According to U.S. government statistics, 26 percent of American schoolchildren ages 5 to 9 spent time on computers while at school in 2001. Yet very little independently funded research has been commissioned to examine what impact computers have on children’s cognitive and emotional development. “Technology was put into American schools with very little planning, forethought or educational rationale,” Healy says. “My concern is that this is very powerful technology, the effects of which we don’t really know.”
Most critics of wired classrooms stress that it is especially troubling to see so much money spent on technology at a time when budget cuts have eliminated many music and art classes. To be fair, with the American economy skidding, there have been cuts across the board. Still, technology expenditures have surged. In 1996, the federal government granted states $81 million for technology in schools. By 2003, that number had spiked to $2.76 billion. Government data show that by the age of 10, young people are more likely to use the Internet than adults at any age beyond 25. But Larry Cuban, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and the author of “Oversold & Underused: Computers in the Classroom,” believes that computers simply have not produced much of a return on investment. “There’s very little evidence that kids are doing better academically because of computers in the classroom,” he says. “Computers haven’t made teaching more productive.”
Then why are American educators spending so much on them? Many critics blame the computer industry’s lobbying muscle–and deep pockets. Others stress the keeping-up-with-the-neighbors mentality that causes schools to try constantly to outdo each other. In any case, the U.S. Department of Education leaves the specifics of classroom computer usage up to individual teachers and schools.
As Healy saw during the two years she spent visiting classrooms across the United States, computer use varies greatly from district to district–but has been on the rise almost everywhere. So, as she sees it, is the danger. “In Europe, they’re willing to let preschoolers be preschoolers much more than we are in [America],” Healy says. “The brain has a life of its own, and if you put artificial electronic stimulation in front of young kids, what the brain is programmed to need is not happening.” Despite all the rosy projections, those wires may be tying down our kids, not setting them free.
