Computers, Thinking and Schools in the "New World Economic Order"

Monty Neill

published in:

James Brook and Iain Boal, eds.

Resisting the Virtual Life

San Francisco: City Lights, 1995

(this draft was slightly edited for publication)

"Capitalism is the first productive system where the children of the exploited are disciplined and educated in institutions organized by the ruling class."

-- Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James

Two primary reasons are given for plugging schools into the National Information Infrastructure (NII or "Information Superhighway"). Plugging-in is required to prepare students to be high-skilled, high-waged workers in the economy of the future; and it is essential for re-forming schools into institutions which will produce students who can think and solve problems.

The "double helix" of high-skill jobs and cognitively complex schooling is presented as liberatory (Berryman and Bailey). But the use of computerization toward a distinctly non-liberatory end is the more likely consequence of the twining of school and work in the emerging world capitalist economy. To make this argument, I will look at jobs, the use of computers in schools, and the role of computers in developing and controlling the working class of the future.

Computers and the Jobs of the Future

Both conservatives and liberals argue that for the U.S. to "be number 1" in the emerging world economy a more educated working class is needed, one that works harder and smarter. The claim is that if this workforce can be constructed, then corporations will create jobs that utilize the workers' skills. These high-skill workers will be more productive than others and will therefore earn high wages. The alternative, they warn, is low skills and low wages. Schools must therefore educate "all" students to "world class standards" so that the corporations will be competitive.

The primary example of this argument is the report America's Choice by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). The report is probably the most influential piece in U.S. education since A Nation at Risk (fraudulently) maintained that falling school quality endangered national security. The NCEE view can be found in legislation, particularly the recently enacted Goals 2000 school reform bill; in numerous corporate education reform proposals (c.f., California Business Roundtable); and various books and government reports (c.f., Carnevale & Porro). It has become virtually unquestioned conventional wisdom.

The most obvious thing about this claim is that it presumes an uncontrollable and inevitable economy to which "we" must adapt. It demands that educators accept, not challenge or try to change, never mind reconstruct, the economy.

Yet two points about the emerging economy suggest "we" should not accept the economy. First, continuous lowering of wages is already fact and not likely to turn around; second, most new hires are not likely to be doing "high skill" work. For U.S. workers, "real" wages (what one can buy with the wage) have been declining nearly 1 per cent per year for two decades, while the dispersion of the wage -- the gap between high and low-waged -- has simultaneously widened.

As Midnight Notes (1992) argues, this calculated and planned intent of the capitalist system over the past twenty years to reduce working class power and income around the planet has had substantial success. The political and technical ability of the capitalist system to move products and services rapidly around the world has weakened the capacity of working people to band together at the national level to push up or even maintain wages. Since the competition for jobs cannot be contained by national borders, wages are dropping toward the lowest levels among the competitors, even for many "high skill" jobs such as computer programmer. This push is, if anything, intensifying. The North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, is organized as a one-way ratchet to continue the lowering of wages in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. (Calvert and Kuehn), to intensify what Kuehn terms "the race to the bottom." There is certainly no reason to believe that the capitalist system will create a world-wide high-wage system or that the U.S. will remain immune from wages within its borders falling to "world class standards."

The fallacy that most jobs will be high-skill is also widely accepted. Yet even strong proponents of the claim, such as Bailey (1991), acknowledge that most new hires for at least a decade will be filling old slots which do not require the knowledge and skills that proponents of the "high skills" argument point to. Moreover, the labor market forecasts that project growth in the U.S. in medium- or high-skill jobs do not consider changes in the world economy that are dispersing skilled employment more widely while driving down wages. At most, the number of middle-level-skill jobs will grow slightly in the coming decade.

Even school reformers whose first interest is not in creating workers to serve the economy nonetheless buttress their reform proposals by pointing to the presumed high-skill information economy. But what are the implications of lower wages and minimal skill changes for schools?

Lower wages coupled with continuous attacks on public services and increased class and race stratification -- the actually existing U.S. conditions -- strongly suggest continuation of the "savage inequalities" so eloquently described by Jonathan Kozol: sharp class gradations with immiseration for many.

The distribution of computers and paraphernalia already indicates this (Piller; Pearlman; Ramirez & Bell; SEDLetter). Not only are rich kids more likely to have computers at school, their schools' machines are far more apt to be up-to-date, drive more sophisticated software, and be connected to the Internet. Most schools are barely wired -- most classrooms don't have telephone jacks or the electric wiring to run more than a couple computers. The less money a school or school district has, the less likely it will be able to ride on the information highway. Presuming that funding can be won to wire the buildings and purchase reasonably powerful machines and software, schools still must raise money to stay on-line and educate teachers in technology use: over a five-year span, the hardware is only 18% of the cost of using technology (Van Horn).

Telecommunications corporations are eager to exploit the school market, sometimes offering to wire schools in exchange for controlling the wires that will hook the schools to the Internet and thus to corporate coffers (Coile; Einstein). Poor schools are particular prey for technology profiteers such as Whittle Communications' Channel One. Channel One provides satellite dishes, VCRs and TV monitors to schools that agree to force students to watch a 10-minute daily "newscast" that includes two minutes of ads. Schools with the greatest levels of poverty or lowest per-student annual spending are respectively two or six times more likely to have Channel One than are schools with the wealthiest students or highest per-student spending (Morgan).

Health and safety issues of computer use are also most stark for poor schools. Children are more susceptible to radiation, including that from computers, and are also at risk for the same muscular and eye strain as adults (Miller). Schools that can barely afford computers are least likely to shield the computers or purchase ergonomically correct furniture.

In sum, the savage inequalities of the past will extend into the wired savagery of the future. There is neither empirical nor theoretical reason to believe this scenario will change for the better so long as the capitalist system continues. In general, students from low-waged families and communities need more resources if they are to catch up at all with students from higher-waged backgrounds on the kinds of skills (technical, academic or cultural) sought for in high-waged occupations -- yet they get substantially less in school. Why expect the capitalist system and its governmental organs to invest extra funds to develop low-income children into sophisticated problem-solving workers if the jobs don't and won't exist?

In any event, wherever the system does invest in schooling, its purpose is to both intensify work by children and prepare them for future work -- while presenting both as in the students' interest. The call for students to work harder in school is as ubiquitous as the call for schools to produce high-skill workers -- and usually comes from the same sources.

Commputerization of schools will not contribute to "high wages" or "good jobs." The U.S. class hierarchy will not be ameliorated by computerization, but will be intensified. Indeed, computers have been a fundamental weapon in the capitalist's class war against the working class over the past two decades. If computer-knowledge is required in the economy, it is not because of any capitalist desire for high-waged workers or any need for many high-skilled workers. But what then are the roles of computers in re-shaping curriculum and instruction?

Thinking Machines for Thinking Students?

A strong claim is sometimes made that using computers and related high-tech machinery is necessary for a change to a mode of schooling that focuses on thinking. For example, Ramirez and Bell conclude, "It is the position of this paper that if systemic school reform in this country is to succeed it will only do so with the application of telecommunications and information technologies at the classroom level with a simultaneous focus on sustained professional development for teachers." The argument rests on the purported necessity of computers for enabling all students to engage in higher-order thinking activities such as understanding complex ideas, solving real-world problems and analyzing critically.

There is an irony in this claim. The emphasis on higher-order thinking in schools rests substantially on the foundation of cognitive pyschology. As Noble (1989) has shown, cognitive psychology evolved in large part because the U.S. military wanted to create artificial intelligence -- but it had no useful understanding of the genuine thing. The military therefore funded extensive research in cognition, research that ended up largely confirming what progressive educators and psychologists had long maintained, that humans learn actively and by constructing and modifying mental models.

The dominant psychological theories in the US have been behaviorist. In the version influencing schooling, humans supposedly learned by passively accumulating isolated bits of information. In time, the bits could be shaped into successively more complex patterns. The impact, however, was that schools presumed students could not think in an area until they had accumulated enough bits. Those who did not sufficiently grasp the bits were condemned to never do anything interesting in school. This approach still dominates curriculum, instruction and the ubiquitous standardized tests. Cognitive psychology, however, proposes learning as a fundamentally different process. Recognizing that students think, learn by thinking, and can learn to think better or differently, it calls for a "thinking curriculum" (c.f., Resnick).

The irony here is that having constructed cognitive psychology in order to develop "thinking machines," the machines are now presumed indispensible for helping students learn to think. But the very existence of thinking in some schools without computers shows clearly they are not necessary for a thinking curriculum. The reason schools haven't encouraged thinking is not because they have lacked computers, but because the system did not want thinking workers.

A softer claim for the necessity of computers is that because of the way the economy relies on computerization, only via computers will it provide access to materials and knowledge that will facilitate higher order thinking in academic areas for many more children. Presumably, the NII will enable access to teachers and learned people, data banks and libraries, analytical tools such as statistical packages, and other software.

Despite the absence of money, teachers actually working in poor systems presumably will be able to get this complex operation functioning. But if teachers could do this, they could reorganize their classrooms for inquiry, dialogue, critical thinking, understanding and problem-solving, with or without computers. They don't for a number of reasons, including too many students, a lack of resources and knowledge, and incentives such as standardized tests that push against thinking. Somehow, though, the computer is going to provide them the means to make the instructional leap -- even without sufficient funds.

Still, the claim of the value of computers has some persuasive aspects, though with many caveats:

-- The tools can free up time. For example, because of calculators, rather than spend time on drill for arithmetical accuracy, the time can be spent on learning mathematical reasoning and problem solving.

-- Access to information is enhanced. In many schools, the library is outdated, useless or unusable. The cost of some information will cheapen, making it more accessible -- if poor schools have the money to get and stay on-line. Access, however, says nothing about the nature of the materials actually available on-line or what materials students know to hunt for. In seeking information, whether on network or elsewhere, one is limited by one's inquiry framework. Without a strong frame, a student will simply be buried in tons of data. Access to information means little without guidance in learning to use information -- which raises questions of whose guidance for what purposes.

-- Access to people is expanded. You can use the Internet to dialogue with people all over the planet. (Of course people from all over the planet may now live in your neighborhood.) Computer advocates constantly tout examples of "real" scientists talking with kids from some school, but once millions of students are on-line, how many scientists will spend time sorting through hundreds of on-line requests?

-- Access to some kinds of computerized tools can enable students to work on more sophisticated problems rather than basic ones that are often quite boring. Working on more realistic and complex tasks, doing so in collaboration with others, proceeding at one's own pace, even having a real-world use for the results, all can help motivate students. Again, much of this does not require computers or the NII. Moreover, once the technology becomes old-hat, deeper issues of the purpose or lack of purpose for schooling will inevitably reappear for students, for whom lack of control often guarantees lack of interest (Herndon).

In sum, use of infotech could facilitate higher order thinking curricula in schools. That is, it might be easier to transform classrooms so that they engage students in active learning if computers are used. However, given the probable shape of the economy and that those who control the economy have the most power to control schooling, the idea that introducing computers (even with "professional development" for teachers) will create a more beneficial educational system for most students can be quickly dismissed.

The important issues are not ones of technology, but of politics: will the funding be there, what kinds of guidance to what ends will students receive, who controls the technology, for whom will the computer ultimately be useful? Class relations that are played out in technology implementation are also implicated in technology construction. What is done with tools is not determined so much by those who use the tools, but by those who construct them. Thus, the ways in which the makers design technology can largely control the structuring and solution of problems by users, to whom the control by the maker remains invisible (Madaus). Computer use is then falsely promoted as a neutral yet liberatory tool for work and for preparing workers.

Controlling School and Work

The controlling class no more wants problem-solvers and critical thinkers to do most jobs of the future than they did to perform jobs of the assembly-line era. Computer use in schools will fit the economy -- not the mythical economy of "high skills and high wages," but the real economy of "the race to the bottom." While following orders, not questioning, being on time, and submitting one's personality to the dictates of the school all prepared workers for jobs in the mass production era, the schoolwork form directly fit the actual jobs for only a relatively few workers. With computerization, however, form can more closely resemble function.

The McDonald's level of familiarity with technology requires no actual knowledge of computers or much of any thought. Data-entry (with the computer monitoring your speed) and similar work does not require higher-order thinking. Schools will train students to sit in front of computers and do routine work in direct preparation for their jobs. For them, this will be their "real world" learning connection.

Use of computers at the technician level sometimes does require decision-making, but the parameters are usually specified carefully, meaning that the thinking done is not at the order of making definition, but of application. (A look at the actual jobs described by Bailey [1990] or Zuboff reveals this.) These jobs do require more academic -- school-based -- knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge, and the number of these kinds of "medium-level-skill" jobs probably will increase in the coming decade. Controlling the development and nature of the thinking of those who have limited-problem-solving jobs will be another task of schools.

Data entry, monitoring, and limited-problem-solving will continue to comprise most computer use by the great majority of employees in the U.S., barring an upheaval against the jobs system. Noble's (1991) critique of Zuboff points out that the "intellective" work she glorifies in fact includes two kinds of work that imply a corresponding schooling: that which is scientific and problem-solving and that which is primarily monitoring the process, a difference that "reflects a cavernous hierarchical division of labor." And, Noble adds, the latter is more "about attitudes and disposition than about 'knowledge' or intellectual abilities" (p. 135). The mind is reduced to the hand. For most, schooling, wired or not, is preparation for routine work, same now as it ever was. However, I suspect that though "the more things change" is still operative, there are yet some important changes in the offing. The changes have to do with capitalist control over thinking.

As Noble (1989) explains, behaviorism largely treated thinking as a black box. On the assembly line, it did not matter what, or if, the worker thought, as long as he or she behaved: came to work, did the job, didn't cause trouble. To the extent that thinking was an issue, the concern was how to manipulate the worker into working harder (i.e., to control behavior). Industrial psychology developed as a tool to help organize and ensure the functioning of the productive process. It developed a knowledge base that retains its usefulness for management, because traditional "good worker" characteristics are still those most desired by the bosses (NCEE).

Behaviorism did not cause a school curriculum that failed to encourage thinking. However, in a social-economic system that did not want workers to think too much but needed to control their actions, behaviorism was constructed as the useful psychology. Thus, corporations, foundations and government agencies funded research that provided ready tools for shaping schooling and controlling workers.

Cognitive psychology tries to explain the working of the mind. It is about thinking and therefore whether, how and about what the worker thinks. Its use is that, for at least some significant part of the workforce, the system will need more workers willing to think for the system and to think in different ways, with abstract symbols. The skills needed in varying degrees by the various levels of problems solvers in the system are to be produced by the schools. Those who use computers to analyze, create or control, will be few in number, but important to the system (Bailey 1991; Reich). They too must be programmed, but with allowance for a greater degree of self-regulation.

The danger of progressive education that expects students to think and problem-solve is that it might get out of control, leading students to "unrealistic expectations" and a command of areas of knowledge useful for attacking the system. But as Dalla Costa and James note, so long as progressive schooling remains within control, it not only presents no danger, it may be a source of yet greater profits. The question for the owners of capital, then, is how to ensure control of the "thinking" curriculum. Revealingly, much of the proposed school reform that rests on cognitive science as the model for instruction still rests on behaviorism for motivation and discipline.

The plans of the New Standards Project are perhaps most illustrative. (The founders of New Standards are leading cognitive psychologist Lauren Resnick and Marc Tucker, head of the NCEE which produced America's Choice, calling for "high skills and high wages.") New Standards, which as of October 1994 has signed up 16 states in its development program, proposes not only new curriculum, instructional methods, assessments and professional development for teachers, but also the use of performance levels and tests to measure student progress toward goals that are substantially about workforce preparation. Non-promotion and non-graduation are the negative reinforcers to complement the presumably more interesting curriculum that is the positive reinforcer.

So, what in this is new? Surely not the drive for control or the use of behaviorism. What are potentially new are the means of control, the computer itself, and the target of control, thinking. On one level this is what is already quite visible, the use of the work tool to monitor the pace of the work. In schools, however, the issue is more subtle for at least some students. For example, the application of computers to real-world problems will teach students how to solve problems on terms amenable to the controllers of the system and will sort out those who are most willing and able to do so. The "less able" will be funneled to less cognitively complex computer work to prepare them for their jobs (or lack thereof), while the less willing will either be worked on to make them amenable, crushed or driven out.

The determination of "less able" is a matter of assessment. While new forms are clearly necessary as part of any humane school reform project, and assessment, by oneself or others, is a necessary part of learning, it is all-too-likely that emerging new assessments, relying on and promoted by cognitive psychology, will simply become an even more sophisticated method for sorting students. Much of this might be done via computerized exams, enabling a high degree of standardization to "world class" levels. Currently this involves adapting to computers the same old tests used for sorting by class, race and gender (FairTest). Down the road, it could involve use of sophisticated means of analyzing everything from problem-solving ability to personality constructs to willingness to work (Raven), knowledge used however not to help students but to control them. While much assessment might be done without computers, the computer will prove indispensible for analyzing results, sorting and slotting students.

More, the computer will itself be used to shape the personality. The model is the computer -- the malleable, controllable "smart machine." Part of the infotech agenda is therefore to learn how better to control the thinking of humans. At the crudest level, schools will try to do what they always tried to do, shape students into beings reduced enough for work. But the more subtle strategy is making the mind want to be computerized, perhaps by computerizing the child at a young enough age so that she or he is less aware of how her or his mind is being shaped and is less able to resist effectively. The goal is to control the whole being so she is available for work all the time and is devoted to productivity.

Thinking is redefined as what computers do or what humans do to interact with computers, eliminating the rest of the mind and body from thinking. Zuboff explains how paper workers historically used smell, touch, and direct sight on the job, and understands this as a widely generalized use of intelligence, an intelligence destined to be replaced by more abstracted modes, tied to symbols on computer screens. Thus, the alienation of the body, long a trend under capitalism (Midnight Notes, 1982), leaps to a new qualitative level as the definition of thinking is reshaped to meet new capitalist needs.

Social alienation also intensifies as humans interact via the computer, a form of interaction virtually stripped of emotional and social cues. Already some hints are emerging that extended replacement of in-person interaction by virtual interaction decreases a person's ability to socialize comfortably with other people when in their physical presence. Schools where students actually work collaboratively on their computer projects will ameliorate this tendency, but the students will be learning all the "skills" needed to desocialize themselves. Privatization of schooling will, to the extent it occurs, also be useful in this regard, because it will increasingly allow for schooling to occur at home, in contact with others only via the wire. (In Michigan, the state has already awarded "charter school" status, and thus funding, to a "school" that is basically an electronic hookup among home-schoolers; the "school" is organized around "Christian" fundamentalist ideology [Walsh].)

In inducing physical and social isolation, the computer is the extension of the "white man." Devoid of emotion, disconnected from the body (except during a "work" out), unnurturing, unmusical, non-rhythmical, it excludes all the human traits capitalism has attached to women and people of color (particularly Africans). I am not talking genetics, but rather the historical hierarchical division of labor that associates human qualities with the work one is forced to do, and then calculatedly reproduces those qualities in people in order to force them to do the work (James). The "white man" (really, bourgeois) qualities are now to be extrapolated and intensified, abstracted into the computer and then used to school the child into being computer-like.

Complex problem-solving can itself be a form of mindlessness. The language of school reform focuses somewhat on the issue of "habits of mind." On the one side, it suggests that students learn to think about their thinking, learn not to just accept but to probe, question, challenge. Well and good if it happens, but more likely is the other side of habits of mind: "critical thinking" confined to areas defined and controlled by the system so that it becomes unthinking habit.

The computer thus will be used to control how one learns to think in order to subsequently control how one thinks. From constructing cognitive science for planning artificial intelligence to using artificial intelligence to control thinking as defined through cognitive science is the trajectory of the capitalist use of computers. Salomon, Perkins and Globerson argue that use of intelligent technologies will make humans themselves more intelligent, provided, however, that these advances are "cultivated through the appropriate design of technologies and their cultural surrounds" (p. 8). The definitions of intelligence and the uses to which intelligence will be put, who is to be made more intelligent and how, the questions of purpose, design and control, are in their article deferred for "people of different expertise" -- academicians all -- to debate and plan.

The idea that the capitalist system wants a good many critical thinkers is simply absurd -- it can only spell trouble unless the thinkers are thinking for, not against, the boss. Thus, the point is to produce the human as puzzle-solver, not really as critical thinker. Puzzles can be entertaining, challenging, require lots of thought, and yet be quite mindless. The mind is thus habituated to thinking only in limited, though complex, ways, and then habits are as habits always are, things one does not think about.

These uses of the computer are about colonization, enclosing the mind in more deliberate and extensive ways than ever before for a larger part of the working class. Cognitive psychology thus becomes an indispensible science for shaping and controlling the working class. But since volition and affect play their parts in shaping behavior, those too must be controlled. The beauty of the computer is not simply the speed with which it computes, nor even all the troublesome work-resistant workers it can replace, but that it can simultaneously powerfully shape the mind and the personality. Thus, if successful, it will enable -- when combined with all the other suasions and terrors of the system -- the production of the human as computer, the worker traveling the information highway in the information age.

The world has for centuries been dominated by capital, with its exploitation of a hierarchy of labor power starting from the unwaged (Dalla Costa and James) and interwoven with gender and race. While working class resistance has pushed the capitalist system to crisis, the working class has not resolved crisis in its favor (Midnight Notes, 1992). Now, as capitalism appears on the advance and recomposes the working class -- while incorporating all its old forms, from slavery on -- we see the spread of fantastical illusions, from fundamentalist religion to computers, as liberation from the miseries of the world. More mundanely, the use of computers in schools is presented as necessary for the creation of a high skill/high wage working class and as opening up the possibility of schooling as exciting, powerful learning. Yet, the working class now being composed will be neither high skill nor high waged, and excitement and power will not be for the many -- unless the many change society, its economy, politics, social relations, and how it educates its children.

Only egalitarian, collective, working class power can assure that any particular technology will be used for its benefit -- if it should be used at all. Liberation is not a matter of technology but of social relations. Our first step in this transformation must be to refuse the inevitability of the capitalist economy.

Authors note

Thanks to Shelley Neill, Bob Schaeffer and Midnight Noters for insights, comments and support.

Monty Neill is an education activist and a member of Midnight Notes. This paper is adapted from a longer piece on education to appear in a forthcoming Midnight Notes publication. He and Midnight Notes can be reached at Box 204, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130.

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