Interfaith marriage: Education meets technology

Yong Zhao

About four decades ago, the eminent scholar C. P. Snow talked about a problem that was serious for "our creative, intellectual, and above all, our normal life. It is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future. It is making it difficult or impossible for us to take good action." The problem was the existence of a gulf of mutual incomprehension, even dislike and hostility between two groups: scientific intellectuals and literary intellectuals. According to Snow, the two groups held "a curious distorted image of each other. Their attitudes are so different that, even on the level of emotion, they can't find much common ground."

Snow could well have been talking about today's situation in education as it pertains to technology. As we spend billions of dollars on technology and millions of children's future are at stake, misunderstandings, mutual dislike and suspicion dominate two groups that should be working together. At one pole are the technologists, at the other the non-technologists. The two groups attend different meetings, participate in different organizations, read different journals, and are normally located in different parts of the campus or building. They talk about technology in different languages and often refer to each other at their own gatherings as "they" or "them." You can easily tell them apart by the titles of the articles they write. Compare "How To Make Teachers Use Technology," "What Factors Affect Teachers' Uptake Of Computers," "Barriers and Breakthroughs: Turn Teachers to Technology," and "Power On: Educational Technology" with "Emperor's New Computer: A Critical Look at Our Appetite for Computer Technology," "How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students' Research Papers," "Resisting Technological Momentum", and "Mad Rushes into the Future: The Overselling of Educational Technology."

The technologists tend to believe that technology not only helps to solve existing problems but also brings new possibilities. Technology should not only "amplify" or "enable", but also "transform" or "revolutionize" existing practices. On the other hand, the non-technologists believe that technology is only a tool for an existing problem. If there is no immediate fit between a technology and the existing problem, technology should not be used. In other words, the technologists tend to view technology as the independent variable that causes changes in existing practices of teaching and learning, whereas the non-technologists see technology as a dependent variable, subject to the power of existing practices.

These beliefs result in remarkably different interpretations of the past. While it has been generally recognized that technology has not changed education as significantly and positively as promised, technologists and non-technologists have different explanations. Technologists point out that: (1) teachers were not adequately prepared to take advantage of the technologies; (2) the last technology was not powerful enough; and (3) there was not sufficient investment in technology. The non-technologists put a different spin on it, asserting that: (1) technology was unnecessarily imposed on teachers; (2) technology was incompatible with the existing school culture, and (3) technology distracted attention from the real education problems. Naturally, different interpretations of the past lead to a different focus on the present and different hopes for the future. The technologists, for instance, get excited over new technologies and focus on improving them; the non-technologists more often than not use the failed past as reasons to reject new technologies and deny hopes for the future.

The two groups hold "curious distorted images of each other." The technologists have a deep-seated impression that the non-technologists are natural Luddites, conservative, resistant to change, and oblivious to the transforming power of technology. On the other hand, the non-technologists tend to view the technologists as shallowly enthusiastic, ignorant of education and learning theories, and unaware of the reality of classrooms and schools. These images, albeit stereotypical, are not entirely baseless. Both groups' daily actions/reactions to technology and public exhibition of opinions in the form of conference presentations, journal articles, and books provide each other the grounds for such stereotypes. For instance, it would not be too difficult to characterize the following statement by Seymour Papert, an archetypical figure of the technologists, as overly optimistic about the power of technology and shockingly ignorant of school reality.

The question at stake is no longer whether technology can change education or even whether this is desirable. The presence of technology in society is a major factor in changing the entire learning environment. School is lagging further and further behind the society it is intended to serve. Eventually it will transform itself deeply or break down and be replaced by new social structures . . .The Education Establishment has misunderstood the historical role of digital technology in relation to the education of children. . .A pervasive error consists of seeing the technology as a way to improve the practices of contemporary School. In fact the technology makes them obsolete.

Even a cursory look at the past history of technological innovations and other reform efforts in education and the present situation of schools would belie Professor Papert's claims. On the other side, David Rothenberg's article How the Web Destroys the Quality of Students' Research Papers serves only to reinforce the stereotype of the Luddite educator. In this article, Rothenberg tells a tale of horror about technology: Word processing has already made many students "slackers, preferring to let the machine do their work for them." And now the Web has destroyed the quality of his students' research papers because it makes "research look too easy." Therefore, Professor Rothenberg wishes "that the university's computer system would crash for a day." Professor Rothenberg seems to equate "hard-to-get things" with quality work, thus any technology that makes some tasks easier will turn people into "slackers" who produce lousy products. I wonder if Professor Rothenberg never uses the telephone because it makes communication "look too easy." You pick up the phone, press a few numbers, and viola, you are talking with your mother across the continent. I also wonder if Professor Rothenberg does not use any of the computerized catalogue when he visits the library, where according to him research should occur, again because it makes research look too easy. Instead of going through boxes of cards, "you toss a query to the machine, wait a few minutes, and suddenly a lot of possible sources of information appear on your screen." I wonder why professor Rothenberg reads books instead of traveling in time and space to talk to the great minds since they, too, can make "research look too easy" and thus turn scholars (students) into slackers.

The snipping would almost be fun if the stakes weren't so high. Whether or not technology fulfills its immense promise for education has profound implications for generations of students. Interestingly, unlike the polar extremes Snow described those many years ago, the two groups today have more reasons to be friends than foes. Not only do they share a common goal, but often they must draw from the same resources, and are forced to interact. Unfortunately, the technologists and non-technologists have traditionally regarded each other as enemies: the technologists as invaders and the non-technologists as defenders of their own territory. An article published in the Journal of Teacher Education best describes the relationship between the two groups: the authors cleverly use Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes as an analogy for today's rush to computerize education. Technologists, like the two tricksters, are stealing the emperor's precious gold and silk threads by fooling the emperor, his courtiers, and the townsfolk. "And this time around, we cannot count on a little child to point out the obvious. The children are in their rooms with the shades drawn staring at computer screens."

One major reason for this animosity between these groups is the shared perception that they must compete for resources and attention. As schools and the society start to invest more in computer technology, resources for other activities decrease. Moreover, as technology takes center stage, an increasing amount of social, academic, and political attention shifts away from traditional disciplines to technology. Thus the non-technologists view the technologists as invading their territory and taking away their valuable assets and resources. They fear that what they know and value is being rendered obsolete and irrelevant while a new group that has traditionally been viewed as "support staff" is rising to the top, upsetting established social orders in academia. Thus, they are doing their best to keep the technologists and their gadgets at the periphery and that technological innovators are not rewarded. The technologists have not taken this perceived snub well. They resent being kept in the basement because they believe that they hold the cure for all ills in education.

The consequences of this enmity are various and serious. In addition to the aforementioned implications for education in the next century, this distrust leads to irrational reactions to technology and each other. The mention of the word "technology" or "computer" causes surprisingly emotional reactions that often prevents both the technologists and the non-technologists from even attempting to find out more about each other's views. I was amused, and yet upset by a comment made by teacher candidate in a recent survey about Michigan's mandated technology requirement: "I don't know much about the requirement because it is ridiculous and pointless."

It does not have to be this way though. If both sides would simply stop and make the effort to appreciate each other and technology, they would quickly realize that they share a mission: to improve education. I believe something else would soon become clear: They need to rely on each other to accomplish such a demanding task. The technologists should understand the defining power of established practices and past history, while the non-technologists should accept the fact that some technologies do stay and cause social changes. The relationship between technology and established practice is dialogic: technology shapes and is shaped by existing practices. Therefore the non-technologists should actively help select and shape technology rather than simply refusing to recognize its potential. Meanwhile the technologists need to understand the reality and adapt to it rather than waiting for it to die out. Once they start the dialogue, the two opposed groups, just like a couple of different religions, can not only live together but also make miracles happen.

To start the dialogue, we must build an environment where the two opposing groups can confront each other's and their own beliefs, can interact with each other openly and honestly, have access to each other's reality, and can genuinely help each other and appreciate that help. Such an environment is hard to build but must be built. Michigan State University's College of Education has begun to try to build one: multi-level human and technical infrastructures have been developed for teacher candidates and teacher education faculty to interact intensively with technologically sophisticated faculty, graduate students, and support staff in classes, labs, at workshops, and on-line. By creating environments that allow for such things as the co-development of course materials and instructional software as well as teaching and conducting research together, the two opposing groups will gradually, I hope, begin to draw together and in so doing create a new culture of teaching and learning with technology.