Back in the era known as the Clinton administration, the president of the United States challenged all schools to equip all children with computers and connect them to the digital universe.

That fully wired educational system is still in the future, although not far in the future.

Today, U.S. schools with no computers are a rarity. Statistically, they don't exist. Even in 1991, 98 percent of U.S. schools had at least one computer, and by now that number would surely be 143 percent if such a thing were possible. In 1991 there was one computer for about every 18 students. Today, the ratio is more like 1 to 4.

Some schools still keep their computers in special computer labs and bring the kids in for training sessions once or twice a week. Increasingly, however, computers have percolated into the classrooms and are woven into each day's work.

Computers schmomputers?
Naysayers still abound, however. "Technology schmechnology," they're heard to sneer. "Computers can't affect real education; they're just machines," they scoff. "Same as television...same as movies..."

After all, they point out, look what happened to Thomas Alva Edison's prediction about the impact movies would have on education. In 1922 Thomas Edison predicted that motion-picture technology would soon "supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks."

It didn't happen.

Technology has mattered

On the other hand, let's not forget Josiah Bumstead. In 1841 this writer raved about a new technology he thought would transform the classroom. "The inventor ... of (this) system," he said, "deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science." Unlike Edison, however, Bumstead's prediction actually panned out.

He was talking about the chalkboard.

Chalkboards are technology? Sure, they are--as the word was originally defined: "scientific knowledge applied to a practical purpose." Pencils, chalk, paper--they're not high technology, but they're all technology.

So, for that matter, is the printed book. The printing press is just a machine. It didn't dictate any change in what people wrote or how they expressed themselves; it only increased the flow of printed text. Nevertheless, learning has never been the same since it was invented.

Will computers turn out to be more like movies and TV? Or more like blackboards and books?

Based on history, I'll put my money on the latter.