36 The Attack on Computer Literacy

This paper provides a commentary on Robins and Webster’s article "Computer Liter-acy: The Employment Myths " within the broader context of critiques of computer lit-eracy. The author argues that the various critics of computer literacy are participants in wider disputes over pedagogical method, the purposes of education, and the role of education in a class society. In some ways computer literacy provides a pretext for these more general controversies, and the particular merits and problems of educa-tional computing frequently become submerged under these wider debates. The au-thor concludes that many of Robins and Webster’s points are overdrawn, and that com-puter literacy is neither as useless nor as dangerous as they imply. Keywords: computers, employment, education, cognition. The controversy surrounding computer literacy and its place in educa-tion is mystifying unless one notes at the outset that two quite distinct phenomena are under consideration: computers and Computers. In the former realm one is concerned with digital devices whose effects in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere are frequently so subtle, so variable, and so intertwined with concurrent changes (be they attempts to reduce costs, enhance the power of certain individuals, or simply acquire status symbols) that social researchers despair of understanding them. But in the latter realm, Computers with a capital c, one is talking not of silicon devices but of potent social symbols. The computer has become a kind of Rorschach, an image upon which commentators project their hopes and fears, their commitment to or distaste for present society, and their visions of a better future. In education, computers have become a vehi-cle for longstanding disputes about the methods and goals of pedagogy and the role of education in a class society. In one sense, anything that forces us to confront these important con-troversies is welcome. But it is sad in some ways that computers have provided the occasion for such confrontation, because the discussion has subsequently become clouded. The focus on computing displace