Children, Technology and Diversity: Making learning tools support cultural diversity

by

Lowell Monke - Muktha Jost and The Alliance for Childhood

For the past four years I have been working with the Alliance for Childhood developing guidelines for teaching technology literacy to youth of all ages. We have recently finished a draft of the section that deals with children from birth through Kindergarten. It may seem odd to even think about the need for technology literacy among a group this young. But that is only true if: 1. one equates technology with high technology - computers, television, etc. - the workings of which no sensible person would expect young children to understand; or 2. One views technology literacy as some intentional instruction on the use of powerful tools.�

The Alliance for Childhood understands technology literacy in a much more expansive way. We believe that the most important element in technology literacy is developing the dispositions and relationship with the world in such a way that the encounters that one has with all sorts of technologies, from hammers and pencils to the Internet, are positive and ecologically beneficial encounters. Given that perspective, the education of small children becomes crucial to the development of their future capacities to judge and employ powerful tools for the benefit of not only themselves, but their communities and the wold as a whole. Beyond even that, it is imperative that small children continue to go about the ancient task of discovering their full powers as human beings before they become too deeply involved with powerful technologies that can serve to substitute for and even curtail that development.

The theme of this conference, diversity, points to the wide variety of ways that children develop their human powers. Thus, the guidelines we have developed, though they do not specifically speak to the issue of diversity, strongly endorse the importance of preserving and promoting individual and cultural diversity in a world that, through the spread of powerful technologies, is becoming ever more standardized and homogeneous.

I have decided to present as the theoretical basis for the workshop I will be conducting, the full text of the draft of the technology literacy guidelines from birth through Kindergarten, but with a section inserted that speaks directly to the fundamental ways in which they support the cause of diversity in the education of small children. It is my hope that those reading these guidelines will recognize the further connections between diversity and technology and appreciate the need to develop in our children the kinds of attitudes toward technology that are promoted in this document. My thanks to the Alliance for Childhood for allowing me to use this document and a special thanks to Colleen Cordes of the Alliance who is principle author of this chapter.

Developmental Guidelines for Teaching Technology Literacy

from Birth Through Kindergarten

Infants and young children have a natural capacity for discovery and learning. They also have a strong innate sense of the pace of this learning. No one needs to teach the healthy infant how to roll over, crawl, or walk—even though individual children differ widely in the timing of these developmental challenges. The child masters them and much more on her own, with the encouragement of parents and other caregivers, by observing and experimenting.

The powerful relationship between the young child’s inner drive for mastery and his human connections with attentive caregivers is most clear in the development of language. Each child is born with the capacity to perform this monumental intellectual feat, but the specific form of his achievement (English, Chinese, Farsi, sign language) will depend on the examples that guide him.

The toddler does not need to be taught to speak in any formal sense. She will do so on her own, as long as she is exposed to human language. Without the example of adults or other children speaking (or signing), the toddler may develop a rudimentary system of communicating through babbling, pointing, and other simple gestures, but she will not develop true language facility. When the two- or three-year-old astonishes us with her ability to learn hundreds of new words, form complete sentences, and express original ideas it is because she has deeply absorbed and imitated the language that surrounds her—in conversation, stories, nursery rhymes, and books read aloud. Children’s innate sense of what they need to learn and how to learn it comes to fruition only in relation to the adults who provide a living example and gentle guidance.

Many people suppose that children can learn language from watching television and playing with so-called interactive computer programs, but there is little evidence to support those assumptions. Research suggests that, on the contrary, language, music, and indeed all of the other budding human capacities develop mostly in these early years through direct contact with actual living people. A relationship with another human being who is speaking, singing, dancing, or working inspires the child’s unfolding capacities in a way that flat images on a screen simply cannot. Many developmental experts warn that the disturbing incidence of language, sensory integration, and movement problems in today’s young children may be related to the growing number of hours children spend sitting in front of screens of all kinds. The solution, they say, is to pull the plugs and to immerse children in the rich texture of human life.

Psychologists Jane Healy and David Elkind, pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan, and many other authorities on development agree that young children learn best—and thrive most—when they are allowed to explore the world in direct hands-on activities in an environment where they develop close relationships with adults and other children. [1] It is in the context of these caring relationships that cognitive development flourishes.

Children also have a natural capacity to give and receive love—a critically important factor in both short-term development and long-term well-being. An environment that nurtures this capacity provides the most promising setting for emotional, social, intellectual, and physical growth. Immersing children in a high-tech environment can actually deprive them of the high-touch interpersonal contact essential for healthy growth.

Young children love to ask questions, but they also benefit from discovering their own answers. Adults can honor children’s questions by not rushing to answer them. We can let the depth and breadth of their wondering live on by sharing in their wonder. They are meeting the vast world for the first time.

When a child asks, for example, “Why is the sky blue?” the question comes not from any need for a scientific explanation of the physics of light and color. It is more likely an appreciative and imaginative reflection of the child’s sense of wonder about the beauty of the world. Sensitivity and humility, not technical expertise, are needed to answer such questions appropriately—along with a recognition that children’s questions offer us as adults a chance to meet the world once again as if for the first time.

It is often difficult for adults to appreciate the inner world of toddlers and pre-schoolers. Children’s thinking tends to be dreamlike: fluid, creative, and less contained within conventional limits of rational thought. Like dreams, it has elements of reality but takes off in its own unique and sometimes other-worldly directions. As a culture we seem increasingly intent on forcing young children’s minds into conventional channels of thinking at ever younger ages by introducing them to numeracy and print literacy (and beginning to test for their mastery of them by age four) and to scientific concepts in abstract adult terms.

The developmental psychologist William Crain relates a striking example of the disconnect between the free-wheeling preschool mind and the efforts of adults to force it into an academic box:

One New York City mother and father spent a year getting their four-year-old daughter ready for the Stanford-Binet intelligence test required for admission to prestigious nursery schools. But when the test examiner asked the child her name, she said, “Amanda,” the name of their cat. Then, to every question the examiner asked, the child simply responded, “Meow.” [2]

Children do love numbers, language, nature, and much more. But in these early years, they especially love to explore them in their own childlike ways, with the examples of adults who themselves express their love for these things and explore them in their own ways. Long-term intellectual development is helped, not harmed, by allowing children time to explore life at their own pace, flexing their imaginative minds and pondering life’s mysteries differently from adults, but just as profoundly.

When Einstein was asked how he had come to make his great discoveries, he attributed it to his unusually prolonged childhood. He came late to reading, for example, and so was able to think about the world in childlike ways far longer than most children. [3] Great artists have expressed a similar view of the special nature of the child’s perspective. Picasso remarked, “Once I drew like Raphael, but it has taken me a whole lifetime to learn to draw like children.” [4]

When one watches young children at play, this creative, imaginative thinking becomes evident. Simple objects like blocks, balls, and sticks become whatever is needed to carry out the play scenario. Play-oriented educators consider a good toy “90 percent child and 10 percent toy.” The child takes the object and adapts it to her own invented story—rather than the toy narrowly defining its use, as many toys today do. But even the worst offending toy is more flexible than most computer programs, with their overwhelmingly sophisticated designs, utterly beyond the understanding or imaginative shaping of the child’s mind.

The capacity for make-believe play is central to young children’s healthy development. It is their way of taking in the world, processing it, and making it their own. Yet this kind of play is often viewed nowadays as a waste of time—much less valuable than organized activities in sports and the arts, and certainly less important than lessons in math, computer science, and literacy. For the overall physical and mental health of young children, however, nothing takes the place of child-initiated make-believe play. “The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health,” wrote anthropologist Ashley Montagu. [5] This view is echoed by many leading psychologists and psychiatrists today.

Montague also draws a direct line from children’s play to the creative thinking of scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators. “For most scientists,” he writes, “their ‘work’ has been but a continuation of their play as children.” [6] The scientist, like the child playing “pretend,” imagines “what if” (the hypothesis) and then tries out many different scenarios in the laboratory, just as the child does in the playroom. It is telling, Montague adds, that scientists prefer to be known as imaginative thinkers, not “fact grubbers.”

Children’s play, of course, also carries strong emotional storylines. There is a natural link between empathy and social responsibility. In play, children work through their feelings about life’s challenges and imagine what others, in different circumstances, might feel. So keeping the capacity to play alive throughout childhood—and adulthood—is also crucial for developing emotional intelligence, especially empathy, a sense of humor, and flexibility in interpersonal relationships.

The capacity for make-believe play is under siege today. Early childhood educators and health workers report that young children increasingly seem unable to generate their own ideas for play. Some children have actually forgotten how to play, or find playing on their own, minus screens and battery-powered gadgets, too boring. In other cases, their play is violent or disturbed.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Marilyn Benoit of Howard University Hospital believes that there is a connection between young children’s increasing exposure to technology and the growing incidence of narcissistic rage and “explosive” behavior she and her colleagues observe in their patients:

I am struck by the apparent link between technology, instant gratification, poor frustration tolerance, lack of empathy, and aggression. While I do not propose that technology is the direct cause of the episodes of horrific violence we have seen in young people in recent years, I do think that we should be mindful of some of the negative impacts of our new technologies. As with all technological advances, there are unintended consequences. We should be concerned, especially at a time in our history when parents are spending less time with their children, and do not serve as much of a protective function as they once did. [7]

Nurturing the capacity for healthy play requires simple toys and classroom materials, as well as ample opportunities for outdoor exploration and activity. These leave full scope for children’s imaginations, challenge them to develop their inner sources of motivation for learning, and strongly connect them to the physical and natural world. Early dependence on electronic mediation, on the other hand, may short-circuit their later capacity to imagine making a free choice about adopting or foregoing the latest technological “advance.”

Is there any advantage to introducing young children to computers? Except in cases of children with certain disabilities, where assistive technology appears to offer clear benefits, we can find none. Young children should be freed as much as possible from the limitations of an early dependence on sophisticated technologies. Otherwise, they may lack the skills, the imagination, and the confidence to base their decisions related to technological issues on what is meaningful and life-enhancing in the long term, rather than on what’s most convenient and pleasurable in the short term.

The current tendency to insert sophisticated technologies between young children and the physical, sensory world is misguided from every perspective of healthy child development, including the development of healthy bodies, healthy minds, and ultimately, a healthy relationship to technology. The last, in a technologically advanced democracy, requires a well-honed capacity to make choices, not simply to adapt to market pressures.

It may seem paradoxical that early exposure to technology could actually hinder the development of real technological literacy. But remember that the scientists and engineers who first developed computers did not themselves use computers as children. A great many of them, the neurologist Frank R. Wilson of Stanford Medical School points out, spent much of their youth tinkering with short-wave radios and cars—that is, using their hands to build things and solve problems. Wilson also reports that today’s leaders of science and industry are alarmed by growing evidence that the younger generation of programmers and engineers, raised on computers rather than jalopies, are incapable of finding creative solutions to problems compared with their older counterparts. “I was 36 years old before I ever laid eyes on a computer,” he writes, “and I have yet to hear a convincing argument that the life or future of any child under age 10 can be materially improved by a computer.” [8]

Young children benefit most from time spent with caring adults, with other children, and in active play in the natural world. Those are all too often lacking in children’s lives. We offer the following suggestions for nurturing and educating our youngest children, from birth through kindergarten.

How This Understanding of Technology and Childhood Relates to Diversity

There are two primary ways this view of slow exposure to high technology promotes, and is promoted by, an appreciation for cultural and social diversity:

1. Language acquisition, which requires so much face-to-face contact between child and parent or teacher, is best facilitated within the context of the local vernacular. The gesturing and sound mimicking of young children only takes on clear meaning to the child if it is true to the tonal and motion forms of the culture surrounding it. Children who spend much time observing or interacting with electronically generated or mediated language, which is typically culturally homogenized rather than localized, will encounter tones and gestures that will be subtly, if not blatantly, different from that of their local culture. Sesame Street may be broadcast in Spanish, but while the words are understandable, the cultural context will not be honored, nor the tone or body language that accompanies the words emulated. Terms that carry specific local meanings will give way to global meanings, and what constitutes local culture will eventually give way to a more universal culture.

Only if the child learns language in a local setting, unmediated by technologies that favor more global speaking and writing practices, can the local memory be preserved over generations. The importation of language and images from outside the community before the child internalizes the local expressive forms is likely to lead to the diminishment of those forms of expression and, thus, the diminishment of the culture itself.

2. Just as important as the use of local language is the use of local materials in children’s play and learning. It is not difficult to recognize the destruction that can be done to, say, an Amazonian culture if all of its children grew up playing with GI Joe action figures. In the U.S. the need for cultural sensitivity has been acknowledged through the development of racially and ethnically appropriate dolls and toys. However, the homogenizing impact of such widely purchased toys as Barbi dolls, whether black or white, is rarely acknowledged but abundantly clear.

Far more detrimental to the preservation of cultural diversity are the images disseminated throughout the world via television and computers. As Jerry Mander’s In the Absence of the Sacred and Stephan Hill’s The Tragedy of Technology have made clear, the introduction of television into remote cultures immediately and irrevocably disrupt local cultural traditions. [9] But the television is not the only culprit. Tools of all kinds, from snowmobiles to rifles to outboard motors to transistor radios have radically altered the cultural practices of indigenous cultures when they were introduced. Often it is the young who seize on and adopt the new technologies, before they have learned the value of the traditional tools of the local culture. Local culture fades very quickly when such generational interruptions of traditional practices take place. It would seem prudent for any local community that values its own cultural practices to emphasize the use of traditional, local tools and materials by its children before introducing them to imported technologies that take their place. Even more important, tools like computers and televisions that can not only replace traditional forms of child learning and entertainment but promote images of distant and foreign cultures to children, should be used with great caution.

If children are to understand, appreciate and continue the diverse cultural practices of their local communities, they need to grow up using the local tools, toys and languages that provide the context for those practices. They need to hear the stories of their own culture that only local story-tellers can tell. They need to walk in the nature that connects them to their own heritage. They need to play dress-up with the traditional clothing of their history. High technology, no matter how much it may connect a local culture with the rest of the world, promotes most forcefully the culture from which the technology came. The more a local community adopts the use of a particular technology, the more that community comes to resemble the culture from which that technology was borrowed. [10] This may at times be very beneficial to the community, but it diminishes diversity. It is then crucial that in the homes and in the schools that children attend, an effort to compensate for that loss be made, by concentrating at the youngest ages on using the tools, toys, stories, nature and play that are an integral part of the traditional culture.

Given that analysis, preparation for maintaining cultural diversity in any society linked to globally connected high technology needs to begin at the most local level, with efforts made to link young children not with other distant cultural groups - many of which are only interested in exploiting them for financial gain - but with caring, present adults, who will help them understand the world and culture they were born into. Those adults can further connect the children with the materials and tools that have been instrumental in forming and maintaining that culture. They can introduce the children to the firm ground of experience with the physical and cultural world around them before they encounter the strange, disorienting and decontextualized world that exists outside their personal experience. This is technology literacy of a type that goes beyond learning to use high tech tools, to learning what tools are valued by a culture and what technologies are appropriate for the kinds of lives we want to live. Diversity will only be maintained if the answers to those questions are also diverse and true to the traditional uses of tools that have grown out of the lived experiences of a particular culture.

Ways to Apply the Principles of the New Technology Literacy from Birth Through Kindergarten

1. Strengthen children’s relationships with caring adults—in part by pulling the plug and by protecting children from commercial exploitation.

� Declare one day a week—or even just one evening a week—an electronic entertainment-free zone. This simple, powerful step could do much to revive the culture of childhood, family life, neighborhoods, and urban and rural community life. Coordinate that day with others in your neighborhood, school, and larger community. Turn off televisions, computers, video games, cell phones, radios, etc., and minimize phone calls to create a space for everyone to focus undivided attention on face-to-face relationships with each other and with the living world around them. This can also be a time for children and adults to slow down and catch up with themselves. Families that have already tested this idea report that even adolescents can be woven back into the fabric of family life when electronic distractions are silenced.

� Keep the television in a closet or another out-of-the-way spot. In particular, do not put a television or computer in the child’s bedroom. (Recent research found that 26 percent of American children under age two have televisions in their bedrooms. [11] )

� Reserve the operation of computers and other forms of advanced technology, including television and video recorders, for adults. See Chapter Two of Fool’s Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood for a detailed discussion of how computer use by young children may hinder their healthy development and sap their sense of initiative.

� Minimize exposure of young children to commercial messages, which teach them that there is always something missing in their lives that money could buy.

� Advocate for more social responsibility and attention to children’s needs on the part of businesses. Hold individual companies accountable for the impact their products and advertisements have on children’s cultural environment and urge them to stop pressuring children with commercial messages. The Alliance for Childhood supports a ban on all television advertising directed at children under age 12—a policy that several European nations have already successfully implemented in one form or another.

� Strive for home and school routines and policies that allow parents, teachers, and other important caregivers to be reliably available to the children who depend upon them. Make sure there is enough time each day for the child to bask in the presence of attentive adults. Children absorb such loving care as a kind of food for their bodies and souls. Too many children suffer from malnourishment today in this regard.

2. Help children develop a sense of caring for nature and for the world around them.

� Maximize exposure to the beauty of the natural world, much of which is freely available to all. Help children explore the wonders of nature in your neighborhood and in the wider world of nature around you. Even the most modest of homes can provide children with a chance to plant a seed and witness the miracle of life and death as a plant goes through the seasons, creating its own seeds for the future and assuring that new life will spring forth again. Create a home for a caterpillar and help children wait for its transformation into a moth or butterfly.

� Allow very young children to witness adult acts of responsiveness and courtesy to others in need in the community. Provide opportunities for children to gradually become more involved in helping adults help others, with the focus on the adult as the one who is ultimately shouldering the responsibility.

� Encourage young children to care about other people and nature through stories, outdoor exploration, helping with simple household and classroom chores, and sharing one’s own enthusiasm, as a teacher or parent, for the world of plants and animals.

� Encourage gratitude at mealtimes, with blessings or other quiet expressions of appreciation, for the plants and animals whose lives and deaths sustain our own lives and good health, and for the many people whose good work has brought these gifts to the table.

3. Honor child-initiated creative play as a fundamental part of early childhood.

� Create environments and time for children to engage in imaginative social play together, since playfulness is the root of human ingenuity. Children do not need an abundance of elaborate toys. Baskets of sticks and stones, ropes and cloths, and a few toys such as balls, dolls, and a bike or wagon will suffice.

4. Help children develop a love for language.

� Strengthen young children’s pre-reading skills by sharing language experiences with them, including conversation, stories, rhymes, and books read aloud.

� Share fairy tales and other simple, traditional stories of death and rebirth, which is a common theme across cultures. Pick simple tales for three- and four-year-olds, such as the Gingerbread Man or the Three Little Pigs; slightly more complex tales for five- and six-year-olds, such as the Frog Prince and Sleeping Beauty; and more complex tales for first-graders and older children.

� Nursery rhymes are especially loved by younger children. Even infants and toddlers respond to them.

5. Encourage children’s hands-on participation in everyday life.

� Encourage children to begin developing competence with simple tools, such as crayons and spoons, and then progress to tools like small hammers and scissors that demand more eye-hand coordination and call for more adult supervision. Help children use tools without invisible mechanics or complex, abstract operations that frustrate their natural tendency to want to understand how things work.

� Provide plenty of physically engaging activities, which are crucial for developing a rich and intricate neural branching in the brains of young children. That in turn supports the complex abstract operations that older students will need to engage in for creative and demanding academic work, including creative projects with advanced technologies.

� Because young children learn primarily through imitation, help them develop a healthy relationship to food through example, rather than instruction. Help them learn to bake and cook, and to appreciate the gifts of the earth and sea, nurtured by sun and rain, that become our daily food. Offer a diet rich in fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and whole grains, to teach healthy nutrition and to keep alive the relationship between nature, the farm, and the family table. Introduce children to the principles of sustainable agriculture and humane animal husbandry.

� Honor the questions of young children by not rushing to answer them with narrowly construed technical information. Likewise, avoid inundating young children with questions that reflect adult timetables for academic learning.

6. Give children plenty of opportunity for artistic expression.

� Provide ample opportunities for music and other artistic experiences, which nourish a child’s sense of the beauty and goodness in the world and within themselves. This should be in form of live experience, not just listening to recorded music, for example. It is more helpful for a child to see an adult struggling to overcome imperfections in singing or playing an instrument than to experience perfection on a professional recording.

7. Create rhythm and discipline in children’s lives.

� Prepare children for a lifetime of self-discipline by creating an environment, at home and school, with dependable routines and ample time both for play-filled activity and for rest, sleep, and quieter activities, for indoor times and outdoor times, and for regular mealtimes and regular nap and bedtime schedules. Many children today are sleep-deprived or suffer from sleep disorders. A regular rhythm in the daytime is a great help for bringing children into a healthy nighttime rhythm as well.

� Introduce clean-up time, work that everyone shares, as a regular part of the rhythm of playtime and mealtime.

� Model the responsible and creative use of advanced technologies—especially setting appropriate limits. For example: drive with care and obey speed limits. Just as no responsible adult would allow a toddler to drive a car, adults should be in the driver’s seat on the information superhighway. Children can observe parents and teachers using such tools for adult purposes and get a sense of their relationship to the world of work, rather than being introduced to them as toys.

� ��� Set aside time in family and preschool schedules for young children to daydream and

���� to exercise their own sense of the importance of paying attention to whatever exciting,

���� beautiful, or sad thing presents itself in the moment.

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[11] Tamar Lewin, “A Growing Number of Video Viewers Watch from Crib,” New York Times, October 29, 2003.