Newman Against Your Computer-Educated Brain

Why computer education fails

Last year, the National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed the effects of computers on education. It found that “internet courses are less effective than in-person instruction,” and that “taken as a whole, the literature examining the effect of [internet communications technology] investment is characterized by findings of little or no positive effect on most academic outcomes.” Even having a home computer is given the ambiguous status of being “unlikely to greatly improve educational outcomes [and] unlikely to negatively affect outcomes.” The only areas that seem to buck this “insignificant relationship between academic achievement and the availability of school computers” are developing countries. This is explained not by the benefits of computers, but by the inadequacies of those education systems — a computer is only good when the school is worse.

The authors of the paper seem surprised by their own results. They give several explanations for the failure of the computer: The screen may “displace other more effective instructional and learning methods.” It may “distract schoolchildren.” Sure, but there is a more fundamental problem: The computer is anti-educative.

Cardinal John Henry Newman laid out his principles for education in his book The Idea of a University…