Chilling effect of Internet requirements [from Talbott's
Curt Priest
Lowell Monke (lm7...@acad.drake.edu)
Letter from Des
Moines
January 19,
1998
(This column is adapted from part of an address to the conference on
"Education and Technology: Seeking the Human Essentials", Columbia
Teachers College, Columbia University, December 4-6, 1997.)
Four years ago an article appeared in the education section of *Newsweek*
under the title, "We Have Seen the Future: it is in Iowa." I don't know
whether it surprised anyone else, but it sure shocked a lot of us
teachers
in Iowa. The article was, of course, about technology -- specifically,
the Iowa Communication Network (ICN), a fiber optic network the state was
building to provide high-speed computer communication among all schools
in
the state.
It turns out that the ICN has not been the panacea many thought it would
be and these days it is rarely spoken of as a model for the future of
education in this state, much less the country. But that hasn't stopped
us from taking our new role as cutting-edge educators seriously. In
fact,
last year the governor's commission on education proposed putting a
laptop
in every student's book bag. I've heard rumors that the next step is to
put satellite hookups on all of the tractors.
A Contract with America's Children
----------------------------------
I, too, take my responsibility to stay out on the cutting edge seriously,
so I am going to describe for you the newest high-tech product being
distributed in my district. It's called the AUA. I'm fairly certain you
haven't seen it touted anywhere yet. For one thing, it's not electrical;
nor has anyone figured out how to sell it to schools (yet). In fact,
it's
just an old-fashioned page of paper -- four pages actually. Yet it could
be one of the most revolutionary developments to result from the
technological transformation of our schools.
AUA stands for Acceptable Use Agreement. Thousands of schools across the
nation already have them. Des Moines Public Schools finally adopted a
fairly standard version last fall. Its purpose is simple: to set the
conditions for appropriate use of the Internet in the classroom. I'm not
going to include the document here; it's a lot of legalese. But to give
you an idea of its effect, I want you to imagine that you have sent your
eight-year-old child off to her first day of school. You have images of
a
bright, warm classroom, a loving teacher who immediately goes about the
task of building a close, trusting relationship with your child. That
afternoon your eight-year-old brings the AUA home to you, with
instructions for you to read it and explain it to her so she knows the
rules and consequences. Then you're supposed to sign and return it, so
she can get on the Internet.
You read through the document and eventually come to the section,
"Liability," which reads like this:
The district does not make any warranties, whether expressed or
implied
including those of fitness for a particular purpose with respect to
any
services provided by the system and any information or software
contained therein.
The student and his/her parents or guardians will hold the district
harmless for student violations of copyright laws, software licensing
requirements, student access of inappropriate materials, violations by
the student of others' rights to confidentiality, free speech and
privacy, and damage to systems accessed by the student.
You stop for a minute to figure out what in the world this means and how
you are going to explain it to your child. You move on, and when you get
to the end of the AUA, you have to sign your name, right below this
little
reminder of what could happen should your eight-year-old not follow the
rules:
Violations of the acceptable use guidelines, any district policy or
procedure, or any federal or state law, rule or regulation may result
in disciplinary action up to and including expulsion. Violations
which
may be criminal will be referred to appropriate law enforcement
officials.
This, along with oceans of information, is what the Internet has brought
to schools. It has inserted this threatening, legal document directly
between the teacher and the student. It hasn't stirred much controversy,
at least in my school, because it really is a legal necessity, and
because, as one parent told me "It's a small price to pay to get my child
on the Internet."
This attitude puts a smiley face on Jacques Ellul's observation that with
any technical progress, "...its harmful effects are inseparable from its
beneficial effects" (1990, p 39). But Ellul also said that the harmful
effects tend to be "long-term and are felt only with experience" (1990,
p.
73) and that these problems tend to be more treacherous and difficult to
solve than the original problem. So it might be worthwhile to think a
bit
about just how small a price the AUA really is.
The Child as Criminal Suspect and Consumer
------------------------------------------
First, this document makes very clear that the district is giving its
students access to a dangerous tool. This puts the district itself in
the
odd position of having to construct a legal shield to protect itself from
its own students' use of the learning tools the district gives them.
That is certainly an issue worth pondering. But what is revolutionary is
the liability clause, in which the district disavows all responsibility
for any harmful cyberspace experiences that occur to any of its students.
This is radically new. In effect, the district is telling parents that
not only does the district not trust their children, neither can the
parents any longer trust the district to protect their children while in
the classroom from the nastiness that exists in the outside world. When
it comes to computer-mediated communication, in loco parentis is out, and
caveat emptor is in.
It's interesting to me that these agreements have been implemented all
over the country with hardly a word of discussion among national
education
leaders. It didn't even require school board approval in my district.
Here we are thirty years after the "hidden curriculum" was revealed in
all
its subtle indoctrinating power, and we seem to have forgotten to apply
it
to computers and the Internet. Maybe there aren't any consequences from
treating a first grader as both criminal suspect and naive consumer. And
of course, this kind of tough, distrustful atmosphere exists "out on the
street." But it is something we aren't happy about, something we
recognize as a coarsening of the community -- in fact, it's something we
have always looked to education to help overcome. The classroom, like
the
home, has always been viewed as a haven against this kind of
depersonalized treatment. The classroom may not have always lived up to
that ideal, but the AUA engraves this dehumanization into school policy.
Where are the Powers of Judgment?
---------------------------------
It also typifies one of the most common effects that high technology has
on education. At least one of the prices we pay for the employment of
these external cognitive tools is the arrested development of many of our
students' internal resources. In this case the substitution of external
controls releases the student from the need to develop the inner
discipline needed to use this tool "appropriately." We aren't willing to
wait until the child matures sufficiently to trust him with the tool; we
want to give him power now and we will stand over him with a big stick
while he uses it. The long-range consequences, at least the ones I see,
are disturbing.
Let me use students in my Advanced Computer Technology class as an
example. I have from time-to-time suggested to some of my students who
are having trouble coming up with challenging projects, that they design
a
simple computer virus or try to break through the school's network
security. Their first response is usually to ask if it would really be
OK.
When I tell them it is up to them, almost invariably the response is a
variation of: "Hey, cool!" And off they go until I haul them back and
reassert my authority. Which, again, is the point I am trying to make:
once the external controls are lifted, there are no internal controls in
many of these seventeen- to eighteen-year-olds to take over.
It seems to me that if we are failing at anything in our schools today,
we
are failing to develop in our students the kinds of internal human
qualities -- including ethical and moral strength -- needed to resist
abusing the tremendous power we are handing them. These qualities take a
great deal of time and effort to develop in a child, but I've come to
believe they ought to be as much a prerequisite to using powerful
computer
tools as learning how to type. Trying to teach a student to harness and
use appropriately the power of computer technology without those
cognitive
and social traits is like trying to build a skyscraper without steel.
It's what forces us to rely on the external scaffolding -- the
psychological prison bars -- that quasi-legal documents like the AUA
provide.
Shall We Limit Technology, or the Child?
----------------------------------------
None of this is new insight. The problems I see in my classroom today
are
ones that Joseph Weizenbaum cited over twenty years ago. He warned that
in conferring on our students this enormous power we must also help them
accept the immense responsibility of using it for the good of humanity.
Yet at the very time when we most need to nurture and expand the inner
resources of our children, we are diverting their energies toward
external, mechanical activities that may make school more fun, but leave
their characters untouched.
Making activities easy and painless at the cost of our children's inner
strength is no bargain. Having failed or given up on nurturing those
inner resources, we end up with sad developments like the AUA.
It seems to me that in education, as in society at large, it is time we
began to take seriously Langdon Winner's essential question:
How can we limit modern technology to match our best sense of who we
are and the kind of world we would like to build? (1986, p xi).
I think this is the most important technology question to ponder in our
schools today. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck on the inverse of it:
How can we limit human beings to best match what our technologies can
do and the kind of world these technologies are building?
We need to turn that question around in our schools. We need to stop
concentrating on outfitting our youth to meet the demands of a
technologically determined 21st century, and start helping our youth
develop the independence of mind and strength of character to make the
future what they will it to be. To help them strengthen that will, along
with the self-discipline, courage, determination and social consciousness
that must accompany it, we have to start talking about limits -- not
those
imposed on them by legalistic AUAs, but those which we can impose on
technology to help us better focus on developing the most deeply human
qualities of our children.
References
----------
Ellul, Jacques. 1990. *The Technological Bluff*. Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans.
Weizenbaum, Joseph. 1976. *Computer Power and Human Reason -- From
Judgment to Calculation*. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Winner, Langdon. 1986. *The Whale and the Reactor -- A Search for Limits
in an Age of High Technology*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
Center for Information, Technology & Society
466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA 02176
Voice: 781-662-4044 BMS...@MIT.EDU
Fax: 781-662-6882 WWW: http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/CITS