Copyright 1988 Guardian Newspapers Limited

The Guardian (London)

January 21, 1988

LENGTH: 966 words

HEADLINE: Computer Guardian: The tools in a language - Some questions about the computer literacy debate

BYLINE: By KEN LEVINE

BODY:

THE recent debate on computer literacy covered much of the territory but some of the central issues of its definition and value remain confused. A useful advance would be to provide clear answers to three of the questions the debate raised. What, if anything, is ideological about computer literacy? How should the value of a limited version be assessed? Will computer literacy improve employment prospects?

All literacies entail the capacity to exchange a coded form of information.

Because many social transactions involve such an exchange, the encoding and decoding skills are socially prized and the process of acquiring them comes to reflect or be incorporated in prevailing institutional arrangements. As well as conveying technical skills, the process of mastering any literacy, exposes the trainee to new values and claims to authority which are transmitted by the trainers, the materials, the setting or all three.

In these respects, computer literacy is no more or less 'ideological' than training in, say, first-aid; both of these literacies set out to provide a modest practical knowledge shorn of its theoretical sources which trainees can apply to a restricted range of problems. In each case, a pre-existing backdrop of specialised institutions containing professional experts with wide-ranging knowledge and high technology is taken for granted. These may well be ineffective ways of distributing the cultural stock of knowledge about computing and trauma, but this does not make either computer literacy or first-aid ideological.

There is little doubt that initial training in reading and writing is a perfect opportunity for indoctrination, and is used as such the world over.

In the case of computer literacy, however, the most systematic areas of indoctrination will probably relate to the trainer's favoured hardware manufacturer, operating system, software package or high-level language.

Frank Webster and Kevin Robins themselves complain (November 17th) that the issues of social impact are left out of many computer literacy courses, so the scope for political consciousness raising or lowering is limited. The latter also believe that practical introductions to computing 'mystify' the IT revolution by failing to expose the extent to which it is employed for military and civilian command and control purposes. There can be no doubt that developments of the type they have in mind have very grave political implications, and any extended course in IT should discuss them.

But mystification is an exaggeration. The customers enduring cold local Tech classrooms for weekly wrestling matches with their micros ar not rendered less capable of seeing the sinister aspects of Government Data Network by being taught a few programming essentials. Do first-aid courses prevent people from appreciating what is at stake in NHS versus private provision?

Webster and Robins are right to condemn the way that the employment opportunities that computer literacy allegedly opens up have been oversold and misrepresented. The introduction of electronic systems into the environment of semi and unskilled work no more demands a computer literacy of the worker than the advent of power tools required that he or she could read or write.

Most jobs in modern factories have had the conventional literacy elements designed out of them long ago, and the last thing that shop floor electronics is allowed to do is to push up training budgets. If employers show an interest in keyboard experience, it is probably for the same reason that all applicants are screened for a minimal reading and writing capacity; the possession of these abilities is being used as a convenient proxy for 'cooperativeness' and 'trainability.'

In assessing the value of any type of literacy, a key element that must be specified is value to whom? A literacy may be cultivated by individuals without the intention of it being certified via examinations or being relevant to the job market.

Many people feel intellectually vulnerable because they know nothing about computers in the same way as others are discomforted by their reading or spelling shortcomings. They deserve access to courses which can take them to the level that satisfies their needs, however rudimentary, irrespective of labour market demand.

It is a different story, however, if a leteracy is to be converted into an educational credential to impress employers. For a limited period, while the supplies of all levels of computing skill are relatively scarce., certifies signifying basic computer literacy will have some credibility.

As increasingly larger cohorts of school-leavers begin to present such certificates, a familiar process of educational inflation will devalue the low-level qualifications. Employers will be able to demand ever higher levels of achievement from applicants, and although a restricted computer literacy will retain its utility, its attractiveness to firms will decline.

So when Ray Thomas (November 26) argues that computer literacy should cover 'knowledge of the application area' but need not embrace a programming capacity or knowledge of hardware mechnanisms, he is giving a hostage to fortune as far as employment is concerned. In a dynamic technology and with rapidly changing employment markets, levels of minimum acceptable competence will inevitably rise, but it is not possible to say with any certainty exactly what job skills will be in demand as little as five years ahead.

Thomas is reminiscent of those early nineteenth century educationalists like Hannah More who confidently believed that working-class children needed to be taught to read (primarily for the scriptures) but could and should be shielded from the burden of learning to write.