This paper is a new version of an essay written for a symposium entitled "Education in the Electronic Age" in 1983 [1]. I believe that what I wrote thirty-five years ago remains applicable to schools and education today. ABSTRACT The setting of goals for education should emerge from a continuing public discussion. Such discussion will lead, inevitably, I believe, to the realization that there are goals we want for all children to achieve. How best might computers be used to advance these goals? It is the thesis of this paper that if and when computers prove to be useful in the achievement of these goals, it will be through the use of a genre of software, not always fashionable, that is characterized neither by tyranny nor license, but rather by discipline and freedom. Introduction This paper is about the articulated and unarticulated assumptions that we as citizens and as educators make about the process and content of education. It considers how these assumptions might or might not, should or should not, change, in light of the emergence of information technology. While it is the case that the assumptions we make about education, or any other social function, can be categorized in many different ways, we will find it helpful here to think about a spectrum of constraint that goes from tyranny to discipline to freedom to license. Anyone who has participated in raising of a child [even if only as the child being raised] will likely recognize this spectrum of educational ideology. Axioms of the Discussion We can all agree that the computer is now a commonplace artifact of the society and that it will become more so. Further, I think we can all agree that it is important that the assimilation of this and other new technologies into the social function of education and its institutions be the result of conscious decisions rather than haphazard acquiescence and accommodation. In the long run the issues that are central to such decisions are neither new nor technology-specific. They include issues of goals, roles, environments, control, curriculum, evaluation, and equity. Consider, for example, the question of roles in education. All too often, we assume that students are the ones to be educated, by those already in possession of an education, namely teachers. An alternative assumption is that all people are learners and all people are teachers. Not re-examining assumptions can complicate the problem of education reform. The natural tendency of people and social systems is to respond to those aspects of a situation that seem to be new and not to use the occasion to re-examine fundamental issues. Computers in Education: Two Perspectives In order to begin the discussion, I will sketch a bit of recent history as I see it. As nearly as I can tell, it was in the decade of the 1960s that there first began to grow in some sectors of the educational community the notion that computers might play a serious role in education. The computer-assisted instruction (CAI) movement was predicated on three assumptions. These are: 1. In the interaction between the computer and the user, the computer leads the "conversation," following, to a greater or lesser degree, the agenda of the educators and their curricula. 2. The computer and its software are primarily tools of those who are teaching rather than tools of those who are learning. 3. Such tools, in order to be useful, must be able to make inferences about the user at every stage of the interaction. Typical computer-assisted instruction software offers the student the illusion of interactivity with the computer by presenting the student with a series of choices at frequent intervals. The program, in keeping with the rigidity of its underlying assumptions, will insist that the student's responses be one of those the program anticipates and recognizes. The typical CAI program will then branch to a part of the software that the designer believes is appropriate for the student based on the choice the student has made. Although computer-assisted instruction is no longer thought to be a promising route to a golden age of education, it does seem to have many uses for training. I make the distinction between education and training in order to underline the fact that the nature of the social contract between teacher and learner is different in the two cases. In training, there need not be an explicit or implicit obligation for the teacher to teach or the learner to learn the underlying intellectual structure of what is being taught and learned. In contrast, education in a democratic society must be based on a different set of assumptions about teachers and learners. The price of a free people not knowing why it believes what it believes can, in the end, be the loss of that freedom. The curricular content in traditional CAI software in schools is drawn from those intellectual domains that the culture as a whole has seen fit to regard as worth passing on to succeeding generations. One further point about CAI, namely the problem of making inferences about learners. A good teacher is constantly making inferences about students' understandings and misunderstandings - indeed this is an essential part of the way people communicate. It is, however, difficult for people to make inferences about the intentions of others, even in face-to-face interaction when the full range of gesture and inflection is available. Knowing who one is communicating with helps greatly, but does not, by itself, solve the problem. Are we really prepared to see computer programs make pedagogical decisions that are based on inferences made with no knowledge of the user and what is important to him or her? There are two rather distinct responses within the computers in education community to the shortcomings of CAI. The first of these responses is a kind of neo-CAI devised by the artificial intelligence (AI) research community. Central to the use of AI in education (and elsewhere) is the problem of making inferences. Typically, the AI approach to education recognizes the importance of understanding the intellectual structure of the content being taught. Much of the research work is very sophisticated in nature and draws heavily on recent advances in cognitive science and linguistics. Nonetheless, it remains the case that the AI approach, when instantiated in educational settings, is based on the same set of educational premises as is traditional CAI. The software is the reservoir of knowledge and directs the educational exchange with the student. In this approach a successful educational experience is one in which acceptable answers are learned rather than provocative questions posed. Further, success means that the teacher's knowledge is transplanted in the student rather than recreated or re-represented by the student. A second, and quite different sort of response of the computers in education community to the shortcomings of traditional CAI has been to develop new programming languages or use existing programming languages. The purpose of the languages is to allow the learner to explore new intellectual domains unfettered by the constraints of the past. Some examples of such efforts include the teaching of the LOGO programming language and its descendants such as Scratch and Snap. More recently we have seen enthusiasm for various "computer literacy" and “learn to code - code to learn” movements.[2] The promise of this approach is that learners will develop procedural thinking and problem-solving skills. In the most optimistic formulation of this point of view, its proponents expect students to reinvent for themselves the accumulated insights of the culture. Even if the advocates of this approach are more realistic in their expectations, the approach can be an abdication of educational responsibility. A language, even a computer language, is only a language. In order to use a language, one should have something useful or relevant to say! This is where the culture, its curriculum and its intellectual disciplines enter the picture. THE GOALS OF EDUCATION - process goals & content goals How well do these perspectives on the use of computers in education address the educational goals we hope our students attain? There is a spectrum of educational goals - affective, social, and cognitive.[3] Among the cognitive goals often cited as desirable is the overly general "problem-solving skill" that seems to elude many of our children, according to many educational pundits. Is there a general 'problem-solving skill'? Problems have structure - designing an optimum school schedule is likely to require a different kind of “problem-solving skill” than formulating a recipe for a new kind of bread loaf or the chemical composition of a new analgesic drug. My mentor for many years at MIT, Jerrold R. Zacharias, suggested a set[4] of specific process goals in education that we should like to see all our students attain. He presented these process goals in the form of heuristic ploys that skilled problem solvers regularly use. One can think of these process goals or heuristic ploys as providing a kind of "Anatomy of Problem-Solving". I have modified the form of Zacharias's process goals into a set of explicit questions that people who are working on problems might ask of themselves before, during and after they work on a problem. Process goals - some questions one should ask oneself when solving a problem - What is this problem a case of? Why? How good a solution can I get? How can I make my solution better? If this method of solution works out are there undesirable consequences? Given my solution to the problem, what else might be true? what then is false? How could I confirm that? If I keep doing this, do I reach a dead end? How else can I approach this problem? Is there a better way to approach this problem? Is there a simpler way to approach this problem? Can this problem be broken into sub-problems? What does this problem look like from a different perspective? What does this problem look like if everything in it was 100 times larger? Smaller? What factors can I ignore in solving this problem? How much difference will that make? Are the constraints on how I solve this problem necessary? Who can I ask to help me with this problem? Why? What evidence is there to support the claims that I am seeing, hearing, reading, etc? Is the magnitude of the claim consistent with the magnitudes of the relevant quantities? How else can I approach this problem? Is my solution the only one possible? How does my solution change if circumstances change? From what other perspective does this problem seem to be the same? What must be true about my solution to the problem? I believe that these process goals are problem-solving heuristics that are desirable for all learners to attain in a world permeated by information technology. Certainly it is the case that skilled programmers call on these skills continually. So do skilled school principals, skilled bakers and skilled chemists. In contrast to these process goals that are essential to various degrees in problem-solving in all contexts, it is hard to make any sort of comprehensive list of content goals. In science, for example, it is conceivable that we might all agree with C.P. Snow that every educated person should understand the nuances and implications of the second law of thermodynamics. Other people might hold the Krebs cycle to be non-negotiable content, while still others, understanding the table of the elements.[5] For content goals in history, we might agree that all children in the United States should understand the social and political origins of our country. However, some people might place greater emphasis on the cultural history of the American people and their diverse origins while others might argue that all students should have a thorough grounding in American economic history.[6] Finally, beyond process goals and content goals, there is an overarching goal in education. It is the goal of helping people to become independent and responsible. This is not a new goal for education that arises as a result of the spread of computer technology. It has always been present in our society, and it has shaped our choices of teaching methods as well as our choices of curriculum. It should now affect our choices for how we use computers in education. The setting of goals should emerge from a continuing public discussion of education. Such discussion will lead, inevitably, I believe, to the realization that there are goals we would like all students to attain. On the other hand, there are goals that students aspire to; some young people wish to become musicians and some mathematicians; some wish to be crafts-people and some salespeople. Our educational institutions should be open and free enough so that these goals may be pursued without being constrained by the educational system. Opting for Discipline and Freedom How best might computers be used to advance these goals? It is the thesis of this paper that if and when computers prove to be useful in the achievement of these goals, it will be through the use of a genre of software, not always fashionable, that is characterized neither by tyranny nor license, but rather by discipline and freedom. I believe that it is both possible and desirable to write software that, like CAI, draws its curricular content from the intellectual domains the culture has come to value and that is at the same time open-ended and flexible. Such software is characterized by several principles. These are: 1. In the interaction between the computer and the user, the user leads the “conversation." The conversation then follows an agenda within a curricular framework that reflects the interests of the user and the teacher and the interaction between them. 2. The computer and its software are primarily tools of those who are learning rather than tools of those who are teaching. 3. Such tools, in order to be useful, must never attempt to make inferences about of the user. They should be designed simply to display to the user the consequences of his or her actions. I further believe that such software offers us the opportunity to go well beyond simply doing with a new set of tools what we already now do with books, pencil and paper. Using such software can expand and deepen the understanding that both teachers and students have of the material that they are both learning. Such software avoids the tyranny of CAI and the license of an unconstrained programing language. Rather it opts for the middle ground of the discipline of the subject matter and the freedom of exploration made possible by well-designed subject-specific tools. I call examples of such software “Intellectual Mirrors” and have written elsewhere [7] about them. Here a brief description will suffice. Intellectual Mirror software has no explicit instructional agenda; it asks no questions of the user and makes no inferences about the users. Second, the primitive operations — that is, the menu options that the user can choose — are germane to the subject matter being taught and learned. They are more elaborated than the simplest structures of a computer language - think of them as subject-specific subroutines. Primitives such as these are often simple enough to be understood in terms of the simplest elementary computer commands. On the other hand, they are complex enough that concatenating them can potentially lead to nontrivial new insights into the subject. The hand calculator, or an electronic dictionary or thesaurus come to mind readily as simple examples of intellectual mirrors. A third property of Intellectual Mirror software is one that goes well beyond these simple examples. Intellectual Mirror software allows users to aggregate their actions within the software and turn them into new procedures. The new procedures may then be used to explore analogous situations. This permits an exploration of the question "What is my situation a case of?" In this way the software can become a tool for exploring particularity with an eye toward understanding generality. The software doesn’t necessarily induce users to greater degrees of generalization, but it can help to provide, along with an encouraging teacher and challenging written materials, the setting and the occasion for such inquiry. A Concluding Remark About Ideology & Equity I have tried to sketch, within the framework of the use of computers in education, a spectrum of pedagogical ideologies that ranges from tyranny to discipline to freedom to license. I have argued that the gap between the tyranny of early efforts in this field and the license of more recent and fashionable efforts may be bridged by a different genre of software. It is important to point out that this spectrum inheres not only in the curricular content and style of the materials we offer our students, but at least as much in our attitudes and behavior. The most open-ended and liberating software can be confining and narrow in the hands of a teacher who demands that a child "discover" a particular aspect of the world in a particular way. By the same token, the most didactic of materials, in the hands of an imaginative and challenging teacher, can be a rich source of true discovery. In my view, there is a serious equity problem rooted in attitudes and assumptions. There are signs that many in the educational community think of one end of the pedagogical spectrum I have sketched as appropriate for poor children and the other end as appropriate for the more socially and economically advantaged. This tendency, insofar as it exists and is allowed to develop, exacerbates real inequities in the society. The assumption that normative curriculum is for the poor and that liberating curriculum is for the advantaged is not new. It is both implicit and explicit in much that has always been done in education. The advent of the computer provides another occasion for us to reexamine this aspect of what we do in education. If we do so carefully, we may reap important social benefits. The thoughtful use of the computer offers the opportunity to expand the educational horizons of all learners. If the social institutions that are in the business of educating people use the new technologies to expand learners' horizons, we as a society will be forever in their debt. I have written (and rewritten) this essay is an attempt to contribute to the public discussion about pedagogical ideology and the use of computers in education. I hope that it is a contribution to a discussion that will lead us to use the new technologies thoughtfully and with imagination. * * * * * [1] “Tyranny, Discipline, Freedom & License; Some Thoughts on Educational Ideology & Computers”, in Education in the Electronic Age, WNET, New York, 1983. [2] See, for example, https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/coded-success-benefits-learning-program for a review of recent efforts. [3] There are those who regard the social goals as primary, while others regard affective goals as most important. Still others will argue the primacy of cognitive goals. I wish to avoid engaging this question. Whatever one's view about the relative importance of these various sorts of goals they are clearly all of importance. [4] See Appendix to this essay for the original Assorted Heuristic Ploys by J.R. Zacharias. [5] An excellent review of the state of education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) can be found at http://www.nas.edu/21st/education/ This report addresses both content goals and process goals. [6] The American Historical Society has addressed the question of both process and content goals for history education in this country. See, for example, https://www.historians.org/ [7] Intellectual Mirrors: a step in the direction of making schools knowledge-making places, Harvard Educational Review, Feb. 1989, 59(1), p. 51. See also J.L. Schwartz, "Software to Think With: the case of algebra" in D. L. Ferguson, Ed., Advanced Educational Technologies for Mathematics and Science, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1993. APPENDIX – Assorted Heuristic Ploys - Jerrold R. Zacharias [circa 1965] Observation, evidence, and the basis for belief. Order of magnitude of significant and relevant quantities; measurement. Successive approximation; exploitation of error; feedback and control of iterative processes. Reductio ad absurdum; pushing to a limit. Plurality of approaches. Mistrust of the principle of exclusion, or exhaustion. What, if not? Intellectual elegance; intellectual efficiency; taste, style and judgment. Symmetry and invariance. Necessary and/but not sufficient conditions. Continuity and discontinuity; particulateness and quantization; interpolation and extrapolation. Analogy/contrast. Inference, implication, and test of conjecture; verifiability; insolvability. Uniqueness, stability, conservation. Equivalence, congruence, identity. Point of view, change of scale, frame of reference. Signal-to-noise ratio; minor and major fluctuations. Arbitrary rules of the game. Crossterms and interactions. Anthropomorphism concerning the inanimate. 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