Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-08-29 03:15 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2002-08-29 03:15 pm
Essay draft complete. Whewh.
Critique of “On Classrooms, With and Without Computers”
The article “On Classrooms, With and Without Computers”, by Clifford Stoll, contains a few logical fallacies that weaken what would otherwise be a strong essay. Stoll’s main point is that computers cannot substitute for actual experience, and it would be more cost-effective to have the students actually experience what the expensive systems are trying to simulate. The purpose of the essay is to convince the reader that all the electronic expensive toys are unnecessary; an enthusiastic teacher is all that is needed to teach the subject properly. Unfortunately, the fallacies of false dichotomy and oversimplification do not support the argument.
Mr. Stoll points out that the inspiration for learning comes from not a high level of technology, but the presence of a motivated teacher. However, a teacher’s electronic presence is less effective than the teachers and students being physically in the same room. High-tech, high-cost innovations in the classroom have proved remarkable failures. By setting children down in front of computers, you distance them from the rest of society. Children are spending less and less time interacting with the outdoors, and more time in front of computers. Stoll feels that this is a bad thing, and that the overuse of computers and television in learning situations will teach students to have their education fed to them while they sit back and are entertained. It is important, he says, to spend time experiencing the real world, to know for yourself what the computers can only pretend at with sight and sound.
Stoll’s article is a dramatic and flashy case for cutting down on money spent on technology in the classroom, but presents what looks to be a false dichotomy. He cites the expensive technologies that fail alarmingly to achieve the desired results, and talks about the simple classical way of doing things that would have achieved better results, such as the video hookup in the classroom where children asked long-distance questions they could have asked on postcards (263). He thought, in fact, the questions “astonishingly naïve and uninteresting”(263). He spends very little time on what effective uses of these technologies would be, concentrating only on how they are being misused, and the low-tech version of the activity. To be truly convincing that this technology is unnecessary, he should not only cite the failures of the high-tech stuff, and talk about the old way of doing things, but include a possible scenario where the expensive technologies, such as computers, could be used in an effective manner.
When Stoll claims that “computing…is an essentially passive activity that seldom requires analytic thought,”(262) he oversimplifies the situation. As an avid user of computers myself, I recognize his point that extensive computer use does lead to a disconnection from other people in the immediate area (262), but disagree that children will unavoidably learn “transitory and shallow relationships” and “that grammar, analytic thought…don’t matter”(265) through online interactions. Children left unguided with online sources and electronic media should be fully as likely to think critically about what they are seeing and listening to as children left unguided with books; he understates the importance of teacher guidance in the use of any method of learning except in the beginning of the essay. The vast majority of my social interactions have moved online; I participate in a community of online diaries, where the forming of deep, long-lasting relationships with especial attention to grammar is encouraged.
I am unsatisfied with Stoll’s purpose in his essay. Had I been writing it, I would have taken a look at the alternate, lower-tech uses that the same money used in the failed experiments could have gone to, and explained how a properly motivated teacher could have used this money to greater effect. This essay succeeded in convincing me that certain applications of technology in schools are misaimed, but did not convince me that the technology itself was unwanted, or inherently bad if used by the same motivated teachers that Stoll would like to see at the helm rather than the Global Schoolhouse (262) or an AI.
728 words
Works Cited
Stoll, Clifford. “On Classrooms, With and Without Computers.” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers Fourth Edition. Eds. Mary Lynch Kennedy, William J. Kennedy, Hadley M. Smith. 2000 Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ. 259-266.
The article “On Classrooms, With and Without Computers”, by Clifford Stoll, contains a few logical fallacies that weaken what would otherwise be a strong essay. Stoll’s main point is that computers cannot substitute for actual experience, and it would be more cost-effective to have the students actually experience what the expensive systems are trying to simulate. The purpose of the essay is to convince the reader that all the electronic expensive toys are unnecessary; an enthusiastic teacher is all that is needed to teach the subject properly. Unfortunately, the fallacies of false dichotomy and oversimplification do not support the argument.
Mr. Stoll points out that the inspiration for learning comes from not a high level of technology, but the presence of a motivated teacher. However, a teacher’s electronic presence is less effective than the teachers and students being physically in the same room. High-tech, high-cost innovations in the classroom have proved remarkable failures. By setting children down in front of computers, you distance them from the rest of society. Children are spending less and less time interacting with the outdoors, and more time in front of computers. Stoll feels that this is a bad thing, and that the overuse of computers and television in learning situations will teach students to have their education fed to them while they sit back and are entertained. It is important, he says, to spend time experiencing the real world, to know for yourself what the computers can only pretend at with sight and sound.
Stoll’s article is a dramatic and flashy case for cutting down on money spent on technology in the classroom, but presents what looks to be a false dichotomy. He cites the expensive technologies that fail alarmingly to achieve the desired results, and talks about the simple classical way of doing things that would have achieved better results, such as the video hookup in the classroom where children asked long-distance questions they could have asked on postcards (263). He thought, in fact, the questions “astonishingly naïve and uninteresting”(263). He spends very little time on what effective uses of these technologies would be, concentrating only on how they are being misused, and the low-tech version of the activity. To be truly convincing that this technology is unnecessary, he should not only cite the failures of the high-tech stuff, and talk about the old way of doing things, but include a possible scenario where the expensive technologies, such as computers, could be used in an effective manner.
When Stoll claims that “computing…is an essentially passive activity that seldom requires analytic thought,”(262) he oversimplifies the situation. As an avid user of computers myself, I recognize his point that extensive computer use does lead to a disconnection from other people in the immediate area (262), but disagree that children will unavoidably learn “transitory and shallow relationships” and “that grammar, analytic thought…don’t matter”(265) through online interactions. Children left unguided with online sources and electronic media should be fully as likely to think critically about what they are seeing and listening to as children left unguided with books; he understates the importance of teacher guidance in the use of any method of learning except in the beginning of the essay. The vast majority of my social interactions have moved online; I participate in a community of online diaries, where the forming of deep, long-lasting relationships with especial attention to grammar is encouraged.
I am unsatisfied with Stoll’s purpose in his essay. Had I been writing it, I would have taken a look at the alternate, lower-tech uses that the same money used in the failed experiments could have gone to, and explained how a properly motivated teacher could have used this money to greater effect. This essay succeeded in convincing me that certain applications of technology in schools are misaimed, but did not convince me that the technology itself was unwanted, or inherently bad if used by the same motivated teachers that Stoll would like to see at the helm rather than the Global Schoolhouse (262) or an AI.
728 words
Works Cited
Stoll, Clifford. “On Classrooms, With and Without Computers.” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers Fourth Edition. Eds. Mary Lynch Kennedy, William J. Kennedy, Hadley M. Smith. 2000 Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, NJ. 259-266.