Re: [seul-edu] Fools Gold: A Critical Look at Children and Computers

[George Free <gfree@linux.ca>]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, jm wrote:
> not really specific to open-source but quite interesting reading anyways:
> http://www.allianceforchildhood.net/projects/computers/computers_reports.htm
> 

I haven't had a chance to read through all of this report, but it does indeed
raise many interesting issues.

I may be wrong, since I haven't read through all of it, but it seems that the
authors of the report don't take into account the emancipatory and creative
possibilities that computers can provide. I agree that much of the way
computers are currently used is not healthy for children. Rather than being
empowered, they are being feed more passive entertainment in many cases. This
point has been made powerfully by Seymour Papert, Alan Kay and others.

Again, I think its Linux that provides schools, parents and children with new
opportunities. The authors write:

			In a democracy, the point of technology literacy is to prepare
                             students to be morally responsible citizens, actively participating in
                             shaping the nation's technological future, rather than merely
                             reacting to it as passive consumers. All technologies, after all, have
                             social effects and many have had profound moral and political
                             repercussions as well. No technology is the result of inevitable
                             forces. Its design and its pattern of use reflect a series of human
                             choices - some explicit and some tacit. For that reason, it is
                             possible to imagine alternative designs and alternative patterns of
                             use that might have resulted - and might yet result - from different
                             choices.

I think that computer education -- integrated with all other aspects of the
curriculum -- can endow students with the ability not only to imagine
alternative designs and directions for technology -- but to *create* those
alternatives.

cheers,
George