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ISSN number: 1746-4757

Feature essay: IT Education and Democratic Practice

Drew Whitworth, University of Leeds

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This essay examines the relationship between IT education and the needs of a democratic society. This first page reviews models of IT education which are currently favoured. It highlights problems which exist with them at the level of the individual student. Pages 2 and 3 expand on this review to ask why these may damage democracy in the UK (note that our focus is on the UK, although we hope the debate is relevant to other nations). Finally, page 4 reconsiders IT education in order that some of these problems can be addressed; albeit stressing the obstacles which will have to be surmounted.

In 1970, Robert Wolff [1] suggested that it was the duty of every US citizen to familiarise themselves with debates within nuclear science, such as: the effects of fallout; the potential efficacy of shelters and government policies for keeping order after an attack; the mentality behind first-strike and second-strike strategies. He suggested that only through doing so could citizens make informed decisions when electing representatives who claimed to hold certain positions. More usefully, they could interrogate them on these positions, when it was the usual desire of candidates for office to gloss over these big questions in favour of more transient, but voter-friendly concerns such as tax and the state of the local train service.

Nowadays we might make a similar suggestion with regard to government policies around the information society. Should we not ask politicians why, for instance, there is such a wide digital divide (whether on a global or UK scale [2], it is hard to dispute that cyberspace and the activities taking place there are essentially the realm of the affluent)? Must we simply accept the overt commercialisation of the online sphere, and its lack of management? Though the supermarket and the library may well be able to live side-by-side online [3], in neither of these buildings would one expect to see a sign for one product or sphere of knowledge, and yet when one arrives there, find something else. But this happens frequently online; in information management terms how can one justify typing www.volcano.com into a browser but then reaching a site for Fox Home Entertainment?

These are just two ways in which our society's technical, political and conceptual relationship with information and information technology should be queried. And it has always been the role of higher and adult education to supply students with the knowledge needed to make such queries. The Dearing report (in section 5.11), as well as acknowledging the obvious need to take account of the concerns of industry, states plainly that the purposes of higher education are also:

• "to inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential levels throughout life, so that they grow intellectually, are well-equipped for work, can contribute effectively to society and achieve personal fulfilment;
• to play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilised, inclusive society."

Information and communication have vital roles to play in "shaping a democratic, civilised, inclusive society", as the subsequent pages of this essay will argue (see also this month's supporting essay). Many authors [4] have also recognised IT's pivotal position in the 21st century's global economy. Thanks to both factors, changes wrought by IT are of direct relevance to people's everyday lives. Therefore one would imagine that these issues would form an integral part of IT education (particularly, but not only, in universities).

Unfortunately this is far from true. On the surface it appears as if IT provision within the UK education system is in a strong position. IT is a key skill, compulsory at every level. At a time when other disciplines, particularly in the "hard" sciences, are facing cutbacks, IT education seems relatively awash with resources and support. But the current trend in IT education is to focus primarily on "computerised office" skills, often in a standardised package (frequently using external sources such as the ECDL). However, there are several problems with this approach even at the level of the individual student:

• "IT" is very far from a coherent discipline. Rather, it describes a broad range of skills some of which are quite distinct from each other. Accessing electronic texts on the Internet requires different skills from using a computer to statistically analyse experimental data. It is likely that different people would have a preference for one or the other; or, indeed, for neither, if their interest lies more with using their PC to stay in touch with friends and family, or to engage in the sort of critical analysis mentioned earlier. To bracket all these different uses under the heading "IT" is akin to bracketing squash, swimming and snooker under the heading "sport" and then going on to assume that all "sporty" skills can be acquired en bloc.
• IT is an unstable, dynamic environment where users face constant upgrades to software and operating systems. Learning only the "button pushing" skills relevant to a particular package may leave a student high and dry when that package is upgraded or replaced.
• Computers encourage a certain way of working, even of thinking. For example, their widespread use may encourage quantitative ("number-crunching") forms of analysis over more qualitative, subjective thought [5]. They may stifle creativity, particularly amongst students less confident with IT.
• There has been a vast increase in the amount of information available to people, but there is little teaching about how to discern (or produce) quality information. Without this, the mass of information now available is little more than "data smog" [6].
• IT education has had an explosive birth and rapid growth, but these have taken place without much systematic analysis of its methods (whether of IT education directly or its use in "online learning" environments).

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Footnotes

1. Wolff, Robert Paul (1998). In Defense of Anarchism. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 17. [return]

2. Selwyn, Neil and Stephen Gorard (2002). The Information Age: Technology, Learning and Exclusion in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 54-7. [return]

3. Gauntlett, David (2000). "Web Studies: A User’s Guide" in Gauntlett, D. (ed.), web.studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age. London: Arnold, p. 11-12. [return]

4. See, for instance: Castells, Manuel (2000). The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford, Blackwell; Schiller, Herbert (1992), Mass Communications and American Empire, Oxford, Westview. [return]

5. Roszak, Theodore (1994). The Cult of Information. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 91-107. [return].

6. Shenk, David (1996): Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut, San Francisco, Harper Edge. [return]