Improving Education With Technology

By William J. Bennett and David Gelernter

Like many others who have devoted their professional lives to education, we are longtime skeptics about computers in schools. Too often, new technology has been used to kill time instead of teach better. Too often, educational software has promoted glitz, glamour, and graphics instead of serious learning. Too often, the Internet has promoted the "surfing culture" where users click their way across an ocean of information, feeling overwhelmed by the vastness of it all and never dipping below the surface.

Why, then, are we helping build K12, an online school? ( "Former Education Secretary Starts Online-Learning Venture," Jan. 10, 2001.) Because the technology is hugely promising and powerful all the same. It has been misused, yes, but much of the technology is brand-new. The recent report issued by Congress' bipartisan Web- Based Education Commission, led by former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, argued that educational technology has not yet moved from "promise to practice." The report concluded nevertheless that "the power of the Internet to transform the educational experience is awe-inspiring." We agree.

Instead of drawing attention to itself, the well-wrought educational computer should fade into the background. It should attract no more notice than a clean window through which one looks. In the learning technology that we are involved in developing, the computer will become a two-person midget sub, allowing adult and child (seated side by side) to move forward at their own pace and go virtually anywhere— through teeming coral reefs and crowded seas and into the heart of our intellectual and civic heritage, without worrying about logistics or bookkeeping. Adult and child will decide together how fast to move along—when to speed forward, when to go back and repeat, and when...