Computer Literacy as Ideology

Thus, the vocational justification and the ubiquity argument can be questioned. As Aronowitz and Giroux (1985) have said, "rapidly changing technologies will require less, not more, training for the majority.... specialized vocational training has less applicability to the work world than ever before." (p. 189). It may, however, still be the case that computer use encourages the development of general organizational and problem-solving skills. This is a frequently-made claim, although the empirical evidence for it is sketchy (see Beynon, 1991). Even on purely pedagogical grounds, there is room to question some of the elements of the ideology of computer literacy. All of the arguments cited rest on some further assumptions: that all computers share some common elements of operation, that learning about one computer will help a student learn about others, and that computerized learning is cumulative. Experience with one kind of computing is assumed to contribute to the development of attitudes and skills which will facilitate further computer literacy. Can these assumptions always be taken for granted?

It is at this point that many analyses of the social effects of ideologies falter, by remaining unconnected to any empirical evidence. They frequently tend to deal solely in theoretical relationships regarding "popular beliefs" versus "minority interests." Counter to this pattern, we will present excerpts from the qualitative data gathered during a three-year evaluation of computer use in high schools (see Goodson, Mangan, & Rhea, 1991). By reviewing some of this evidence, we can begin see what the state of computer literacy as an educational enterprise is at present.

Encountering the Ideology: Reactions from Teachers and Students

The notion of the inevitable ubiquity of computers was certainly well-established in the high schools we studied, among both teachers and students. In talking with them about their notions of computer literacy, however, we discovered quite a range of reactions to this concept. Although the majority of interviewees believed that computers were the "wave of the future", and that they needed to ride that wave to insure their own success, not everyone was enthusiastic about the prospect. These interviews also indicated that the assumptions about the cumulative nature of computer knowledge, and its transferability both to other computers and other logical tasks, were by no means irrefutably established. Enthusiasm for classroom computing is in evidence in these remarks by Elliot Nance, a history teacher1:

I think they’re important in the classroom, I think they’re going to be important in society, if they’re not already. I’d like my own kids to be much more comfortable with computers, just as a way of being able to cope if they have to. So I think by the same token I’d like my students to be comfortable, to recognize that the computer’s a pretty powerful machine, can do them a lot of good, especially if they have more mastery or control over it. Now they may already be at that point. In a lot of cases, they’re ahead of me, I think. So I still think there’s some value in working at implementing computers fully into the system. I guess if I didn’t I would’ve backed out of the project by this point... We’ll probably have to have a mandatory course in computer literacy that every student will take, and maybe, if necessary, over two years.