David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University in classical Hebrew literature and his PhD in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His books, articles, and theories on technology have been highly influential. He is a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies, and also a painter and an art critic. In 1993, he lost part of his right hand and the sight in one eye after opening a mail bomb sent by Theodore Kaczynski, the “Unabomber” terrorist opposed to the advancement of technology, who targeted prominent professors and business executives. Gelernter chronicled his recovery in the memoir Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber (1997). His many other books include Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (2007) and America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats) (2012). In “Computers Cannot Teach Children Basic Skills,” first published in the New Republic in 1994, Gelernter challenges the widely held view that computers are always a “godsend” in the classroom.

AS YOU READ: Identify the solution Gelernter proposes for using computers effectively in the classroom.

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Over the last decade an estimated $2 billion has been spent on more than 2 million computers for America’s classrooms. That’s not surprising. We constantly hear from Washington that the schools are in trouble and that computers are a godsend. Within the education establishment, in poor as well as rich schools, the machines are awaited with nearly religious awe. An inner-city principal bragged to a teacher friend of mine recently that his school “has a computer in every classroom … despite being in a bad neighborhood!”

Computers Teach Some Things Well

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Computers should be in the schools. They have the potential to accomplish great things. With the right software, they could help make science tangible or teach neglected topics like art and music. They could help students form a concrete idea of society by displaying on-screen a version of the city in which they live — a picture that tracks real life moment by moment.

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In practice, however, computers make our worst educational nightmares come true. While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency° of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student’s arithmetic or correct his spelling.

Computers Lower Reading Skills

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Take multimedia. The idea of multimedia is to combine text, sound, and pictures in a single package that you browse on-screen. You don’t just read Shakespeare; you watch actors performing, listen to songs, view Elizabethan buildings. What’s wrong with that? By offering children candy-coated books, multimedia is guaranteed to sour them on unsweetened reading. It makes the printed page look even more boring than it used to look. Sure, books will be available in the classroom, too — but they’ll have all the appeal of a dusty piano to a teen who has a Walkman handy.

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So what if the little nippers don’t read? If they’re watching Olivier° instead, what do they lose? The text, the written word along with all of its attendant pleasures. Besides, a book is more portable than a computer, has a higher-resolution display, can be written on and dog-eared, and is comparatively dirt cheap.

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Hypermedia, multimedia’s comrade in the struggle for a brave new classroom,° is just as troubling. It’s a way of presenting documents on-screen without imposing a linear start-to-finish order. Disembodied paragraphs are linked by theme; after reading one about the First World War, for example, you might be able to choose another about the technology of battleships, or the life of Woodrow Wilson, or hemlines in the ’20s. This is another cute idea that is good in minor ways and terrible in major ones. Teaching children to understand the orderly unfolding of a plot or a logical argument is a crucial part of education. Authors don’t merely agglomerate° paragraphs; they work hard to make the narrative read a certain way, prove a particular point. To turn a book or a document into hypertext is to invite readers to ignore exactly what counts — the story.

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The real problem, again, is the accentuation° of already bad habits. Dynamiting documents into disjointed paragraphs is one more expression of the sorry fact that sustained argument is not our style. If you’re a newspaper or magazine editor and your readership is dwindling, what’s the solution? Shorter pieces. If you’re a politician and you want to get elected, what do you need? Tasty sound bites. Logical presentation be damned.

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Another software species, “allow me” programs, is not much better. These programs correct spelling and, by applying canned grammatical and stylistic rules, fix prose. In terms of promoting basic skills, though, they have all the virtues of a pocket calculator.

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In Kentucky, as the Wall Street Journal reported, students in grades K–3 are mixed together regardless of age in a relaxed environment. It works great, the Journal says. Yes, scores on computation tests have dropped 10 percent at one school, but not to worry: “Drilling addition and subtraction in an age of calculators is a waste of time,” the principal reassures us. Meanwhile, a Japanese educator informs University of Wisconsin mathematician Richard Akey that in his country, “calculators are not used in elementary or junior high school because the primary emphasis is on helping students develop their mental abilities.” No wonder Japanese kids blow the pants off American kids in math. Do we really think “drilling addition and subtraction in an age of calculators is a waste of time”? If we do, then “drilling reading in an age of multimedia is a waste of time” can’t be far behind.

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Prose-correcting programs are also a little ghoulish, like asking a computer for tips on improving your personality. On the other hand, I ran this viewpoint through a spell checker, so how can I ban the use of such programs in schools? Because to misspell is human; to have no idea of correct spelling is to be semiliterate.

Conditions on the Use of Computers

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There’s no denying that computers have the potential to perform inspiring feats in the classroom. If we are ever to see that potential realized, however, we ought to agree on three conditions. First, there should be a completely new crop of children’s software. Most of today’s offerings show no imagination. There are hundreds of similar reading and geography and arithmetic programs, but almost nothing on electricity or physics or architecture. Also, they abuse the technical capacities of new media to glitz up old forms instead of creating new ones. Why not build a time-travel program that gives kids a feel for how history is structured by zooming you backward? A spectrum program that lets users twirl a frequency knob to see what happens?

Second, computers should be used only during recess or relaxation periods. Treat them as fillips,° not as surrogate teachers. When I was in school in the ’60s, we all loved educational films. When we saw a movie in class, everybody won: teachers didn’t have to teach, and pupils didn’t have to learn. I suspect that classroom computers are popular today for the same reasons.

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Most important, educators should learn what parents and most teachers already know: you cannot teach a child anything unless you look him in the face. We should not forget what computers are. Like books — better in some ways, worse in others — they are devices that help children mobilize their own resources and learn for themselves. The computer’s potential to do good is modestly greater than a book’s in some areas. Its potential to do harm is vastly greater, across the board.

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