It seems that every session of the Idaho Legislature, when the education budget comes up, we are reminded that “You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it.” And, if all you do is throw money, with no thought for what that money will actually do, that is probably correct. At the same time, you are unlikely to solve many problems if you are not willing to throw some money in their direction. The old adage is mostly an excuse for not doing anything.
Now, Superintendent Luna and his Republican allies seem to think they can solve Idaho education’s problems by throwing computers at them. A laptop for every child seems, almost, to be a solution in search of a problem.
I am not against computers in our schools. I taught English, and it was my perennial hope that by the time I retired, every student would have routine computer access at school so that I could assign all compositions to be typed, just as they will be required to be in college. And just maybe, students could submit their compositions electronically, and they could be critiqued, graded, and returned electronically, just the way it is done at most colleges and universities. If only I could do that much, my efficiency and my students’ learning experience would be enhanced. Unfortunately, we never got that far. Not even close. Never mind on-line instruction. Never mind going out online to “get The Information.” Just to better teach writing.
We had computer labs, most of them dedicated to this department or that, business or math, or whatever, not for routine general use. I had four computers in my classroom for thirty plus students. There were computers in the library, but they were overseen by two harried and overworked librarians. It was not really practical to send students down to use the lab one or a few at a time. There was no real access before or after school. We had been better off a decade earlier when there was a dedicated aide who made all sorts of things possible. But at some point the aide went away, and that was that.
Nor could I assume that all of my students had computer access at home. Some did, some didn’t. We were not an affluent district.
I can think of all sorts of things that would have been possible if every student had his own computer. But had the computers been dumped on me with the single purpose of on-line instruction, something unto themselves and not provision for real integration into the curriculum, they would likely have been more of a distraction than an asset. It is possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason – replacing teachers, for example – but the true potentials of that right thing are seldom achieved.
This morning I heard a news item about technology at Bishop Kelly High School in Boise. http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/idaho/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1764275/Local.News/Does.Tech.in.Classrooms.Work..A.Look.At.One.Private.School I was envious. This sounds like applications that are thoughtfully designed to augment an established instructional program, not to supplant it, not to be scabbed on top of it, not to run schools more cheaply, not to remedy, in some ill-defined way, some ill-defined set of problems, real or imaginary.
I worry that when this scheme doesn’t work very well, when it is unsustainably more expensive, when it has caused more problems than it has solved, it will be regarded as yet another “flavor of the month,” of which we teachers are reputed to be inordinately fond, will be dismissed as a discredited concept, and will be relegated to that great scrap-heap of what might have been.