Dimensions
140 x 214 x 23mm
What Computers Are Doing to Our Children's Brains - and What We Can Do About It
The rush to computers in schools is well-known to anyone who has school-age children. Schools have been adding computers as fast as they're buying new textbooks, and the schools that are technologically sophisticated boast about their ratio of computers per students. For private schools, it's a key selling point.
But Jane Healy says we have been rushing blindly into this new technology. It isn't essential to learning; other things are far more important and are being shoved aside in the rush to buy computers. At the top of the list is teacher training. Many schools buy computers and software and completely neglect to train teachers in how to incorporate the new technology into the classroom.
Next on the list is the dearth of good educational software. Much of it is little more than game software with an educational component. As a result, children are not learning; they are learning how to point and click. If you don't succeed, click, click again; eventually the right answer will come up. Whether the child learns anything other than to try every option is doubtful.
Meanwhile, on the home front, parents think that putting a child in front of a computer screen is better than putting him or her in front of a television screen. Not so, says Healy. Much of the "edutainment" software is no better than television programming.
So what should parents do? Healy recommends not purchasing a computer for children until they are in the middle grades of elementary school (roughly grade 4) and, likewise, not introducing computers into the curriculum until then.
She stresses the important of consulting reputable sources for good-quality software (she names these sources). She recommends working with younger children at the computer and generally supervising their computer activities as one would monitor their television-watching.
The book should be of great interest both to parents facing this decision and to educators. It will not be popular in the computer industry, where it will be understood, correctly, as a call to put on the brakes and re-think the computerization of our nation's classrooms.
