From: vwsetzer@IME.USP.BR
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Subject: Computers at elementary levels
Date: 17 Nov 92 20:57:19 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Comments: To: ETHICS-L%UGA.bitnet@lion.cce.usp.br

Some people have asked me to write about why I consider it unethical to
use computers in elementary education.
I had to write a book on the subject to describe with some detail my
arguments;
the last edition (German) has about 150 pages, so one may imagine how
difficult
it is to write down just some words to adjust oneself to a small
e-mail.
The first spet is to examine what a computer is. From the educational
point
of view, the most important aspect is that it is an abstract machine.
This
applies to such uses as text editing, simulation or programming.
Another type of educational use does not deserve any dicussion:
automated
programmed instruction. Experts in education have already pointed out
that PI is not a good educational tool, because it does not give the
student
the necessary freedom, it is more like animal conditioning (remember
that its
founder was Skinner...), etc.
Let us take one of the extremes in terms of abstraction: that of
learning how
to develop computer programms, as in the LOGO system. Computer programs
are
mathematical abstractions, expressed in a formal language and are
completely
devoid of any "real" content. They express exact cause-and-effect
situations
which do not occur anywhere else. Notice that any machine which is not
a
digital computer works under approximate conditions, never exact ones,
that is,
it is nondeterministic, opposed to the computer's deterministic
behaviour. Even
if one uses a random-number generator, the situation is completely
different
from other machines, because all the computer's behaviour may be
calculated in
advance for every outcome of the generator.
When developing and testing a program, the programmer has to limit his
thinking
to an extremely restriced and poor, formal space.
Now one has to examine the child. He is born  with no mental
abilities whatsoever. Let us consider a traditional age to consider
a young person a responsible adult: 21 (here in Brasil, that is the age
where one becomes legally responsible; before then, it is, for
instance,
necessary to have the parent's permission to get legally married, to
buy property, etc). So the self-consciousness, which is connected to
the
thinking ability, has to be developed during that period. Now a very
important
consideration is that the human being requires 1/4, 1/3 of his life to
develop this stage; no animal requires relatively so long to acquire
its
maturity. This is so because the animal has to develop solely its
physical
and instinctive maturity. The human being requires also mental,
emotional and
willing capacities, controlled by his consciousness. The acquisition of
these capacities and control is one of the key reasons for education, be
it
at home or in the school.
I have no space to justify at lenght why pure mathematical abstractions,
like
theorem proving, should only be taught after puberty, in high school.
Anyhow,
let me point out that from 0 to approximately 7 years of age, the child
is
essentially developing his physical basis and willing abilities.
Traditionally,
children learned how to read only with 7, because reading requires an
abstraction which is not proper of small children. If they learn how to
read before 7 (change of teeth), one robs them energies that should be
devoted to other inner activities. It is one of the tragedies of our
times
that this old, intuitive knowledge has been lost, and children are
learning
how to read with younger ages. The fact that a child is able to do
something, and even that he likes it, does not mean that it is good for
him. Just leave a
kg of candies in front of a child to see what happens...
From 7 to 14, the child is essentially developing his emotional
abilities.
That is the reason why, during this period, the Waldorf Education method
uses
artistic teaching in every subject, even mathematics. Only after 14 one
should
bring to the class pure abstracions, critical attitudes, and so on.
R.Steiner
gave an interesting formulation to these 3 7-year periods: in the 1st,
the
child should looking for and should be put in contact with what is good;
in the 2nd, with what is beautiful, and in the 3rd, with what is true.
One more aspect: the young child is
open to the outer world (that is why parents should never argue between
themselves in front of their small children); analysts know very well
that
this openness means that influences form the outer world penetrate much
deeper in the unconscious than later. The child gradually isolates
himself,
until he may be consider an independent, adult "individual".
Now let's combine these considerations: if the computer is a pure
abstract
machine, forcing abstract thinking, it should only be used when the
young
person has reached the proper age. If it is a nonsense to force children
to
prove theorems (I had to prove theorems in geometry with age 11 - I
remember
finding it a complete absurd, because I could see in the figures that
those
2 triangles were equal or similar), then it is a nonsense to force upon
them
Modern Math - see Morris Kline, "Why Johnny can't add...The failure of
Modern Math" - or computers. Well, certaily computers do exert a strong
attraction upon small children, but one should wait until the child can
understand what he is doing, and have enough isolation and
self-consciousness
to dominate himself. A small child will be simply dominated by the
machine.
He will be obliged do think as an adult should sometimes. He will be
forced to
use a formal, dead language which is not proper to a being who is full
of
life, feeling himself as a unity with his environment. Poor children,
they
are being forced to think as machines - in the sense that they have to
develop thoughts that may be introduced into machines. So we are
accelerating
the child's development and specializing him too early. Now, it is easy
to see
that early specialization is an animal quality, not a human one.
Animals
specialize too early, and they become prisioners of their physical
abilities.
Humans are not physically specialized at all (just look at your hands:
they
preserve their embryonic lack of specialization - and that is why they
can
perform such subtile actions like playing a violin, painting, writing...
In
this sense, we are much less evolved than animals). If one examines a
human
body, one does not find its specialization, because humans are
specialized in
a non-physical activity: thinking. And this high capacity is being
distorted
during education when it is forced to think like a machine.
My most tragical conjecture of what is going to happen with these poor
children is the following: they will not have the sensitivity to
distinguish
human beings from machines. They will find it most natural that machines
take
the place of humans in social decisions (a nice metaphor of the
possible
consequences, albeit too hollywoodistic is the film "War Games"). There
has
never been such a strog metaphor implying that Man is a machine such as
the
computer's. And, the contrary, that machines have human
characteristics.
Can you imagine what consequences this will have in the future? Nazism
will
be a toy compared with what is being prepared for the future
generations.
Science is just helping to materialize this step: scientists have
created
fields such as "Artificial Intelligence" (it was probably a lack of
real, deep
human intelligence that led these people to use such a misleading
name),
"Machine Learning", "Computer Decision Making" - maybe it would be
interesting
to mention Warnier's book "Computers and Human Intelligence", where he
says
that computers don't take decisions, they perform logical choices.
Exactly,
that is the big difference, but to feel this difference one should
probably
be free from the influence of computers until an age where one may
regard them
objectively, understand their logical functioning, and understand how
they
may be unethically used, such as in education at elementary levels.


Valdemar W. Setzer
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Sao Paulo
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU