Are teachers really so unwilling to learn?

[bickiia@earlham.edu]

It's often said that teachers aren't that interested in learning about
the computers they work with -- they just want them to work.  This is a
common statement for easy-to-use computing in general.  Coming from a
turn-key sort of ideal, I suppose.

I don't think this is correct at all.  Not a bit.

Okay, teachers are busy people.  Their primary efforts should be towards
teaching, after all.  But teachers are not stupid, they are not
close-minded, and they don't have a fear of learning things.  At least
not good teachers, and I those are the ones that matter.  Computers are
no more likely than anything else to turn bad teachers into good ones,
so I don't think bad teachers are worth a lot of effort.

Now, that doesn't mean teachers want or should learn everything.  There
are a ton of details in computers -- Linux not doing much better than
any other OS in this.  Most of those detalis are important in some
situation but otherwise boring.  The obscure naming of the standard
command-line utilities being one such example.  Having learned what "ls"
does won't leave you with a greater depth of understanding of the
computer as a whole.

But there are a lot of important ideas in computers that aren't just
little details.  If a teacher wants to *understand* what they are doing,
they need to know these things.  They need to understand the concept of
file types, the notion of folders/directories, the client/server aspect
of the Internet... there's a bunch of them.  This isn't the same as
knowing how to set up a dial-up PPP connection -- that's just a skill,
useful to some and not others.  It's about understanding the concepts
around which skills provide only a shell.


There's this notion and fear among teachers that their students know
more than they do.  But most of the time they don't.  A lot of kids
think they know a bunch about computers, but most of the time it boils
down to a bunch of tricks and a few skills.  Even smart kids can be
totally oblivious to important, fundamental aspects of computers.  The
number of times I've had to explain that Hotmail is slow due to the
server and not the computer the kid is on...

I blame some of this on Windows and Macs, which hide deep concepts
behind shallow skills.  They *have* managed to hide a lot of obscure and
unimportant knowledge (much more so Mac than Windows), and they deserve
some credit for that.  But their layers of hiding have hidden a lot of
details that are important for people to develop accurate models of how
computers work.  It's all black magic to most people.  Hell, half of it
is black magic to me.

This might be just fine in an office situation.  It's goal-oriented and
ignorance is perfectly acceptable as long as you get your job done.  But
this isn't what computers in the schools are supposed to do.  Contrary
to politicians' desire, schools are wholely about the process, and the
only thing they really produce are experienced and knowledgable people.


Anyway, this notion of children being so full of knowledge is, from my
experience, false.  But it is widely held and it is really disruptive to
teaching.  Teachers need the upper hand, because they have every
potential to know more than their students, and every potential to teach
that knowledge.


My thesis was that teachers aren't willfully ignorant.  They are often
intimidated by computers, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have it
another way if they could.  I haven't met a teacher yet that, when I try
to explain something, doesn't at least try to understand what I'm
saying.  Maybe they won't sit down and read the documentation, but if
they are offered a chance to learn from their experience using the
computer I really believe they will take that chance.  The current
operating systems don't give them that chance.  Linux wouldn't do them
any service by immitating this.


So, that's my rant for now...
  Ian