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21. Computer Lib

/Dream Machines

1974

309

;

recombination, the parsing of old relations, rather than

synthesis.

Like political boundaries, curriculum boundaries arise

from noticeable features of a continuum and become

progressively more fortified. As behind political borders,

social unification occurs within them, so that wholly

dissimilar practitioners who share a name come to think

they do the same thing. And because they talk mainly to each

other, they forget how near is the other side of the border.

Because of the fiction of “subjects,” great concern and

consideration has always gone into calculating the “correct”

teaching sequence for each “subject.” In recent years radical

new teaching sequences have been introduced for teaching

various subjects, including mathematics and

physics. But such efforts appear to have been

misinformed by the idea of supplanting the

“wrong” teaching sequence with the “right”

teaching sequence, one which is “validated.”

Similarly, we have gone from a time when the

instructional sequence was a balance between

tradition and the lowest common denominator

of each subject, to a time when teachers may pick

“flexible optimized strategies” from textbooks.

And this all ignores a simple fact: all are arbitrary.

Instructional sequences aren’t needed at all if the

people are motivated and the materials are clear

and available. 

Testing as we know it (integrated with walled

curricula and instructional sequences) is a destructive

activity, particularly for the orientation which it creates. The

concerns of testing are extraneous: learning to figure out

low-level twists in questions that lead nowhere, under

pressure.

The system of tensions and defenses it creates in the

student’s personality are unrelated to the subject or the way

people might relate to the subject. An exploitive attitude is

fostered. Not becoming involved with the subject, the

student grabs for rote payoff rather than insight.

All in a condescending circumstance. Condescension is

built into the system at all levels, so pervasive it is scarcely

noticed. Students are subjected to a grim variety of put-

downs and denigrations. While many people evidently

believe this to be right, its productivity in building confident

and self-respecting minds may be doubted.

The problems of the school are not

particularly the teacher’s fault. The practice of

teaching is principally involved with managing

the class, keeping up face, and projecting the

image of the subject that conforms to the

teacher’s own predilections. The educational

system is thereby committed to the fussy and

prissy, to the enforcement of peculiar standards

of righteousness and the elevation of

teachers—a huge irrelevant shell around the

small kernel of knowledge transmitted. 

The usual attacks on computer teaching tend

to be sentimental and emotional pleas for the

alleged humanism of the existing system. Those

who are opposed to the use of computers to

teach generally believe the computer to be “cold” and

“inhuman.” The teacher is considered “warm” and “human.”

This view is questionable on both sides.

Some premises relevant to teaching

1. The human mind is born free, yet everywhere it is in chains. The educational system serves mainly to destroy for most people, in

varying degrees, intelligence, curiosity, enthusiasm, and intellectual initiative and self-confidence. We are born with these. They are gone

or severely diminished when we leave school.

2. Everything is interesting, until ruined for us. Nothing in the universe is intrinsically uninteresting. Schooling systematically ruins

things for us, wiping out these interests; the last thing to be ruined determines your profession.

3. There are no “subjects.” The division of the universe into “subjects” for teaching is a matter of tradition and administrative

convenience. 

4. There is no natural or necessary order of learning. Teaching sequences are arbitrary, explanatory hierarchies philosophically spurious.

“Prerequisites” are a fiction spawned by the division of the world into “subjects;” and maintained by not providing summaries,

introductions or orientational materials except to those arriving through a certain door.

5. Anyone retaining his natural mental facilities can learn anything practically on his own, given encouragement and resources.

6. Most teachers mean well, but they are so concerned with promoting their images, attitudes and style of order that very little else can

be communicated in the time remaining, and almost none of it attractively.

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the

NEWMEDIA

READER

The computer is as inhuman as we make it. The computer

is no more “cold” and “inhuman” than a toaster, bathtub or

automobile (all associated with warm human activities).

Living teachers can be as inhuman as members of any

people-prodding profession, sometimes more so.

Computerists speak of “freeing teachers for the creative part

of their work;” in many cases it is not clear what creative

tasks they could be freed for. 

At the last, it is to rescue the student from the inhuman

teacher, and allow him to relate directly and personally to the

intrinsically interesting subject matter, than we need to use

computers in education.

Many successful systems of teacherless learning exist in

our society: professional and industrial magazines;

conventions and their display booths and

brochures; technical sales pitches (most

remarkably, those of medical “detail men”);

hobbyist circles, which combine personal

acquaintance with a round of magazines

and gatherings; think-tanks and research

institutes, where specialists trade fields;

and the respectful briefing. 

None of these is like the conventional

classroom with its haughty resource-

chairman; they are not run on

condescension; and they get a lot across.

We tend to think they are not “education”

and that the methods cannot be

transferred or extended to the regions now ruled by

conventional teaching. But why not? 

If everything we ate were kibbled into uniform dogfood,

and the amount consumed at each feeding time tediously

watched and tested, we would have little fondness for eating.

But this is what the schools do to our food for thought, and

this is what happens to people’s minds in primary school, sec-

ondary school and most colleges.

This is the way to produce a nation of sheep or clerks. If we

are serious about wanting people to have creative and

energetic minds, it is not what we ought to do. Energy and

enthusiasm are natural to the human spirit; why drown them?

Education ought to be clear, inviting and enjoyable,

without booby-traps, humiliations, condescension or

boredom. It ought to teach and reward initiative, curiosity,

the habit of self-motivation, intellectual involvement.

Students should develop, through practice, abilities to think,

argue and disagree intelligently.

Educators and computer enthusiasts tend to agree on

these goals. But what happens? Many of the inhumanities of

the existing system, no less wrong for being unintentional,

are being continued into computer-assisted teaching.

Although the promoters of computer-assisted instruction,

affectionately call “CAI,” seem to think of themselves as being

at the vanguard of progress in all directions, the field already

seems to operate according to a stereotype. We may call this

“classic” or “conventional” CAI, a way of thinking depressingly

summarized in “The Use of Computers in Education” by

Patrick Suppes, Scientific American, September, 1966,

206–220, an article of semi-classic stature.

It is an unexamined premise of this article that

the computer system will always decide what the

student is to study and control his movements

through it. The student is to be led by the nose

through every subject, and the author expresses

perplexity over the question of 

how the system

can decide, at all times, where to lead the student

by the nose (top of col. 3, p. 219). But let us not

anticipate alternatives. 

It is often asserted (as by Alpert and Bitzer in

“Advances in Computer-Based Education,” 

Science,

March 20, 1970) that this is not the only

approach current. The trouble is that it seems to

be the only approach current, and in the

expanding computer universe everyone 

seems to know what

CAI “is.” And this is it. 

Computer-assisted instruction, in this classical sense, is the

presentation by computer of bite-sized segments of

instructional material, branching among them according to

involuntary choices by the student (“answers”) and embedding

material presented the student in some sort of pseudo-

conversation (“Very good. Now, Johnny, point at the . . .”)

CAI: Based on Unnecessary Premises

At whichever level of complexity, all these conventional CAI

systems are based on three premises: that all presentations

consist of 

items, short chunks and questions; that the items

are arranged into sequences, though these sequences may

branch and vary under control of the computer; and finally,

that these sequences are to be embedded in a framework of

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