| Sinclairvoyance |
THE JUNIOR INDUSTRY MINISTER, Mr John Butcher, has predicted that by 1986 half the households in the U.K. will have a computer. Mr Butcher was speaking at the Computer Trade Association awards ceremony earlier this year, and he went on to describe the schoolchildren of today as the first generation of the computer literate. He added: "Because of this world lead - a direct result of the co-operation between Government and the education sector - the U.K. will have the skilled manpower to exploit the burgeoning information market, especially in software."
The extravagant claim that it is the present Government which has fostered computer literacy through the Microelectronics Education Programme will make many teachers fall about laughing. If children are becoming computer literate - and that is questionable - then they are doing so at home, not in schools which cannot even boast of having a micro for each class, let alone each pupil.
The Microelectronics Education Programme was initiated, belatedly, in 1981, two years after it was ready to move. The Labour Government had planned the scheme to begin in 1979, but lost the General Election and the new Conservative Government immediately called a halt to the project as part of the general cutbacks in expenditure. An inauspicious start, and one which Butcher has conveniently forgotten.
| 'If children are becoming computer literate they are doing so at home' |
Three years later, the Department of Education and Science reports on the progress of MEP: "the current position in the United Kingdom is that each secondary school, some 5,500 in all, now has at least one microcomputer", and on average there are five computers in each of those schools. Only one-third of primary schools, however, has any computers at all, and the majority of those have only one. In total, then, less than 50,000 computers have been purchased by schools. Scarcely a figure to be proud of, particularly when compared to the 1.19 million home computers sold to first-time users in 1983.
Consequently, computers in school tend to be used, if at all, as demonstration models in the few classes receiving tuition in computer science. In many instances, the only hands-on experience gained by pupils is in after-school computer clubs organised by enthusiastic staff, and those tend to appeal to those who already have a computer at home.
One cannot blame the schools themselves - at least, not entirely. Computers cost money, and even with the help of the MEP schools must shoulder 50 percent of the expense of hardware and software. With the present cutbacks, schools are finding it difficult enough to buy textbooks, and for effective teaching computers must be bought in large quantities. There is a little a teacher can do with one Spectrum plus hardware and a class of 35 pupils.
Nevertheless, some progress has been made. Within the past 30 months, according to DES figures, 80,000 teachers have taken courses in computer awareness. That, however, is not enough, and schools have lagged so far behind in the teaching of computer science that universities have taken to giving remedial tuition on the subject to post-A level students. Richard Ennals, of the Department of Computing at Imperial College, London, spoke of the problem at the North of England Educational Conference in Sheffield: "Teachers must be properly trained and the number of computer science teachers increased. It is not enough to provide schools with microcomputers which would only produce a generation of poor Basic programmers."
Those poor Basic programmers are likely to be self-taught, too, as a growing number of schoolchildren become familiar with micros at home. A recent survey by Gowling Market Services showed that 11 percent of homes in the U.K. now have a computer. Well over one million people bought a computer for the first time last year, and nearly two million are expected to do so in 1984. The hands-on experience which children fail to get at school is gained at home, though one unfortunate aspect is that it is only the children of the better-off who learn in that way. Due largely to the failure of MEP to provide all pupils with a computer education, the subject has become, unintentionally, one from which the less well-off children are excluded.
In any case, how literate is that generation of computer kids? What skills will they have to offer in the future? Most Sinclair users would agree that computer literacy has nothing to do with reaching Cavern 20 of Manic Miner or scoring 79 percent on The Hobbit. Fortunately, few people use their computers only for playing games. The majority also devote considerable time to programming and learning about the new technology. It cannot be said, however, that those skills will ensure a career in computing. After all, the ability to drive a car and tinker with an engine does not qualify one as a motor mechanic, and even if it did, society requires only a limited number of garage hands.
| 'Far too great an emphasis is placed on programming skills' |
It must be remembered that a computer is, in the final analysis, only a tool, albeit a very sophisticated one. Familiarity with that tool is essential, as we move ever nearer to a fully computerised society, but far too great an emphasis is placed on programming skills which, one day, with professional software available for every application, will be simply a hobby for most users. In the meantime, schools should, ideally, be using computers in every discipline in order that pupils become accustomed to their use and potential. That will better equip people to use computers in everyday life, and they will become expert in using the new technology rather than in programming.
The Government, too, should look carefully at the implications of computers, and instead of being complacent about a so-called computer literate generation which it has done little to foster, it should begin thinking now about educating the public to make good use of increased leisure time.