Lap three on Lap Tops

Responding to my inestimable colleague Professor Schaff on the subject of laptop computers in schools:

1.  No, you are.

2.  A "bee in one's bonnet" does not imply irrationality; it implies only a preoccupation with some subject beyond what it warrants.

3.  I do indeed concede that giving students laptop computers (or other computers) will not improve educational performance, but I added "in itself."  Teaching someone to read, write, or type, in itself, will not make him more educated.  These are tools only.  What he reads, writes, types, or downloads will make the difference.  Learning to read is nonetheless vital to getting an education. I argue that the use of computers is an essential skill, at least as important as typing has been since the advent of computers. 

4.  Professor Schaff says this:

Like Prof. Blanchard I learned keyboarding in school (it was called Keyboarding and Word Processing).  But that is a far cry from making the use of computers central to the curriculum.

In the various articles that my colleague cites I find nothing about "making computers central to the curriculum," whatever that might mean.  There was some mention of teaching teachers how to integrate computers into the curriculum, which means nothing more than showing them online resources that they can use for their regular classes.  What all the articles focus on is providing more computers to teachers, schools, and perhaps directly to students. If it's practical, I am for it.

5.  I don't accuse my colleague of being a Luddite, though the bee in his bonnet may be a bit of a Luddite.  We agree that computers can be effectively used in genuine education, and that, in the absence of a genuinely liberal curriculum (see point 3), no use of technology will come to any good. But just as  providing technology cannot in itself promote education, so it cannot in itself do any harm.   What matters is the curriculum. 

6.  I do believe that someone without access to an internet connection is likely to be increasingly isolated as time goes on.  I pointed out that the internet is making vast cultural resources available to anyone almost anywhere, and many of them available free and for the first time: classical art and architecture, thousands of hours of great music,  great texts along with translation tools, etc.  Integrating these riches into the classroom and homework environments presents practical challenges, and I see no reason not to help teachers overcome them.  But at the same time, a lot of stuff that used to be sitting in file cabinets or boxes in library stacks will soon be available only online.

Education has always depended on highways.  Athens and Jerusalem, London and Rome, were all centers of commerce.  The information highway is more of the same.  Besides, how much poorer is the man who cannot log on and get access to Professor Schaff's lucid and penetrating prose. Or even mine.