Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!jade!violet.berkeley.edu!ed298-ak
From: ed298-ak@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: High Schools of the Future
Message-ID: <6354@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 21 Dec 87 17:09:00 GMT
References: <2285@dasys1.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: lagache@violet.berkeley.edu (Edouard Lagache)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 38
Keywords: Technology, Schools, Social experience

In article <2285@dasys1.UUCP> patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) writes:
>Excerpt from "The Public High School in the Year 2010: A 
>National Delphi Study," doctoral dissertation by Margaret E. 
>McCabe, Copyright 1984 (UMI 8401629).
>
>                          Scenario
>
... Deleted description of a High School Student working 
    almost exclusively at home ........
>
>1990s. She contacts her "study teammates" to share 
>information. Finally she sorts out all the information and 
>sits down at her PC to write her essay, confident that she 
>is including the most salient points. When she completes the 
>essay she will send it via the computer to the high school.
	.
	.
	.

	This is all fine and good, but I think that it misses a very
   important part of education: the learning of social values, and 
   how interact with people.  That part of the "hidden curriculum" is 
   probably the most important skills that schools are expected to teach,
   and computers are not going to replace human contact.  I was also
   struck by the loneliness of the scene.  Given the women's movement
   success in bringing everyone out of the house, it seems very 
   strange to imagine locking up families for 24 hours a day, completely
   without any direct human contact from the outside.

	Perhaps these comments should be posted to 'comp.society',
   but before we computerize everything (especially education),
   perhaps we should decide what we are trying to do as humans, and if
   computers can really do that sort of work.

						Edouard Lagache
						School of Education
						U.C. Berkeley
						lagache@violet.berkeley.edu