The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology
The Flickering Mind, by National Magazine Award winner Todd Oppenheimer, is a landmark account of the failure of technology to improve our schools and a call for renewed emphasis on what really works.
American education faces an unusual moment of crisis. For decades, our schools have been beaten down by a series of curriculum fads, empty crusades for reform, and stingy funding. Now education and political leaders have offered their biggest and most expensive promise ever—the miracle of computers and the Internet—at a cost of approximately $70 billion just during the decade of the 1990s. Computer technology has become so prevalent that it is transforming nearly every corner of the academic world, from our efforts to close the gap between rich and poor, to our hopes for school reform, to our basic methods of developing the human imagination. Technology is also recasting the relationships that schools strike with the business community, changing public beliefs about the demands… More >>
The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology
Tagged with: Education • False • Flickering • from • Mind • Promise • Saving • Technology
This was my first book purchase over the internet, and I was a bit apprehensive about doing it. However, I couldn’t have been more pleased about the experience. I received the book about 2 weeks after I ordered it, it was cheaper than if I were to have bought it from my local bookstore, and it was in absolutely excellent condition. I will definitely do it again!
In this volume, Oppenheimer takes on the blanket use of computer technology in the classroom. His basic argument is that local school boards are sinking money into technology while basics are being underfunded. Without covering the basics, children will grow up without the ability to think. To compound this problem, technology quickly becomes obsolete, which requires school systems to either use out of date equipment, or to participate in a vicious cycle which sucks funds from underfunded schools.
Two other things that this book really criticized is the promotion of standardized testing and fraudulent educational software companies. This book claims that the promotion of standardized testing has encouraged teachers to use computers to practice endless test drills, but on the other hand, students are not really learning anything other than how to take tests. No one makes a living by answering multiple-choice questions. This use of standardized testing is exploited by educational software companies that use biased studies to support claims that their software increases test scores. Oppenheimer laments that education has become testing rather than learning and thinking.
I believe this book raises a lot of powerful arguments. Oppenheimer isn’t against using computers, but their use should be limited in scope. I really recommend that all teachers should examine this book and think critically about the role of computers in their classes.