Computers and Their Place in Education

    I have recently finished reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Throughout the book he continually criticizes and analyzes television as a use of teaching and its affect on American culture. The book explains many times how entertainment naturally distracts from education thus they can never mix successfully even though many have tried to combine them. Postman often mentions computers as another possible problem to education, but instead chooses to focus more on television which was the biggest technology that brought such cultural change during the time of the book's publishing. Since the book has released, computers have overtaken television as the most popular source of entertainment and thus the biggest player in changing the way we view education and culture. Our smartphone's and desk computers have us hooked to entertainment even more than television with thousands of applications to occupy our time such as Instagram, YouTube, video games, etc.

    Unlike television computers do have the capability to separate education and entertainment through the use of education specific applications. One might even argue that computers could successfully combine entertainment and education through the use of video games because video games allow for hands on interaction with the student - something television could never do. Some video games such as Minecraft have already seen use like this. Even with these great capabilities of educating that computers possess, they still suffer from a similar problem as TV when they try to educate. One could simply change the application from something educational to something far more entertaining. Even if people were able to successfully use computers and video games as education, putting those technologies in schools nationwide is definitely going to cost more than pencil or paper or even using the televisions that are already in many schools.

    I have always believed that computers have the power to educate and stream line or fix the more inconvenient parts of the current school system like storing all the papers to grade, slowly grading trivial assignments, being unable to communicate with students when they leave school, or even being unable to communicate with other schooling officials, etc. Computers do indeed fix many of those problems and have the potential to educate even better than traditional text, but reading Amusing Ourselves to Death has shown me that there are costs to introducing such a technology into schools. Now we must ponder to ourselves whether introducing computers into school is worth it and if we do, how do we do so while maintaining a high standard of education?