Computers, the Internet, and the Web are popular educational tools that seem destined to assume even more prominent roles in the future. The question is not whether information technology will survive in schools, but whether or not it will have a revolutionary, or even a positive, effect on teaching and learning. Education in general is facing an array of formidable problems, including sustained and vicious attacks by politicians and business leaders. Possible causes of these attacks are discussed, including generalized anger in the population, the profit motive in the private sector, a belief in “the magic of the marketplace,” excessive faith in standardized testing, and growing availability of sophisticated technology for distance education. It remains to be seen whether or not public educators can use information technology to improve traditional, campus-based public education while resisting the pressure to water down their programs for impersonal mass delivery by distance education.
Journal description