Boring Old Books

(March 2001)

Moral panics over the proximity of young people to modern media have
developed somewhat since discussions focussed primarily upon 'video
games' and 'video nasties'. The rapid development of the World Wide Web
since the mid-'nineties has seen the humble PC utilised as a learning
aid in a far more fundamental way than practitioners and opponents
alike expected. GCSE and A-Level Revision sites such as www.revise.it
have been presented enthusiastically on mainstream television and in
other youth-related media. How justified are the claims of the
internet's proponents, that it constitutes a more viable and modern
route to exam success than traditional book-based learning, and how
does this in turn alter the role of the classroom teacher?

Accessing the chapter delivering basic descriptions of cells within
www.revise.it is simple enough, and the information (compiled by
professional teachers) is sound and visually impressive (one can
however say this only with reference to my wife, a specialist-teacher.
Other material on the internet is dubious to say the least). What
highlights more serious issues is the co-existence of the internet
learning method with class-based lessons.

A key issue within teaching and teacher training is the position of
pupils with Special Educational Needs and the relationship between
those needs and more general social and cultural deprivation. If
websites are to be seen as the future of GCSE revision, what will
become of those whose access to computers is limited or absent? It is
fatuous to assert that all pupils can work on PCs at school - the
undeniable truth is that the key to exam success is home revision. By
introducing the pre-requisite of ICT know -how (and the possibility of
computer failure at critical times) to revision sessions on completely
unrelated subjects, it could be argued that www.revise.it poses more
questions than it answers. Critics of the internet have repeatedly
drawn attention to its tendency to oppress and marginalize as many
people as it 'liberates'.

The task of monitoring revision, offering roughly equal assistance to
all pupils and the simple fact of needing to motivate pupils in class
is undoubtedly complicated by the existence of websites which claim to
offer a comprehensive revision experience (the claim of the 'Sam at
School') site, that it will 'reduce teacher workload' is vaguely
worrying). Add to this the fact that a number of individuals saw the
chance to post gratuitous pornographic insults on www.revise.it (some
pupils clearly assumed that their PC could revise for them). This
reflects the fact that the internet (and GCSE revision within it) is
only a small facet of the average PC. Adolescents and adults alike know
that in order to avoid distraction and get real work done, there are
better places to do it than at the computer desk.

Revision websites are part of a more general trend towards the
substitution of true knowledge and understanding for 'skills'. This
particular site features thirteen 'handy tips' for essay success,
advising students to copy and amend the sample essays and pass them off
as their own work. Here academic knowledge is presented as an
elabourate confidence trick, rather than something to be envied and
aspired to, and achieved through hard work (interestingly the author
spells Disraeli incorrectly). This is simply the pinnacle of the
tendency for technologically advanced economies to replace erudition
with vocationally-oriented and clearly demonstrable 'skills'. Teachers
already have to deal with pupils who take an adversarial attitude
towards themselves personally and to education in general, without
advice such as this.

It could of course be argued that merely having parents who read
regularly is an unfair advantage, but to hold the home computer as the
key to life success is rather more dubious. Those who seek to champion
the internet as a learning tool repeatedly decry books and other
written sources as 'boring' without any satisfactory explanation as to
why this should be. This claim has encouraged young people to reject
books (rather than vice versa). Without book-based revision, pupils
genuinely lose some of the rigour and satisfaction of academic study.
The unavoidable conclusion is that reliance upon the likes of
www.revise.it can only make the task of educators harder.