PROLOGUE 

This book has one message: schools can use technology more effectively, and for the welfare of students, teachers, and society, they must do so. Businesses and other organizations throughout the world have made gigantic strides as a result of better applications of technology. Schools, despite their acquisition of millions of computers, waddle along as they have for eons. They waste the power of these machines and reap negligible educational benefits as shown by the lack of improvement in overall test scores. 

Meanwhile, fervent pleas from parents for improved schools result in verbal agreement from educators and politicians, but no effective action follows. This dialogue has continued for years. The difficulties in education remain virtually untouched. Hope of major improvements under present conditions is little more than a fantasy. Today's technology, if used differently, could bring advances that would improve education dramatically. Ordinary students would make massive gains and restraints on bright students would dissolve. Wherever illiteracy is a problem, it would be eliminated, and handicapped students would have immense new vistas opened to them. 

If computers are to be effective in schools, however, overthrowing present practices must occur, and that frightens many people. Opposition is therefore inevitable. Some human instructors will object emotionally, fearing that more extensive employment of technology will seriously degrade their position. Their trepidation is understandable but groundless. Although teachers will have to alter their accustomed practices, they will reach a new level of importance, will accomplish more, and will have greater job satisfaction when schools take advantage of the power of computers. Some parents may also object to technology fearing that an Orwellian world will engulf their children. This fear is also false. Computerized education, properly used, can provide a personal side to education that is impossible today.

Despite the present retarded pace of change in schools, a real revolution can happen. Compelling evidence of the power of effective computerized education is available in a few places. When parents become aware of this evidence, and when they become cognizant of what computers can do under still better conditions, they, together with other concerned citizens, can force schools to use computers properly. Schooling will become both enjoyable for children and supremely effective. Thereafter, the dire weakness of much of today's education will vanish. 

This book explains why computers have failed to alter education until now, how they should be employed, and the startling gains their appropriate use will bring. I am a psychologist and rely on principles of that science to support the arguments favoring improved use of these machines. I am also a professional computer programmer and apply knowledge acquired in that role to show the gains that technology can bring to education - gains that may seem like fantasies to anyone who hasn't studied the power and capability of this technology. Although I am an American and stress the difficulties in schools in the United States, computers can remake and improve education throughout the world. Effective computerization in education will happen eventually, simply because the advantages are monumental. Nonetheless, the longer the change is delayed, the more present students are deprived of the benefits that could accrue to them. The necessary prerequisite for this change to occur is thorough discussion by educators, parents, politicians, and concerned individuals of what can and should be done. 

This book attempts to hasten this process. Computers can remake education. It is time to begin.