As if teachers didn't have enough problems, they're now coming down with a new phobia: fear of the Net. This is not simply a fear of computers, but a particular dread of telecomputing and its implications.
As millions of people swarm into cyberspace, too many teachers are hanging back. They think they have good reason to fear the Net, but in the long run they only short-change their students and themselves.
Fear of the Net has several causes: technological, pedagogical, and psychological. To some extent each cause aggravates the other two, but technology comes first. Current hardware and software is still too complex and unreliable for many teachers. They get little or no training; or if training is available, it's too far from their own classrooms.
I saw this in two consecutive summer training sessions not long ago. Teachers gathered at a mountain resort where they could attend lectures and practice going on-line in a well-equipped temporary lab. But some lectures were fearsomely technical. Worse yet, the teachers then returned to schools whose equipment was old, inadequate, or not even installed. The lab assistants at the mountain resort were no longer available. Because they had little chance to practice, many teachers soon lost confidence, skill, or both.
Those who persisted wondered whether it was worth the effort. They were learning to use both the Internet and a provincial network with a kludgy system that did not reward even the diligent. Unsurprisingly, teacher involvement wasn't high.
For the Internet-skilled minority, of which I was included, still more problems loomed. My role was to be a writing mentor for students in rural and small-town schools in the interior of British Columbia. Students were to upload their stories, essays, and poems to me, and I was to respond with criticism and advice that would help their classroom teachers. In the summer training sessions, we all worried that students would swamp me with more material than I could handle. It didn't happen. Work dribbled in, much of it good, but it was no avalanche. Worse yet, I couldn't seem to get a discussion going with students or teachers.
Not until months later, when I visited some of the schools, did I learn why. In one school, students couldn't go on-line directly. They had to give their work to the one staff person who knew how to get on the Internet. She had to type in their assignments, upload them, download my responses, and send them on to the students. Doing all this was a low priority for an already overworked person.
At another school, an enthusiastic teacher was doing the same chores on top of his full workload. His busy students sometimes got on-line themselves, but again it was just one more chore in a schedule that made little time for the Net.
What about all the other teachers whose students didn't get on-line at all? Here, I think, the problem was pedagogical. As one high school computer science and math teacher said to me recently, "I don't see where the Internet fits into the curriculum I have to get through." As a mentor I had tried to reassure teachers that I was there to strengthen their curriculum, not to steal their students. "Consider me just another text on your shelf," I told them. But with limited time and a lot of material to get through, many teachers clearly preferred chalk, talk, and textbooks that didn't want to strike up a conversation.
Still, some teachers reported that my comments had indeed reinforced what they were trying to say. The students might have read the same basic principles in a book, but coming from a "live" author, who was commenting on their own work over a computer, my advice had an unexpected authority.
With a handful of students a dialogue did begin; a second draft or an argument about my original comments came in. Even here, it was clear the on-line connection was saving a "problem child" who was too bright or fractious for the local school. This meant the Internet was serving as day care for the gifted, not as a routinely used resource for everyone.
Other pedagogical worries lie close below the surface for many teachers. They rightly fear the Internet as a dangerous place for children. Students venturing into cyberspace may wander into toxic-waste dumps: neo-Nazi newsgroups, pornographic files, flamers, cranks, sexual harassers, and even pedophiles. However, one of the benefits of the Internet is that it permits freedom to speak, read, and explore. Teachers want to foster those freedoms but feel caught in a double bind. Rather than trying to resolve the paradox, some teachers may prefer to go back to their textbooks.
Another Net-impeding factor is that many teachers are accustomed to setting the terms of their students' education. They present an array of texts, exercises, and activities aimed at a clear outcome. Providing access to the storehouses of the Internet can subvert these teachers' tidy plans. If students can range freely through outside information, they're essentially free of the local teacher-defined curriculum. they're setting their own curriculum.
For many of us, the power and control we exercise over our students is psychologically rewarding and professionally necessary. If students can define their own curriculum and pursue their own interests, do they really need teachers at all? The answer will probably be yes, but in a greatly diminished capacity; with our roles changed from being "the mentor at the centre" to "The guide on the side." Instead of driving the bus on the Information Highway, we'll be pump jockeys providing directions to independent travellers with their own itineraries.
School has always been an expensive business because you have to put scarce bits of knowledge within sight and earshot of large numbers of students. This means maintaining buildings, libraries, support staff, and the whole bureaucratic mess. But why bother with the mess if all you need is a computer and a modem? The information is on the Internet; teachers are increasingly available through the Net; and more and more schools are offering courses through the Net.
The problems that now hinder on-line education are likely to fade. Technology is becoming simpler, more reliable, and more powerful. Special training at mountain resorts will soon be for mountain climbers only.
Pedagogy too will change. As the economy and job market evolve, today's schools and universities are finding themselves too slow and inflexible to adapt to new demands. The student-defined curriculum will become not a luxury but a necessity.
Teachers' psychological need for control is largely a function of the industrial-model school. The model set out to train order-taking employees for an industrial economy, and like factories and armies, the model fostered a culture of control. Naturally the system recruits people who accept the model and its culture. Unsurprisingly, the hierarchy always finds reasons to prolong education; first to high school graduation, then to college, and now to post-graduate degrees. Prolong education and you prolong control.
The Internet-based school, however, will develop a different culture and recruit a very different kind of teacher. The function of the on-line educator will be to save students from wasting time, set some intriguing challenges, and get students out of the academic nest as quickly as possible. To foster freedom, responsibility, and initiative will demand that teachers themselves display these three traits.
Frightening though it may seem to contemplate the end of the old chalk-and-talk school system, we at least have timing on our side. A whole generation of teachers is about to retire; the schools built for the baby boomers are in need of replacement. But we don't have to reconstruct the whole system, especially if it's obsolete.
The Internet is a kind of planetary schoolhouse staffed by millions of teachers. We can enroll our children (and ourselves) with a few keystrokes or mouse clicks. If we look at the Internet as an enormous resource, not as a threat, fear of the Net will soon join smallpox as a disease without victims.
Crawford Kilian teaches interactive writing at Capilano College in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has also taught on-line in various education research projects. In addition to writing a weekly education column for over 10 years in a Vancouver newspaper, Kilian is the author of 16 books, including science fiction, fantasy, and history.
Copyright (c) 1994 by Mecklermedia Corporation.