People are flooding the Internet like the lava from Vesuvius flooded Pompeii.
—Tom Lichty, America Online’s Internet
SUBJECT: Basic computer programming
TIME REQUIRED: 3 to 5 hours per week for one year (eleventh or twelfth grade)
GENERALLY SPEAKING
Throughout Part III of this book, we referred the high-school student to computer resources—CD-ROMs, online tutorials, reference websites. So we’re certainly not antitechnology. Computers are marvelous tools; word processing beats typewriting; e-mail is more convenient (and cheaper) than the postal service. We live in the country. Before Internet access, we had to make the hour-long round-trip drive to the public library in order to look up information about books we wanted to recommend. Now we can sign on, search the library catalog, and be off in three minutes.
In the spirit of classical education, though, we approach this new technology with great caution. In Chapter 28, we suggested that the student use questions outlined by Neil Postman in The End of Education to evaluate scientific discovery and innovation better. These should be applied first and foremost to computer technology.
Postman says, in essence: Any technology offers both advantages and disadvantages. What are they?1
The Internet floods cyberspace with information. Yet only some of this information is filtered in any way—fact-checked, read through for general accuracy, edited. Scholarly books, on the other hand, have been mediated—passed through a number of tests before publication. They may still be bad scholarship, but they generally won’t contain libelous statements, out-and-out lies, or intentional distortions. It is relatively easy to publish on the Internet; libel, lies, and distortions abound. The student who uses the Internet for information needs to check everything carefully, applying to the task all her skills in logic and analysis.
In other words, Internet information doesn’t make the book obsolete. It doesn’t remove the need for the student to be trained in critical thought. It should not take the place of library trips, magazine subscriptions, or any of the mediated ways to gain information. When Internet resources become primary, the student herself becomes the mediator of knowledge—and no high-school student can match the experience of an editor at a university press who’s been working with scholars and their manuscripts for many years.
Now, consider this:
All technologies come complete with a philosophy about what is important about human life and what is unimportant. What parts of life does the technology exalt? What parts does it ignore?2
Constructing a philosophy of the Internet is a complex job, but one part of that philosophy is immediately obvious: the Internet exalts intellectual experience over sensory experience. The Internet is body-neutral. Physical sensations—touch, smell, taste, balance—are irrelevant.
What are the implications of that? At least two stand out.
First, because we’re physical beings, our intellectual pursuits affect our bodies. Numerous studies have been done on how different experiences change the physical makeup of the brain. Specifically, the brain of the student who spends eight hours per day in front of the computer looks different than the brain of the student who spends an hour in front of the computer, four hours in front of books, and the other three hours doing outside activities. Any constantly repeated activity develops some neural pathways at the expense of others. In other words, balance computer use with paper-and-pencil work and active learning. Otherwise, you’ll be developing certain parts of the brain while ignoring others. Don’t let this form of modern technology dominate your child’s spare time; think long and hard about what you’re agreeing to when you allow your adolescent to roam the Net for five hours in the evening instead of building models, reading Plato, playing a musical instrument, cutting the grass, drawing, keeping a journal, eating, sleeping, or staring into space and thinking about what life means.
A second implication is especially important for high-school students. Any normal adolescent—by which we mean one who is insecure, struggling to face others with both grace and confidence, self-conscious about skin and hair and weight—prefers to communicate via chat room. Electronic friends are much safer than flesh-and-blood companions. We’ve met teenagers who spend almost all their recreation time in chat rooms or e-mailing. Although computer friendships can be productive, any computer friendship may take the place of real, live give-and-take between people who are physically present.
For high school, we’re not laying down hard-and-fast rules. We are encouraging you to realize that computers, like all technologies, put priorities on some types of experience and relegate others to the background. Know what kind of bargain you and your teen are making when dealing with computer use. As a matter of fact, simply to maintain balance, we think that every high-school student ought to read at least one neo-Luddite work on the computer age (for example, Data Smog, Resisting the Virtual Life, or one of the other titles listed at the end of this chapter) to balance out the techno-ravings of software executives and Internet providers.
PRACTICALLY SPEAKING
High-school students should be familiar with basic computer use (how to navigate through Windows), Internet access, and a common word-processing program such as Pages or Microsoft Word. Knowledge of a desktop-publishing program such as QuarkXPress or PageMaker and a spreadsheet program such as Quicken will boost the student’s employability. The best way to learn any of these programs is to buy, install, and use it with one eye on the computer, the other on the manual. Let the rhetoric-stage student prepare her paper on a word processor, keep her checkbook on Quicken, and write the family newsletter on PageMaker. Then she can add to her résumé: “Computer skills: Microsoft Word, PageMaker, Quicken.”
Every high-school student should be introduced to basic computer programming. This is a way to take the mystery out of computers and put them in their place—as powerful tools, not as dictators of culture. The student who can program has asserted her control over the computer genie.
We suggest that during eleventh or twelfth grade, you schedule at least a year of beginning computer programming into the student’s curriculum. Computer programming traditionally takes the place of an advanced mathematics elective or a language elective (anything beyond the four years of one language and two of another outlined in Chapter 29).
One of the most straightforward starting places for beginners is Visual Basic. We suggest several self-teaching courses in the Resources list at the end of this chapter. With the proper equipment, the student should be able to work through these independently for a good grasp of programming principles. Computer languages slide into obsolescence faster than fresh produce spoils. So before you plunge into the study of Visual Basic, you might call a friend who programs (or consult the computer-science department at a local college, or talk to the technology-education teacher at a good private school) and ask whether another language (suitable for beginners) has already trumped it.
As always in high school, you can also enroll your student in a programming course at a local college or find her a tutor. Adult-education classes offered by colleges and libraries often include basic computer skills and programming.
SCHEDULE
Grade 11 or 12: a one-year course in beginning computer programming for three to five hours per week
RESOURCES
For publisher and catalog addresses, telephone numbers, and other information, see Sources (Appendix 4). Most books and tapes or CDs can be obtained from any bookstore or library; where we know of a mail-order option, we have provided it.
Skeptical Reflections on Technology
Meadows, Mark Stephen. I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life. Berkeley, Calif.: New Riders Press, 2008.
Part memoir, part analysis, this book asks us to reflect about what the existence of virtual worlds (primarily in role-playing games) means for existence in the real thing. (Best for older students and their parents.)
Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage, 1993.
Technology, Postman insists, is “a branch of moral philosophy” it demands that we assume certain moral positions, and we should know what they are.
Sale, Kirkpatrick. Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. New York: Perseus, 1996.
Like Postman, Sale argues that technology isn’t morally neutral; to prove his point, he goes back in time and makes connections between steam and computer technology. Fascinating reading.
Shenk, David. Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut. San Francisco, Calif.: Harper San Francisco, 1998.
Shenk argues that the huge amount of unfiltered information available in society contributes to social fragmentation, lowered educational standards, religious extremism, and political bickering.
Slouka, Mark. War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault on Reality. New York: Basic Books, 1996.
Fascinating essays on how cyberspace changes the rest of reality.
Stoll, Clifford. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. New York: Anchor, 1996.
Although it’s easier to poke holes in Stoll’s argument than in the arguments of the other authors we recommend, he offers some provocative ideas: that computers change the way we think, isolate us, and tie us to a cycle of constant spending and updating.
Basic Computer Knowledge
Common Word-Processing Programs
Pages (Mac)
Microsoft Word
Common Spreadsheet Program
Quicken
Other Common Programs
QuarkXPress
PageMaker
Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Acquiring Programming Skills
We offer this as a tentative and extremely rudimentary list. You would do well to call a local computer-science teacher or the computer-science department of the college where your child hopes to apply, and ask what titles they would recommend for beginning programming skills.
If you’re a beginner (still looking for the power switch), start with one of these:
Rathbone, Andy. Windows Vista for Dummies. Foster City, Calif.: IDG Books Worldwide, 2006.
Order directly from Dummies. Use this if you have Windows and an IBM-compatible system. It is written for novice users and provides a very easy start for the intimidated. (If you still have XP, you’re one of the lucky ones—try XP for Dummies instead.)
Levitus, Bob. Mac OS X Leopard for Dummies. Foster City, Calif.: IDG Books Worldwide, 2007.
Order directly from Dummies. Use this if you have a Macintosh with the OS X Leopard operating system. This guide to the latest Mac operating system begins with “What you should see after turning the power on” and progresses to more advanced concepts.
If you’re already familiar with your computer’s operating system, you’re ready to move on to programming. There are many websites that offer up-to-date insights into coding and programming. One of the best is www.webmonkey.com. If you prefer to begin with books, you can start with one of the following titles:
Hillegass, Aaron. Cocoa (R) Programming for Mac (R) OS X. 3d ed. Boston, Mass.: Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2008.
A solid introduction to the Cocoa programming language for the Mac.
Halvorson, Michael. Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step. Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, 2008.
This book introduces users to the fundamentals of programming in Visual Basic, and then moves on to some of the more advanced aspects of coding. Comes with a CD.
Goodman, Danny. JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook. 2d ed. Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly & Associates, 2007.
Use this if you are interested in coding websites at a higher level. With competent technical writing and an engaging writing style, this book covers a wide range of suggestions and solutions for web programmers.