Copyright 1988 Guardian Newspapers Limited

The Guardian (London)

January 7, 1988

LENGTH: 1380 words

HEADLINE: Computer Guardian: Meaning machine - Is technology to be just for the elite?

BYLINE: By MARTIN OWEN

BODY:

Frank Webster and Kevin Roberts's arguments about the uselessness of teaching computer literacy (Computer, December 17) are based on the fact that it is 'sold' (an interesting enough concept in these days of compulsory curricula) by its value in the employment market. Rightly they question whether the point of sale till operative or the automated teller machine customer needs to understand any of the technology they are using.

They claim that technology is de-skilling, and they say we need to know less. They suggest that we need not know anything about electricity to use the telephone. As a teacher of the teaching of 'computer literacy' I almost share that belief .

However, I start from a different premise. It may well be the current thrust of our manpower planners and followers of human capital theories of the function and purpose of the education system is to produce a stratified and disciplined labour force where a majority of the population only require a level of education sufficient to make them operators and consumers. But this

Brave New World view is not one supported by the majority of workers in the field of education. I feel we would espouse a nobler purpose.

Literacy, as Webster and Roberts suggests, is an enabling process in that without reading and writing we would have a 'fearful handicap which disables people socially, economically and politically.' However, reading and writing are not functional skills. To read and write involves more than decoding and encoding alphabetic characters on a page or screen. It involves a search for meaning.

Meaning arises from a set of experiences we might call our education. Being able to mouth the phonemes of 'antidisestablishmentarianism' does not contribute to our understanding of the current controlversies in the Church of England. Our reading of the pages of Crockfords, the Daily Telegraph or the Guardian needs informing from our fund of knowledge of important ideas in the development of modern Britain, the world or the universe.

We do not need to know about electromagnetism to operate a telephone, but does anyone suggest we should not teach about the laws of physics.

But what has all this to do with computer literacy?

I think computers are important. They are one of man's greatest achievements of the 20th century. The ideas behind their operation are intellectually stimulating, their applications are worthy of scholastic investigation and questioning, and their utility to the individual and society as a whole is so profound that I feel I can justify calling it the most useful tool ever invented. Try justifying not teaching about information technology (IT) on educational rather than training grounds.

As a former science teacher I was convinced that a better knowledge of nutrition would make us healthier, a better understanding of friction would make us safer drivers, and a better understanding of detergents would make us less prone to pollution. None of these areas of knowledge are essential to the tasks of eating, driving or washing, but it resolves to a question of whether we wish to live in an educated society or in a society of trained operators and consumers.

Surely the ability to use and understand computers cannot be less important than the study of Vikings or the geography of chalk landscapes? Are the technological advances of our age to be kept from the populace? Are the processes of modelling with a computer, desk top publishing and a host of other activities to be kept for an elite who acquire the associated thinking, planning and operational knowledge and even the rote mechanical tasks of making back-up discs by some unspecified means?

At a second level, Webster and Roberts suggest that teaching IT is unnecessary because the technological thrust is towards ease of use; and indeed, we use all sorts of IT gadgets and gizmos without extensive education or training. Further, it is suggested that hands on training is wasteful of resources which would be better applied elsewhere.

There are some interesting problems with ease-of-use, mainly in that it does not seem to be that easy.

One central thrust in providing ease of use is to adopt metaphors from elsewhere in life in which we have previous experience and training.

Operating systems are given desktop metaphor, graphics programs are artists' palette databases are video recorders, data entry and retrieval systems are based on form filling and automated completion.

Even at the level of their surface features, these metaphors have built-in problems. the only filing cabinet in my children's life is on the screen of our family computer; what will their children think of the metaphor? Form filling on screen may provide a useful transition for clerical workers whose previous work was filling in forms, but is it the appropriate metaphor for those whose information-handling experiences will have been predominantly electronic?

Our education provided us with the means of doing the tasks which are made simpler on the computer because we have learned how to do the tasks before. This does not mean that we did not learn how to store and organise, classify and rearrange. We have transferred earlier learning to the computer.

The metaphors that provide links to our earlier learning do not necessarily apply to the next generation, and they may hide the true complexity of the tasks which we know we can do with computers, and could not do with old technology.

The skills we employ in our learning and everyday life are not innate. We acquired them. Someone had to teach us the use of a calendar, index, protractor, ruler and scissors. Someone had to teach us how to interpret information in an atlas or a table or a graph or a dictionary. Our new ways of doing things with computers still require teaching and learning to take place (as anyone who has attempted them will testify).

We may be able to do things better, we may be able to do new things or things which were just too difficult previously .. but do not make the mistake of thinking that the ability to do them is part of our genetic endowment.

Pupils who use preadsheets in their home economics lessons may not need to financially model the production of cauliflower cheese ever again, in the same way that I knew that I would not have to translate Caesar's 'De Bello Gallico IV' after working on 'V' for my O level Latin.

The processes I went through in schoold have left me with an endowment that enables me to take on other tasks as a result. I hope familiarity and experience with computer modelling will provide the basis of handling many other types of problem in the future, and also to know what kind of problems can call upon computer assistance.

There are new educational challenges which have only arisen by the presence of the computer. The application of Boolean algebra and set theory in the process of retrieving information is a classic example.

No matter how well on hides the process behind video-recorder or file card rack metaphors, the true power of these systems can not be made abailable until the user has a grasp of the new concepts which are underpinned by the Boolean operations. Using the computer itself is probably the best way of providing the experience itself.

We are also living in a society where facility and ease with mechanical and electrical devices is not problem free. There are many who, through their upbringing and education, have a fear of distaste for interacting with machines. We all know of apocryphal drivers who run out of petrol rather than visit self service filling stations, or pay cowboy electricians small fortunes for changing fuses. People who fear machines in this society are as handicapped as those who cannot read and write.

How much of that fear comes from a lack of understanding of the nature and purpose of the machinery, a feeling that they are not totally in control of the situation? Sometimes these fears of lack of control are entirely justifiable .. ignorance makes one a victim. Education is the only cure; avoidance is only an ameliorator.

Martin Owen lectures at Roehampton Institute of Higher Education and can be contacted on TTNS / Telecom Gold 01:HFE051.