A colleague pointed out the following quote to me from a blog he follows, basically saying in his email that he was afraid the writer is correct.
“I wonder if the ‘app-ification’ of computing is turning out to be the same thing: a powerful, knowledge-destroying idea that is actually crippling our collective ability to use computers as tools of creation rather than merely as vectors of consumption.”
He went on to talk about the blog post and gave a link to the full article referenced here. Here is my response:
We had a brief moment when we were moving toward social literacy in computing. At St. John’s, it occurred thirty years ago, and I remember it clearly because it was the reason for my being hired. The number of programming classes exploded beyond the comp sci teacher’s ability to teach them. A one-semester elective in “BASIC Programming” (as in the BASIC computer language) was taken by about 3/4 of the sophomore class every year. Most of the rest of the class picked it up as a senior.
Then the history requirement (a year in 9th) was increased to add a semester in 10th, which put a huge damper on the momentum because there were other 10th-grade electives and later to a full year in 10th, which resulted in the current level of programming you see now.
However, a trend counter to the dumbing-down of the interface was, at least initially, a bigger impediment to the movement I think. That was the increasing sophistication of the user interface as windows and other kinds of graphical interfaces came on the scene, which made programming much harder to start. When all we had was a text-based interface, it was much easier to program. Objects made sophisticated programming easier but beginning programming much harder.
As far as the scribe analogy to Gutenberg goes, I agree, but that’s been true of most major technological inventions. When I was 16, I could take apart most of my car under the hood, fix what was wrong, try new stuff, and so on. Now, almost no-one does that because of the computerification of cars. You need expensive equipment just to diagnose what’s going on. Again, the subtle, sophisticated tasks are made easier by a computer–and gas mileage goes up. The down side is that there is almost no entry-level tinkering.
Today, almost no-one does anything with a car but drive it and buy accessories for it: they *use* it, but few understand how it works and even fewer can do anything with it. I don’t like that trend either, but I wager that it’s irreversible short of armageddon.
One reason I think using Mathematica is better in my math classes than letting students use only calculators is that it exposes them to at least a bit of programming-like thinking. The calculators require almost no thought except when to push what buttons. The teachers may not mean them to be used that way, but listen to one kid teach another how to do a “calculator-based problem” that’s short of AP level, and it’s very clear that it’s a button-pushing exercise according to an algorithm: once you identify the algorithm to be used, there’s no more thinking involved.
It’s simply true, I would assert, that as a technology starts to mature, it becomes a tool, and most people want to use tools automatically–they do not want to understand them. The understanding is left to the people who will become the “scribes”–the engineers, programmers, etc.–who enjoy the tool itself and will work to make it better.
The most important tool we have is our minds, which I gather is your point. And it’s why more teachers need to resist the urge to “look smart” or “be helpful” by telling kids what to do because that detracts from their ability and willingness to think for themselves. It does, however, produce short-term gains. But it’s also like “high grades for little work”, the trade-off that some people use for popularity with students. And some of our teachers, esp. those who’ve come from certain public schools, seem genuinely to believe that our students can’t think unless the teacher lays out everything step-by-step for them and never gives a problem or assignment the kids haven’t already seen. That’s a huge disservice and a large disincentive for kids to think and to grow intellectually.
It’s also easier for the teacher, though. When I’m very tired or sick, I sometimes find myself just answering kids’ questions about what to do to solve a problem because I don’t have the energy to spend trying to find the leading questions necessary to push them to think successfully for themselves. I used to get annoyed but now I laugh when I hear a student (or worse, a parent) say that kids “teach themselves” in my classes. While that’s true in a sense, the parent implication is that I don’t do anything to help. I invite them to try to get kids to think in productive ways. It’s a hell of a lot of work, much more than the alternatives of simply not helping or of simply answering questions.
Interestingly, a question on the first-semester college survey responses from the class of 2011 indicated that the respondent felt her/his math courses were good, but that “friends in regular and advanced classes” felt that their classes were probably too easy. I suspect, having visited those classes this past year as interim dept head, that it’s because there was too much assistance. We have some teachers whose behavior seems to me to indicate that they believe their students cannot learn how to solve problems unless the teacher tells them exactly what to do at every step. I continue to maintain that doing so is a huge disservice even if it stems from the noblest motives