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Miss Helen's reaction to Paolo's story |
Ironically, Paolo Freire wrote his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom, while he was in jail himself. What would my student Paolo say if we labeled the education we are offering him as "Practice of Freedom 101"? He is a fair-minded fellow so he might well agree that his teachers offer him some chances to think for himself, some chances to be creative, some chances to critique the status quo. But for him, at least last spring, school seemed like a jail. He had to be indoors when he would rather be outdoors. He had to be awake when he would rather be asleep. He had to be reading and writing when he would rather be doing almost anything else. He would often say "Why can't we just discuss things?"
Just as computer technology has permitted workers to sit home and do work in their underwear, or in the woods, or late at night, or whenever and wherever they want to, it could give our students new freedom. That's what Paolo thinks. But being a social animal, he doesn't want to be home alone with his computer all day. And being a teen-ager with a bad case of spring fever he often does not want to work at all.
Our challenge is to entice our students to work hard in the practice of freedom. Anything that is fun, novel, or otherwise interesting is a possible enticement. Computer literacy is one tool for students to better their own lives and work on improving the world along with other literacies such as reading, writing, finding meaningful patterns in numbers, using scientific method, thinking historically, etc. At the same time, applying computer technologies to a school project is an enticement to work hard at all the other things they need to master to be the master of their own and our collective futures.
Asimov's story, The Fun They Had, demonstrates how computer technology can be used in service of what Freire called "the banking model" of education where the teacher makes deposits into the passive student depository. Asimov also shows how technology in education can isolate young people from each other. Even if he made some wrong guesses about how the technology would evolve, he is right on target in warning us to think carefully about how we use this technology. We worry about preparing students for their future but what they need above all is help in learning how to prepare themselves.