Computer Literacy as Ideology

As the following classroom observation records show, however, the vocational message is being delivered clearly to students:

From a Sociology class: Discussion topic: labour market trends of the future. Based on Globe article. Trends: more white-collar, less blue-collar jobs... big problem of the future is "lack of skilled employees."

From a Commercial Art class: Guest lecturer introduces video by saying that computers are the wave of the future in commercial art; students will need to know software to work in the shops of tomorrow (or today). Employers don’t want to invest time and money into training; employees who already know the software are in demand.

The latter note comes from observation of a course with a clearly-defined vocational purpose. The argument presented has a double-edged quality: it urges students to acquire specific computer skills in school, because they cannot expect employers to provide it; at the same time, it implies that employers expect the school system to save them money by undertaking the specific types of training that they require for their businesses. The question then arises: to what degree has this model of secondary education permeated other, traditionally more independent, disciplines? Do all teachers presume that industry should define the curriculum, and that the function of the school is to respond to that definition? Does the ideology of computer literacy promote such a view of schools?

Whether it does or not, it is possible to locate teachers who are resistant to the urgency of computer literacy. Alone among the teachers participating in our study, Walter Harvey, a fifty-year-old geography teacher, had reservations:

I don’t care about this age of computers and everything else, I - excuse me for being old-fashioned - but a student should be able to sit down and write, maybe not legibly, because I don’t, but they should write correctly. They should be able to communicate.