Anyone who has watched kids in a video arcade, or has logged on to the World Wide Web, knows how computers can gobble up time. California children already spend less of their day in school than most American students or our economic competitors overseas. We must examine if time with computers in the classroom is paying off. In the three dimensional, real world, kids encounter the unexpected. On the two dimensional screen, children see only the choices a programmer has developed for them.
Many parents wonder if early use of a computer can guarantee their child lifetime employment.
All of us have been shaken by the recession of the early '90s, by the elimination of many jobs from the economy and general uncertainty about the future. We are told that early exposure to computers will make our kids computer literate. However, most of us who have kids realize instinctively that the simulated experience of playing with these images on the screen does not duplicate the reality of learning the small motor skills needed to actually manipulate the real objects. As a parent who has lived through the preschool stages of four children I can identify with the desire not to walk barefoot on any more Play-Doh or to stub my toe on another toy truck. Those choice must be based on data and analysis, not fear or faith that seem to characterize the rush to put computers into the class room.