, then you kmow, what is in fact problematic about it; you know, what are the serious things that we should think about? Perhaps the pride of politicians which leads to the killing of so many people and all that sort of thing. Now, that happens not to be computable, and therefore it's ignored in the demonstration that we saw. One of the things that worries me is that technology generally and the computer in particular serves as a kind of a telescope which permits one to see something really very close up, and that may be very exciting, but on the other hand, it induces tunnel vision so that one sees only a very, very small part of whatever the problem is. Now, the computer in education comes along in effect as a solution looking for a problem, and then if we were to step back and ask ourselves, what are the real problems in American education, well, they happen not to be computable, and therefore they can't be seen.

MacNEIL: Because they're not reducible to quantity equations or numerical?

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: That's right.Well, or they are not subject to the kind of rationality which is represented by calculation in the general sense.

MacNEIL: Are you suggesting that if small children and not-so-small children spent a lot of time with computers as part of their education, they would learn to think in a particularly narrow way, which would not be good for their broad educational development? Is that it, or am I putting words into your mouth?

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: No, no. I'm pleased you're putting those words in. Yes, that's exactly what I mean. And, in that sense, the computer -- I'll just refer to it here as a craze; we have a craze here -- is merely the epitome -- it's sort of the last step, perhaps the penultimate step toward the kind of rationalistic thinking which has dominated this century in any case.

MacNEIL: What do you say to the point we just heard the woman make at the end of the film?She said that it will give those children who have developed this kind of skill or literacy with the computer a decided advantage over children who haven't in the new society.

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: Well, notice what she did say. She not only said it would give them an advantage. She has pointed out what the advantage would be: the advantage would be, she says, that these children will learn how to be in control. Okay?Now, it's not clear to me in any case whether that's the goal of education, that is, to teach people how to be in control. It's not clear to me -- or maybe I should say it much more strongly. It is clear to me that the main object of a civilization, of a culture and of a human being is not simply to be in control, and yet this is what -- this is in fact what's being taught, yes.

MacNEIL: What would they fail to learn by being taught with or using computers a great deal, in your view?

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: Well, I'm afraid they'll be, so to speak, channeled, that they'll be given a kind of tunnel vision. Okay? And then what -- it's not so much that they fail to learn something; it's that something is being taken away from them, namely, the wide and broad view, the skill to make judgments in place of calculations.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Another view of it now from John Seely Brown, a computer scientist and psychologist with the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California. He is one of the developers of a computer called Buggy, a so-called computer of the future. He is with us tonight from Los Angeles. Dr. Brown, first tell me what the Buggy is.

JOHN SEELY BROWN: Okay, well, the Buggy is actually a computer system that tries to look at the systematic mistakes that students make in arithmetic and try to find the underlying causes of those mistakes in terms of the knowledge they might have misrepresented or not represented at all inside their head.

LEHRER: Rather than just to spew out an answer that says your answer is wrong or right?

Dr. BROWN: Right. We try to find like a diagnostic profile what the information in the student's head is that causes these errors.

LEHRER: I see. You heard Dr. Weizenbaum's concerns about this. Do you share those, particularly that the real problems of education in America today are not computable, and you all are going down the wrong path altogether?

Dr. BROWN: Well, I'm not sure who "you all" refers to. I share many of his opinions, as a matter of fact. I actually look at the computer as providing us a set of tools to enable us to play with the information in interesting ways. So I don't understand the computability issue that Joe raises. I prefer to think of it as the computer provides us a chance, for example, or students -- kids -- a chance to possibly look over very large-scale data bases, form their own hypotheses, begin to understand how complex it is to support and deny or defeat a hypothesis, begin to understand that there is no such thing as a right hypothesis or a wrong hypothesis, but there are problems with all types of hypotheses.

LEHRER: Well, he says that it's just the opposite, that computers are encouraging tunnel vision, and not to think in a wide and broad way.

Dr. BROWN: I think it depends if you are trying to just use the computer to program into it your own ideas. In that case we're limited through tunnel vision to the types of things that computers enable us to program easily, and at the moment that's very restricitive. What I was talking about more was using the computer as a tool to help us learn how to be more effective at playing with, understanding, for example, large amounts of information.

LEHRER: Well, maybe I'm not sure I follow you on that, Doctor. Let me ask you in more specific terms. Do you see a time when computers could be used in the classroom to teach some of these broader subjects like religion and philosophy, where ideas and concepts are involved?

Dr. BROWN: Oh, well, I surely see in the future the chance to use computers in some very novel ways, in terms of, for example, enabling kids to become much more articulate about, for example, their own problem-solving strategies.

LEHRER: Now, how about -- excuse me, let me stop you right there.

Dr. BROWN: Sure.

LEHRER: Give me an example in very specific terms of how a student could do just what you just said by using a computer.

Dr. BROWN: Right. Suppose, for example, that I wanted to, or a student wanted to actually build up a little tiny agent, a little tiny robot, simulated robot that would actually try to solve problems for him, like in algebra. Now, his job would be actually to be very explicit about the problem-solving strategies that he should give to this hypothetical robot to actually solve these types of problems.

LEHRER: Do you have the same objection that Dr. Weizenbaum had to, for instance, the suggestion that he made of the Falklands example in the tape, that while the kids were looking at lists of arms, the basic questions about the Falklands did not come up? How could they ever come up in a computer?

Dr. BROWN: Yes, I did agree with much of what he said there. In fact, I was laughing to myself when I saw the beginning of the tape just because of that. I think, for example, that I would see using the computer not just to build those types of simulations, but for example, perhaps to help kids write up stories, write up hypotheses about what is going on there, and use that as a -- like a pull technique to get kids to be better at writing, articulating what those ideas are that they have that are the underlying causes for that war.

LEHRER: In general terms, Dr. Brown, do you see the computer as a good thing for education in this country?

Dr. BROWN: I see that it could be used in many great ways, yes. It could also be misused.

LEHRER: Do you expect its use to proliferate, and would you encourage that?

Dr. BROWN: Well, I think its use will, almost by definition, proliferate. I would encourage it, but I would surely hope that we would become much more sensitive to observing what's really happening with kids using computers. And I think that kind of observation is much trickier than current-day psychologists and educational researchers believe.

LEHRER: In other words, you think the jury is still out as to whether or not this harms kids or helps them as much as some of the advocates believe?

Dr. BROWN: Not only that, but I believe that in fact we have a potential problem of having tunnel vision, as Joe puts it, in terms of the researchers looking at how to use computers and how to evaluate the use of computers in learning.

LEHRER: I see. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Robin?

MacNEIL: We hear now from someone who has studied the impact of television and computers on the way children learn. Mary Alice White is a professor of psychology and director of the Electronic Learning Laboratory at Columbia University's Teacher College. Professor White, how do you believe such computers can help children learn?

MARY ALICE WHITE: Our first studies suggest, first of all, that children pay more attention to computers than they do to the classroom, so one has motivation going. Secondly, they ask more questions to the computer than they do of their classroom teacher, and as a teacher myself, I think that's a good thing. Thirdly, they are cooperative with each other. They tend to work together to solve problems, and I think that's helpful. And the fourth thing we've noticed is that children make no more errors in learning to program a computer than adults do. And as far as I know, that is the only skill I can think of where children and adults are equal in learning something.

MacNEIL: Why is that good?

Prof. WHITE: I think it gives children a sense that they come into learning computers on the same footing as adults. I think if you watch children learning on a computer they have a sense that they're one among equals in this, and I think kids find that very motivating.I don't think that's bad.

MacNEIL: Do you share any of the anxieties we heard from Professor Weizenbaum about the tunnel vision or the ways in which computers may encourage children to think?

Prof. WHITE: Certainly. I think anybody would be foolish not to be worried. It's a new tool; we don't know much about it. And I think everything that they've raised needs to be studied. But I think it's a tool, and we should look at it as something we should use well.

MacNEIL: Do you approve of rushing computers, particularly this sort of micro or personal computer, into the classroom as rapidly as it seems to be happening?

Prof. WHITE: I have mixed feelings about it. I want to see computers being used by children and by teachers, but I think teachers need to be prepared to use them, and I think it won't be great to just dump them in classrooms. I think we need to prepare them.

MacNEIL: Are teachers prepared to use them? Do teachers know enough about them to use them?

Prof. WHITE: Well, certainly some teachers do, and everywhere I go teachers are learning and are interested and are trying. And it's just not true that they've been resistant. They really are very anxious to learn, which is a great credit.

MacNEIL: Do you want to see computers put into the classroom because we're moving into the computer age and children need to be literate for their future lives in computers, or because you think of it as a real benefit and teaching tool to help them learn mathematics or other subjects?

Prof. WHITE: I think something even more strongly than that. I think that the computer is as much a revolution as the printing press, and I think that learning and teaching will never be the same. I think they are very, very different on the computer than they are in print. And I find that intriguing; I find it's a wonderful challenge. But it's a profound change in the way we learn and the way we teach.

MacNEIL: And is the new one going to replace the old one, in your view?

Prof. WHITE: No, I don't think so.I don't think so. Books are a wonderful invention; they're not going to go away. But that's not the only way to learn, and I'm very excited about the graphics possibility of computers that we haven't quite mentioned. I think that's going to involve us in a way of learning through visual images that's a whole new way of learning for us.

MacNEIL: Professor Weizenbaum said he was worried lest the computer be regarded as something that could solve the other problems of American education. Can it solve some of those problems, do you think?

Prof. WHITE: Well, it certainly is being looked upon as a panacea by some people, and I don't think it is. Putting a computer in a classroom is not going to suddenly solve all the problems of a classroom. But it is -- it can be a powerful adjunct for teachers. It's going to change a teacher's role, I think, without any question. I think that teachers will become more in the consulting role that we saw on the film. I think one thing that's going to be hard for us to understand is that children will become, in a sense, the teacher.

MacNEIL: How?

Prof. WHITE: Well, lots of children will know more about programming than lots of teachers, and when a child -- we've seen it in the classroom -- turns for help, they turn to another child who is a computer expert. That changes the structure of a classroom rather dramatically, I suspect it will.

MacNEIL: Is that good?

Prof. WHITE: I don't know whether it's good or bad. We have to find out.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Dr. Weizenbaum, what about it? Do you think the computer is as much a revolution as the printing press was?

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: Well, that's hard to answer. It may come to be.In any case, we're not talking about the computer on the whole, but talking only about the computer in the classroom. And there I think it's too premature to speak of revolutions.

LEHRER: What about Dr. White's points here that her studies show that the students pay more attention? In other words, they arouse more motivation; they ask more questions than they do of the regular teachers; they cooperate more among themselves; and they make no more errors than adults do.

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: Yeah, well, suppose we take that list, except for the errors, which I think is a separate problem. Suppose we take the first three of those and turn them around. Instead of talking about the computer, let's talk about the teacher. Suppose we say that the students pay less attention to teachers. They ask fewer questions of teachers, and they don't cooperate as well with a teacher as with each other in the presence of a teacher as with a computer. Then I think we would be led to ask, you know, what's wrong with a teacher? What's wrong with our teacher-training methods? What's wrong with what the teacher has to face in the classroom that these things are true? Okay? I think especially these first three are essentially an indictment of our educational system.

LEHRER: How do you feel about that, Professor White?

Prof. WHITE: Pretty hot.

LEHRER: Pretty hot?

Prof. WHITE: Yes, I do. I'm very tired of hearing teachers indicted for things that I don't think are their problem. I really don't. Let me say one thing. I think that we've missed the boat about television. It isn't the content of television that's made the difference. Television is an acceptable teacher to children. It has meant a learning system that's available to them, that they can turn on. They need no adult to interpret it for them. This has changed the classroom. Teachers are competing with television, and it's a very hard act to follow, as you gentlemen know.

LEHRER: Well, what about his point? What about Dr. Weizenbaum's point, which is simply, hey, the problem is not that computers are so great, it's that teachers are so lousy?

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: No, no. That's not what I said. You see, Professor White misunderstood me, too. I wasn't indicting the teacher. If you play the tape back I think you'll see that what I said, it's an indictment of our educational system. I didn't say a word about the teachers. I think teachers are put in a position today in many schools, perhaps in most schools, particularly in inner-city schools, where in fact the students don't pay attention, not because the teacher can't get them to pay attention, but for other reasons. It's not the teacher that's the problem, to put it that way. It's a system.

LEHRER: The system. I see.

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: Yeah, and a system which could easily -- I don't know about easily. It's a system which could be improved if we stopped looking for technological fixes, if we took a look at the real problems of the system.

LEHRER: Dr. Brown, in California, what's your view of this?

Dr. BROWN: Well, I think that one of the troubles is the type of learning that we see being enabled by this type of technology is focusing more on what I think of as being learning by doing, or discovery learning. Now, that's an old hat. The trouble is in the past it has not worked out too well because it has been extremely labor-intensive. It's very hard for teachers, no matter how good they are, to spend enough time with the students to facilitate their learning by doing or discovering things on their own as they do something. I think the computer technology correctly used opens up that arena to enabling us to actually build much more cost-effective, learning-by-doing types of environments.

LEHRER: You have said it a couple of times, and so has Dr. Weizenbaum to a lesser degree, and Professor White said it in much stronger terms, that the key to this is using computers correctly. Now, what is the proper use of a computer in a classroom, from your standpoint, Dr. Brown?

Dr. BROWN: I don't think we yet understand what the proper use of it is. I think that we have to try to go into this with a very open mind, try to exploit the kind of capabilities of enabling us to build experimental systems easily, test them out sensitively, and go from there.

LEHRER: But in the process, hundreds of thousands of computers are being put in classrooms as we speak, before all that information is in, correct?

Dr. BROWN: Well, that's happening to some extent. It has to happen to some extent, yes.

LEHRER: Is that a good thing?

Dr. BROWN: I don't have a strong opinion of that.I believe that we basically have to get on with using computers. I believe that the next generation of personal computers is going to be qualitatively more powerful, and is going to make it much easier to explore quite new kinds of learning by computer.

LEHRER: Dr. Weizenbaum, I would assume that you would favor waiting awhile until the answers to a lot of these questions are in. Is that right, sir?

Prof. WEIZENBAUM: Well, I doubt very much that the answers for these questions will ever be in, but I'd certainly like to wait until we know a lot more, and I'd certainly like to turn the problem back in its proper position, which is to say that if we're going to have lots and lots of kids exposed to computers with the help of teachers, that we should first of all see to it that teachers understand something about computers. The other day, perhaps it was two weeks ago or so, Science magazine reported that half the science and mathematics teachers in the country are underqualified, are operating on emergency certificates. Now, how are we going to see to it that the teacher knows something about what he is teaching the children about --

LEHRER: Professor White, let me ask you a question about that. Hundreds of thousands of computers are already in classrooms, more are coming. You heard the statistics that I gave at the beginning; it's in the wind; it's a craze. Are we moving too quickly on this?

Prof. WHITE: I don't have any great wisdom about that. I know it's going to happen. It is happening. I just hope we do it wisely.

LEHRER: But are we doing it wisely now?

Prof. WHITE: I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows.

LEHRER: Robin?

MacNEIL: Well, thank you all very much; that's the end of our time. Dr. Brown, thank you for joining us in California; Professor White, Professor Weizenbaum, here. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.