Book Report

David Curtis

English 516

October 7, 2004

A Book Report: Larry Cuban Debunks the Reformers

In Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom, a six-chapter treatise or book, Larry Cuban carefully probes the newest school reforms, involving both the quality and quantity of technology use in educational environments. Cuban appears to leave no stone unturned in his effort to answer very difficult questions regarding the role of powerful stakeholders (reformers) that may have paved the way for excessive purchases of computer hardware and software by public school districts. Such shockwave-producing questions tend to form the basis of the book and include the following: What promises did the reformers make regarding how technology could be used in the classroom? Have such promises, made more than twenty years ago, been adequately realized? Have the relatively large investments in computers and other technologies been worth the costs?

Reformers, in the context of Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom, are a somewhat loose “coalition of parents, corporate executives, public officials, and educators” (176) who began proposing plans for the increased use of computers in school environments more that twenty years ago. Oddly enough, those possessing the greatest influence to sway public opinion in an intended direction probably know the least about obtaining successful outcomes using specific teaching methods. How much, for example, does a given politician or corporate executive know about educational procedures or processes that yield satisfactory results? Additionally, how much influence do educators generally have in influencing opinion or policy at both state and federal levels, perhaps against the political and profit goals of much more powerful stakeholders. Cuban agrees that those who hold the most power and influence usually get their way regardless of the opposition arrayed against them. Therefore, the public statements of some of the most indomitable reformers such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, secretary of education, and other politicians (whether they be state or federal senators or congressmen or presidents), influenced by these companies, become important. Nonetheless, as aforementioned, their knowledge base concerning teaching and learning processes likely extend no further than their respective foggy memories of their high school experiences. Below, Cuban recounts their claims:

1) “Wiring schools and creating the hardware and software infrastructures that give teachers and students access to technology will solve most of education’s problems” (188);

2) “Access to more and faster communication means that students will become knowledgeable” (188);

3) “Students will become sufficiently computer literate to compete in a workplace that demands high level technological skills” (177).

Attacking their claims in reverse order, Cuban states there is no consensus on what it means to be technologically literate. The definitions are simply too diverse. For some, computer literacy means one has programming skills and the ability to troubleshoot computer software or hardware errors. For others, literacy is less complicated and denotes a facility to run word processing programs like Microsoft Word or Word Perfect or work effectively and efficiently with spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel. Or, is one technologically literate if he completes a course in computers?

Respecting these diverse definitions, Cuban writes “…any hope of securing agreement on a common definition appears slim. On such an elementary but crucial point, promoters [reformers] offer little direction to computer-using teachers” (177-178). To that end, Cuban effectively weakens the reformers claim that increased use of computer technology in public school classrooms would produce a greater number of computer literate students ready for the workplace. For without an established definition of computer literacy, how can one make the aforementioned assertion convincingly?

Continuing in reverse order, Cuban set upon the reformers’ questionable declaration, that “access to more and faster communication means that students will become knowledgeable,” (188) with the following: “The thrill of retrieving hard-to-get information quickly is a long stretch from thoughtfully considering the information and turning it into knowledge” (188). The reformers’ claim, in this case, looks really shallow in the face of Cuban’s response to it. Cuban is, in effect, saying knowledge does not just fall off trees like apples and apricots, that one must come with critical reasoning skills as well as an appreciable amount of judgment capacity in order to grasp it. These skills, not technology, likely permit students to filter incoming knowledge, or knowledge detected through the five senses, and store it in the long-term memory for future use. Greater computer access then may reserve the most benefit for those who possess prerequisite critical skills in the sense that such persons possess a much better opportunity to obtain knowledge from it. This rather naked argument from the reformers’ camp also demonstrates clearly their lack of knowledge regarding learning and teaching. In this way, Cuban subtly illustrates that the mere possession of power and influence to sway opinions and decisions does not necessarily translate into knowledge necessary to make appropriate decisions.

Moreover, having somewhat easily refuted the two aforementioned claims, Cuban sets out to, figuratively speaking, injure or cripple the remaining one, manipulating what he refers to as a history-and-context explanation. History-and-context theory assumes “School structures and historical legacies carry so much weight that, unless changed, they will retard widespread use of technology and hinder substantial changes in classroom practices” (180). This theory strongly suggests public school problems, relative to computer integration, are not easily resolvable unless wholesale structural changes are made. Plans would have to be developed to address new ways of organizing schools, and computer manufacturers and software firms would have to return to the drawing board in an effort to create “software and equipment especially designed for teachers and students” (181). Also, the reformers’ claim seems to have little value since it fails to consider the questionable reliability of some hardware and software products sold to public schools. As such, according to the history-and-context theorists, manufacturers would have to cultivate more reliable products as well as provide increased technical support to teachers. In this discussion, Cuban is strongly suggesting a scenario in which the bandits make off with the loot and leave nothing for the victims, a scenario consistent with “profit without responsibility,” as he wishes to hold entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and other reformers accountable for the quality of their products and for the lack of services they provide. Cuban simultaneously hints that responsibility for computers and other technologies sitting in classroom corners collecting dust, owing to a lack of technical support or a lack of technical training for teachers, can be assigned, in part, to reformers who may be reluctant to dip into their profits to provide the necessary support services.

After refuting such reformer assertions, Cuban moves to prove that technology has indeed been underused in a lengthy discussion about how teachers have actually been using computers over the past twenty years. Using both his own survey results and a number of reputable studies, including case studies, conducted since 1982, Cuban put together an insightful picture of elementary and secondary teachers’ use of technology. In this endeavor, he adroitly placed teachers into three distinct categories according to the amount of time allocated for computer use in the classroom: 1) serious users (once a week); 2) occasional users (once a month); and 3) nonusers (no use at all). Interestingly, Cuban acknowledges that some of the reformers’ goals were realized given the fact that “teachers reported increased communication, using email, with colleagues, parents, and students than they had previously, more efficient completion of administrative tasks such as grades and attendance, and the preparation of materials, like student handouts and syllabi, with greater depth and breadth” (133). However, as Cuban points out, these tasks have little to do with technology integration into teacher lesson plans in which students perform technology-related tasks in attempts to meet objectives in each subject-matter area.

Additionally, enthusiastic reformers never predicted the “unanticipated consequences” (133) of oversold, underused technology in classrooms though, admittedly, they may celebrate teacher and student computer usage mostly unrelated to the content of teacher lesson plans. Cuban cites a number of unanticipated consequences below apparent at the end of his Silicon Valley study:

Ø Less than ten percent of the teachers who used computers in their classrooms were serious users;

Ø Between twenty and thirty percent were occasional or rare users;

Ø In classrooms of serious or occasional users, most students’ use of computers was peripheral to their primary instructional tasks;

Ø Only on rare occasions did student computer use become of primary importance, as in participating in online curriculum or creating multimedia projects;

Ø Less than five percent of teachers integrated technology into their regular curricular or instructional routines;

Ø There was no clear and substantial evidence of students’ increasing their academic achievement as a result of using information technology (133).

To conclude, in the final chapter, chapter 6, Cuban determines, based on evidence presented in the previous five chapters, whether the billions of dollars spent on producing an infrastructure for increased computer usage and on other technologies has been worth it. On page 189, he admits that over the past twenty years teachers and students have acquired technology skills and have participated in serious use of these technologies. However, overall, he decries the fact that large sums of money and time invested have yielded “less than modest returns” (189). In addition, academic achievement remained the same with no clear, substantial improvements, there was relatively little technology integration into lesson plans, and there were no earth-shaking changes in teaching and learning as promised by the reformers. Some reformers then oversold computers and other technologies to public schools using their power, influence, and persuasive rhetoric. However, with billions of dollars worth of computers and other technologies in classrooms and computer labs throughout the country, few, including teachers, administrators, and reformers, seem to know how best to use them for classroom instruction. For these reasons, Cuban applies the words oversold and underused and believes such dismal results have not been worth the investment. To that end, he believes public schools should change their priorities and begin greater investments in class size reduction and the provision of full day educational services at the pre-school and kindergarten levels, while simultaneously reducing expenditures on technology.