Dick and Jane and Technology Education. (2002)

A Little Nostalgia I'll admit it right up front. I get very nostalgic about the old Dick and Jane reading books. I like them so much, I collect them ... reliving the memories of my first love, Mrs. Williams. There in Abington Avenue School in Newark, New Jersey, we sat in a circle around her and read those magic little passion plays day after day. My first grade experience was not so unusual; about 80 million children learned to read from those colorful books, probably while sitting in their own circles. The books are an indelible part of the 1950s and 60s American scene. They helped to define our roles in life, and teach us something of lasting value. In high school, I started to hear things about why whole language reading styles, like the and say techniques of the Dick and Jane books, were supposed to be bad for young minds. Phonics was the touted Holy Grail of the Dick and Jane antagonists. Even today, the debates rage about whole language vs. phonics. Just log on to the Internet and you can find plenty of sites that vigorously discuss the pros and cons of both sides. For me, this either/or debate always seemed so unnecessary. In Mrs. Williams' class, it was Dick and Jane and phonics. First, we learned to recognize and read the words, and then we had to look them up and write them phonetically--even use them in a written sentence. In fact, the teacher's editions of the old readers recommended using phonics as needed along with the lessons. What was all the fuss about? All this leads me to think about technology education and the arguments its proponents seem to encounter. Technology and History Talk to most folks in the education establishment, and you get the same either/or arguments. It's either science or it's technology education. You shouldn't mix the two subjects--as if there is no connection between them. If you study science, you must be headed for the white-collar world. If you study technology education, you must be headed for the hands-on, blue-collar world. Why must there be such a sharp distinction between the two, when, in reality, they merge into soft and potentially creative blur? A little history, if I may. Humans were technologically astute long before they were scientifically literate. Science as a codified field of study is about 500 years old, building up a good head of steam during the Renaissance Period. But, humans have thousands of years of productive tool-making history. It may not have been scientifically elegant, but simple tools built the pyramids, the wonders of the ancient world, the gothic cathedrals, the great China wall, the Roman aqueducts, sailing ships, and a myriad of everyday products about which archeologists still marvel. Just look around your kitchen at those common utensils, older than all of modern science, and still very serviceable. Simple tools solved real-world problems and still do today. They helped push our ancestors along the road of progress. We tend to lose sight of those early, sometimes faltering, steps ... and how they influenced the now confident strides we routinely take. Is something less pure and wholesome because it was forged on the unforgiving anvil of trial and error? Do its empirical roots make it less worthy of study in the classroom? It was the many years of accumulated trial and error methods of building and making things that inexorably led to the development of the modern and codified laws of science. In effect, there was a chicken and egg component to the symbiotic development of technology and science. Let's never forget this common lineage. Technology is the mortar between the joints of science. The great professions of antiquity were engineering, architecture, medicine, and law; and all had a very practical approach to implementation. Only with the combination of cheap printing and the ability to access large amounts of information, much of it quite practical in nature, did science become a recognizable profession. …