TECHNOLOGY AND WORLD EDUCATION
By
The United Nations
Obed Ruggiu was born in 2000 in the village of Sovu in Rwanda and lives there today. He never heard of the United Nations. He does not know about decrees coming from that far away organization. Nonetheless, one of those proclamations should have a dramatic effect on his life, or at least on those of his children.
In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations made a declaration that has the potential to remake civilization. The declaration stated simply that, “everyone has a right to education." Signers of the document added no conditions. They were not talking only of those countries that have satisfactory schools and are not impoverished, or only of people who live in cities much larger than the village of Obed Ruggiu. The United Nations obviously felt that with its help everybody would someday partake in that right.
That pronouncement of the General Assembly did not suddenly achieve the goal, nor did it solve the fundamental difficulties. Nevertheless, that body had enunciated a powerful idea, which remained in effect from that time. Over forty years later, after the cessation of the Cold War, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) finally took another major step. It held a world conference in Jomtien, Thailand, March 5-9, 1990, under the title of Education for All (EFA). One hundred and fifty-five nations sent delegates, and representatives from one hundred and fifty non-governmental organizations attended. The representatives found that the educational difficulties were immense. They summarized some of the predominant but basic problems at that time saying
· More than 100 million children, including at least 60 million
girls, have no access to primary schooling.
· More than 960 million adults, two-thirds of whom are women, are
illiterate.
· Millions of children who begin primary education do not acquire
essential knowledge and skills.
Despite these imposing
obstacles, the participants felt that it was possible to
“make the goal of basic education for all - for the first time in
history - an attainable goal.” They established the year 2000 as the expected
time for two key objectives: universal completion of primary education and reduction
of the adult illiteracy rate to half its 1990 level, with special emphasis on
female literacy.
In 2000, UNESCO sponsored a new conference in Dakar, Senegal.
Again, there was wide participation with more than 1,100 attendees from 164
countries. Unfortunately, the
results from the previous ten years were dismal. The Dakar report, which some
authorities believe may underestimate the true figures, found that 113 million
children had no access to primary education. In addition, 880 million adults
remained illiterate, and gender discrimination continued to be rampant.
Obviously, the initial idea of making progress in ten years had serious flaws.
The delegates set the revised goal date back to 2015.
In 2002, UNESCO issued an interim
report, and the world was still making only spotty progress. "[A]lmost
one-third of the world's population live in countries where achieving the EFA
goals remains a dream," said the report. It added that
by 2015, “countries accounting for 26 percent of the world's population might
not meet any of the three measurable goals of Dakar.” Most of these nations
are in sub-Saharan Africa, but the list also included India and Pakistan.
Another 43 nations accounting for over 35 percent of the world's population
risked missing at least one of the goals. UNESCO called for much greater effort.
One major obstacle to reaching the
2015 targets is a shortage of teachers. Under current approaches, Education for
All will require many millions of new instructors. The numbers are only a part of the difficulty. The success of any
education is highly dependent on the quality of instruction, and even if
governments could find and train millions of new teachers, many would still not
be good instructors. This is apparent from results in advanced nations where
elaborate systems have been set up over many years to train aspiring teachers.
Despite all of the preparations and schooling, many instructors are less than
ideal. A recent report from the United States’ Department of Education
illustrates the difficulties. In
2000, only 21% of
high school seniors felt that most
of their courses were “quite or very interesting,” and 32% felt that
teaching was “very or slightly dull.” It is logical to expect that less developed nations without the massive
infrastructure for training instructors will have even poorer results.
Unless the world makes significant changes in the way education is carried on, the possibility of reaching the UN goals, not only by 2015 but also beyond that date, is limited. The delegates at the 1990 Jomtien Conference stated that nations had to go beyond traditional means to achieve their targets. Greater use of technology was a possibility, and since universities had been using on-line education, some educators attempted to do the same with younger children. The results were discouraging. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, termed this as “webucation.” He complained that, “Human contact has been virtually eliminated from webucation and this is certainly an important reason for frustration: people find it boring and drop out at a rate of 80%.”
This is understandable. In webucation, pupils can communicate with a teacher over the Internet, but have no personal contact. In addition, students are often alone and do not interact with other students. Children without a teacher present, and without the companionship of their peers, find it difficult to remain involved in their schoolwork. Some can do it, but the 80% dropout rate shows clearly that most do not. To have effective schooling, other humans, teachers and students, must take part at the same time in the same place.
Another major obstacle to webucation is the lack of discipline. Youths need authority, and without it, they cannot focus continually on a task. The remote teacher cannot provide and enforce this necessary condition for learning. Parents might be able to supply the needed direction, but most guardians of these children have had no education themselves and consequently are often struggling to scratch out a living. As a result, they find it difficult to arrange for the discipline that would require their children to concentrate on their studies.
Experience from the United States
presents an additional question about the value of technology in education.
During years when American schools added millions of computers, national test scores did not improve. For reading,
mathematics, or science, for three age groups, nine year olds, thirteen year
olds, and seventeen year olds, from 1994 through 1999 there was no significant
change in scores on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress test. Obviously, massive use of computers in
schools in the United States did not improve education, and so it seems that
technology might not assist schools in other parts of the world.
Reasons
for failures of technology
This lack of success of computers in education
creates a perplexing question. Why has technology failed to improve schooling
while it has shown amazing success in almost every other area?
It appears that the failure of technology in schools may have an underlying cause - the way schools use computers. In webucation, the difficulty involves an on-line setting without a human teacher being present. Thus, the inferior outcome is not the direct result of technology.
As for the lack of success with computers in
schools in the United States, strong evidence supports the idea that the poor
results are not due to inherent weakness of technology because when schools use
computers differently, outcomes improve dramatically. One characteristic of
these successful programs is that they involve some change in the traditional
role of teachers. Human instructors remain, but with different activities. In
these successful programs, a computer teaches a student directly and
individually, determining what the child knows and the instruction that he or
she needs. Each acts, in effect, as a
private tutor for a child.
Under these conditions, schools have successfully used computers primarily with students who are doing so poorly that they are considering dropping out of school - the so-called at-risk students. These pupils are traditionally the most difficult to teach, at least partially because they do not want to be in school. This gave educators an impetus to try something different since their usual methods were ineffectual. Some saw technology as an answer that at least could keep the children from being disruptive in regular classes. Then came the surprise. When schools removed these pupils from the ordinary classes and allowed computers to instruct them, the attitude of the children changed dramatically. They began to find learning engaging. The results of teaching of at-risk children by computers have been outstanding. The students learn and retain more, and they do it much more quickly than ever before in their school careers. Several companies provide the software for these programs including Plato Learning, Scientific Learning, Novanet, and Waterford Institute. Results are posted on their web pages.
Usually, school administrators do not use computers as true tutors in the ordinary classes with regular students. There are, however, a few notable exceptions. Carnegie Mellon University has developed software that teaches Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II to classes of ordinary students. Extensive research shows that pupils taking these math courses do much better on standardized tests. Most interestingly, at the conclusion they are far superior in their ability to respond to real-world problem solving assessments compared to the students who were taught in the usual manner. Therefore, in addition to teaching the necessary material, computers are helping these children to learn to think well.
Another area that shows successful teaching by computers is in virtual schools where select students take some of their classes on the Internet at home for a variety of reasons. There are many examples of successful computer education in these conditions.
These programs use computers especially with high school students, but the electronic instruction is also successful with younger children - even those in pre kindergarten as Waterford Institute, a non-profit organization in Salt Lake City has demonstrated. They show that computerization can help develop literacy, the foundation of all other learning in the earliest grades.
If schools in undeveloped nations use technology so that
computers tutor children individually, the immediate and powerful effect will be
a marked difference in the roles of human instructors. Computers will not
eliminate teachers, who will direct
students, and encourage and assist them to learn how to get the most from their
computer education. Human teachers will spend more time on a personal basis with
the students. They will provide the disciplinary structure that is necessary.
The computers, however, will tutor the children.
In developed countries with large
school systems, the necessity of changing the way that teachers function meets
immediate and hard-core resistance from teachers, administrators and
occasionally from parents. This is probably the main reason that computerized
education has not made greater gains in the more advanced nations. This
opposition to changing the role of teachers is interesting because of its unique
characteristic. There are
few, if any, other areas of modern society in which people function in the same
way that they did 100 years ago. For example, although humans remain essential
in telephone systems, it would be sad to imagine the condition of communications
if the duties of telephone operators had not changed in 100 years. In education,
teachers perform almost exactly as they did 100 years ago. That lengthy history
has two ramifications. It makes it more difficult to consider using teachers
differently, but it also emphasizes that the time for a change may be here.
Fortunately, changing the role of teachers in the newly developing nations will be much less difficult because there is no entrenched system. It is reminiscent of the use of cell phones. The telephone systems in nations with a large infrastructure of physical lines took longer to add a proportionate number of cell phones. Those nations without the vast system of phone lines went more quickly to cell phones.
The advantages of computers in education are massive, but the primary benefit is that each child has a private tutor. Children have many differences including their intelligence, their previous learning, and the help that their parents can give them. Consequently, their instructional needs differ. One instructor for a class of children cannot give everybody sufficient individual attention. Computers can do this since they instruct each child separately, and can take the unique background of each learner into account. Moreover, children, owing to their unique attributes, learn at varied rates. Computerized education allows each child to move at the pace appropriate to him or to her.
Computerization will
also eliminate the universal obstacle to good education -
poor teaching. Proper programming will ensure that the instruction is always
excellent and constantly improving further as programmers and educators
fine-tune the system. Then an added advantage will follow: these tutors will
never be sick and never retire. While this characteristic of computers is
valuable in every school system, it will be especially important in developing
nations. This will vastly reduce the difficulties of training millions of new
teachers.
A further characteristic of computers in education is that they exert a profound attraction for youths. The Jomtien Conference deplored the fact that millions of children who begin primary education do not acquire essential knowledge and skills. They drop out before completing the program. Many reasons might contribute to this abandonment of schooling but lack of interest on the child’s part is often a factor. Computerized education invariably proves to be more engaging for students and keeps them interested far better than other forms of education. Little opportunity exists in a computer class for the daydreaming that accompanies traditional classes. That is probably one of the main reasons why students in computer classes learn better and faster than in regular classes.
Elimination of biases
or bigotry, whether blatant or subtle, is another advantage of computers. While
these evils are often found among humans including teachers, this is obviously
not a problem with computers. The machines are not concerned if a pupil is male
or female or whether he or she belongs to one of the minority classes that often
struggle both in developing and developed nations. The computer’s only concern
is what it can teach each child.
Obstacles
to computerized education
The
immediate apparent obstacle to the use of computerized education in third world
countries is the cost. Actually, this should not be as great a problem as it
seems. The expense of the computers will be at least partially offset because
schools in developing nations will be able to function with fewer and more
rapidly trained teachers. In addition, computers have dropped rapidly in cost
and will continue to do so
In many nations that need education most desperately, there is a consequent electric power vacuum, especially in the smaller villages. Again, this will not negate the value of computers. One or two teachers and a technician could bring a generator and a number of machines. Education could then begin. The computers could operate virtually around the clock. Recipients of learning would not be only children, although most of the teachers’ time would be spent with them. Adults, who would be learning because they wanted to do so, could also profit from the computer lessons available on easily carried software. This ties in with the United Nation’s goal of reducing overall illiteracy together with the education of children. Although adult illiteracy is secondary, in actual numbers it is much larger. Again, computerization will be the ideal means because the children will use the computers during the day and the adults can use the same machines in the evening. As with children, adults could begin their education at any level.
Success of computerized education is dependent upon proper
software, which is now available in some languages and can be translated into
others. Although it will not
be possible to have programs written in all of the languages in the world,
governments can still provide education to their citizens. Colonialism with all
of its attendant evils did provide these nations with a second language.
Computers can teach all children this second language. That is easily
accomplished if the process begins early while the child is still in a language
formative period, but is still possible at later ages. Officials could use that
language to educate the pupils. At the same time, children will be able to
partake in the language and culture of their own area through training and
language at home, and by having local non-teachers come to the school and give
lessons about the indigenous culture. It will not be necessary for these
non-teachers to be skilled in academic subjects. Their position will be to keep
alive the local culture.