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The widest benefits of the electronic revolution (unlike those of most revolutions) will accrue to the young. Seymour Papert, professor of mathematics and education at M.I.T., estimates that there will be 5 million private computers in people's homes and available to students within two years; by 1982, he predicts, 80% of upper-middle-class families will have computers "capable of playing important roles in the intellectual development of their children." Says California Author Robert Albrecht, a pioneer of electronic education: "In schools, computers will be more common than carousel slide projectors, movie projectors and tape recorders. They'll be used from the moment school opens, through recess, through lunch period, and on as far into the day as the principal will keep the school open."
What is happening is not only believable but inevitable. In the words of science-fiction Writer Ray Bradbury, "It's pure sci-fi." Across the country, "these magical beasts," as they have been called, are assisting hassled, often incompetent teachers. They are revivifying soporific students, dangling and delivering intellectual challenges beyond the ken of most educators. Says Bradbury: "Millions of buildings' worth of mostly outdated literature and information will be stored on tiny capsules for retrieval when needed. There's too damn much paper around anyway."
U.C.L.A. Professor of Computer Science Gerald Estrin, who helped to develop the computer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in the 1940s, says: "The computers provide an intensely visual, multisensory learning experience that can take a youngster in a matter of a few months to a level he might never reach without it, and certainly would not reach in less than many, many years of study by conventional methods." Notes from the classroom:
¶ In Minnesota, 2,200 educational computer terminals, from tiny farming communities to the Twin Cities, reach 92% of all students in the state. With a more than $1 million annual state grant for long-distance telephone charges, students are hooked into a statewide network by which, among other projects, social-studies students can simulate a national election, young biologists analyze the pollution of a lake, and future farmers learn how best to manage a given number of acres. ¶In Sunnyvale, Calif., Robert Albrecht is using personal computers to teach "kids how.to program computers so that they can teach other kids." Sunnyvale students can also engage in such simulations as "Whale Watching," in which they help a southward-migrating gray whale make the necessary navigational and survival decisions to reach the Baja California breeding grounds. One effect of the computer, says Albrecht, is "to create worlds of If for children to explore." ¶ In Brookline, Mass., under the direction of Seymour Papert, a pilot study costing almost $1.5 million and financed by the National Science Foundation, is getting its first realistic testing with 48 sixth-graders who are learning to program computers for math, language, music making and, says Papert, "we like to believe, thinking skills."