Classrooms Need to Ditch PCs, Tablets

Tech firms are looking forward to selling more machines for the classroom, where student can struggle by themselves on what amounts to a "teaching machine" that essentially does not teach. Teaching machines have never worked in the past, and they will never work in the future.

Yes, in some situations with a certain kind of motivated student, the teaching machine can teach the student. But generally this is the same sort of student who can learn by his or herself using books and asking questions once in a while. The machine hinders the process.

Teaching machines have been around for some time and stemmed from the ideas of controversial behaviorist BF Skinner. He developed something called programmed learning, which quickly morphed into teaching machines that culminated in the Control Data PLATO computers, or Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations.

While it was invented by the University of Illinois and first appeared in 1960, PLATO was licensed by Control Data Corporation and implemented across the country. There were still useable PLATO terminals around until 2006.

I was lucky enough to take two courses using these devices. The user sat behind a big oblong green CRT, and the devices had a dedicated classroom that was near the mainframe, often in a basement. I cannot recall the courses I took, but there was some fun element to the devices. It was extremely crude by today's standards, but futuristic in the 1960s and 1970s.

Their effectiveness was questionable, although the things seemed miraculous. And I'm sure when computers first appeared in actual classrooms in the 1980s a similar awe was inspired.

When tech enters the classroom, the usual result is money squandered. This was obviously the case with PLATO and it is quite apparent today with daffy educators suckered into going all-in with PCs and tablets.

A recent initiative for education called Common Core (promoted heavily by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as some high-paid consultants, and a major textbook publisher) hopes to change the way teachers teach with an emphasis on computers.

Common Core has become quite controversial over the past year for all sorts of practical and political reasons, not the least of which is the abnegation of previous learning methodologies and the overt exclusion and discouragement of parental assistance. This is mostly because most parents do math differently than how Common Core proponents want to teach it.

I would advise readers to do their own research on Common Core. Suffice it to say that one element of Common Core seems to be adding more and more computers into the educational mix. Computerized studies. Computerized testing. Lots of computers.

This, to me, means a return to the inefficient and awkward teaching machine style of education. It is no wonder why test scores are not up to par.

I'll make this assertion once and only once. The only thing a computer does in the classroom is distract from studies. Of course, if you are studying how to use a computer or how to do a great Web search, then the computer is a perfect tool. But that should be where it ends. Teachers should be the focal point for teaching, not computers.

There is something weird and pathetic about a teacher who goes from student to student to help them individually on the computer. This is not teaching, this is IT support.

Computers are great, I agree. But teachers teach and computers compute. Get gadgets out of the classrooms and watch things improve.