While skepticism is well-founded when it comes to big talk regarding education technology, overwrought fears about the perils of technology have proven equally exaggerated. Those apprehensiive about computer-assisted tutoring or online instruction would do well to keep in mind that such concerns have greeted almost any new learning tool. Dave Thornburg and David Dwyer, for instance, offer up a list of past complaints in their book Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. From today's vantage point, some of the concerns make for amusing reading:
From a principal's publication 1815: Students today depend on paper toO much. They don't know how to write on a slate. without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They cant clean a slate properly. What will they do when they nun our of paper"
From the journal of the National Association of Teachers, 1907:
"Students today depend too much upon ink. They don't know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil." From Federal Teachers, 1950: "Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Businesses and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries.
A fourth-grade teacher in the 1987 Apple Classroom of Tomorrow chronicles: "If students turn in papers they did on the computer, I require them to write them over in long hand because don't believe they do the computer work on their own."