James Baldwin "A Talk to Teachers"

In 1976 John Nevison coined the term computer literacy and unwittingly sparked a long, complex debate when he wrote:

Because of the widespread use of elementary computing skill, there should be an appropriate term of this skill. It should suggest an acquaintance with the rudiments of computer programming, much as the term literacy connotes a familiarity with the fundamentals of reading and writing, and it should have a precise definition that all can agree on.

It is reasonable to suggest that a person who has written a computer program should be called literate in computing. This is an extremely elementary definition. Literacy is not fluency" (Nevison 1976:401, italics in original).

The "precise definition" that Nevison called for has yet to emerge from the voluminous debate on the topic and the discussion has become part of the much larger debates about equality in education and the "back to basics" movement.

This discourse is and has been about two things: it is a debate about what the term "computer literacy" should encompass - how it should be taught - and a discussion of the value to US society of pursuing some kind of universal computer literacy. It seems as though every educator and education writer has some opinion about the so called "computer revolution," how it is going to reshape education and how to best bring that revolution into the classroom. The range of the debate runs from Nevison's original idea - computer literacy as programming ability - to the idea that quickly followed on it heels - the notion that programming ability is passe and what matters is the ability to chose and run applications.

In an interesting way, few people questioned or question the appropriateness of the term itself or the kinds of models it evokes. The models look surprisingly like those found in discussions of general literacy and which have been part of that debate for more than 30 years. The central issue in the debate about literacy - general literacy and computer literacy - is the issue of how society is to be maintained and how it will be best moved forward without it coming apart. There are two views on this question in the debate about society and literacy. In the conservative view, literacy is seen as an instrumental enterprise that makes education the place where one acquires those concrete skills necessary to participate in society - literacy (however defined) is a skill that is necessary and sufficient to maintain and advance societies and individuals. On the other side of the debate are those who see literacy as a mediational process that helps individuals develop into whole human beings by offering them new ways of seeing the world they live in and how that world is shaped by literate practices. This view posits that literacy is one part, albeit a very important one, in helping people understand their world - their own existence. Literacy, from this perspective, helps bring people to the point where they are critically able to examine their present experience and shape their future.

This paper examines these issues. It examines the debate about what computer literacy involves by showing the links between general literacy models and models of computer literacy. It examines some of the contentions about the value of universal computer literacy and ends with an argument of its own, which talks about how the use of computers in education might be reconceptualized so that they function as an element in a radical approach to literacy as political activity.

What is said here concerning general literacy is valid about the discussion surrounding computer literacy as well. The instrumental view in the general literacy debate has its counterpart in the literature on computer literacy. Here, computer literacy is touted as part of a package that will bring the underprivileged into the mainstream. While there are critics of the instrumental notion of computer literacy, the other position on general literacy, the idea that literacy is political empowerment of a different sort, is all but non-existent in the literature on computer literacy.

This is the position from which this paper advances its own argument about computer literacy. This argument seeks to separate manipulation of the technology - instrumental views of computer literacy - from the application of that technology in literacy practices - computers as technology that affords new opportunities for understanding. This paper properly labels the ability to manipulate the technology, what has heretofore been labeled computer literacy, as "technical competence". This paper is about how to think about what a useful notion of technical competence might be and how that state of competence might be acquired. The argument then shifts to extend the radical approach to literacy into the debate about computer literacy and argues that computer literacy should be seen as the ability to make use of the information that computers make available in ways that would allow the user to come into closer political and social contact with his or her community.

Ideology and Literacy

The tension in the debate over the definition and practice of literacy, which can be seen in the debate about computer literacy, can be characterized as the tension between conservative forces in education and radical forces. On one side of this debate over general literacy are people who see education as the major means of providing citizens with the tools necessary to advance themselves and and thereby participate in society. Their ideas look remarkably like those of the political theorists who proposed the notion of "modernization theory" which was so popular in the 1950s and 1960s. This theory held that industrialization and literacy in the developing world would automatically bring those developing nations to democracy (O'Donnell 1979). The subsequent rise of bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes in Latin America daunted the theorists who proposed modernization theory but seems to have had little effect on those who hold parallel views in the education debate.

There are still a lot of people who write as though becoming literate (however they define the term) will bring about an increased standard of living for those on the margins without affecting the standard of living of those already in the mainstream (most notably E. D. Hirsch 1988). These theorists see being illiterate as the major restraint, if not the only restraint, to "progress" for these individuals. For them literacy is the one path to development.

On the other side of the debate we find educational theorists who hold that, for education and literacy to be properly understood and for them to make a difference, they need to be seen as serving particular functions and as growing out of and situated in a particular ideology (Scribner and Cole 1981, Galtung 1976, Street 1984). This is a view that sees literacy as part of a larger set of social practices, driven by particular interests in particular societies, constrained by access to technology and resources. At the most radical end of this group are the theorists who see literacy as part of a project that seeks radical social change (Freire and Macedo 1987, Giroux 1987).

This paper is only going to discuss the literacy debate in general terms. It is not in the place of a paper on computer literacy to attempt to lay out the debate over general literacy in all its manifestations. This work picks out those arguments from the ends of the spectrum that illuminate the understanding of computer literacy it is trying to approach and those necessary to show the roots of the model for computer literacy that it proposes. In laying out the debate about computer literacy it is instructive to pose that debate against the larger debate over general literacy. It is interesting to see just how closely the process of defining computer literacy follows the same process of defining literacy itself. It is also instructive because the vast majority of the discussion about the term computer literacy in the mainstream educational press comes out of the development and modernization camp. This is even more true of the news media's limited coverage of the issue. Very little of their contribution to the discussion falls into the middle range of the spectrum and almost none at the critical-functionalist end.

Literacy and Development

One basis for the argument that literacy, and collaterally computer literacy, is instrumental in social change comes from the work of Eric Havelock. There are two important aspects to Havelock's work. First is his assertion that the advent of Greek alphabetic literacy represents the first point in society where reproduceable language - written texts - created a cognitive shift. Second is his insistence that this shift lead to a divide between "developed" and "primitive" societies:

In modern Western society, "illiterate" is used to identify that proportion of the population which, because they cannot read or write, are presumed to be devoid of average intelligence, or else underprivileged. It is therefore pejorative, signifying those who have been left behind in the battle of life, mainly because they are not bright enough. Nor do we hesitate to enlarge this significance of the term to cover whole societies of men. If they happen to be underprivileged economically in comparison with the industrial nations, then their poverty and "backwardness" must be due to their illiteracy" (Havelock 1976:3 - italics added).

Havelock's quotes around the terms "illiterate" and "backwardness" notwithstanding, the main idea of this passage, that illiteracy leads to backwardness, is one that he accepts, if in no other fashion than in his willingness to incorporate the passage in his text uncritically. His final statement here places him firmly in the company of people who see literacy as a necessary precondition to development.

He comes to this point somewhat circuitously by way of positing that Greek (and later Latin) alphabets allowed for a transparent democratization of literacy - everyone could participate because of the all-but-direct correspondence between sounds and the letter combinations which made up the scripted words: "The acoustic efficience of the script had a result which was psychological; once it was learned you did not have to think about it. Though a visible thing ... it ceased to interpose itself as an object of thought between the reader and his recollection of the spoken tongue" (Havelock 1976:46).

In his later work Havelock extends this idea by arguing that the ability to think in abstract terms is a consequence of Greek alphabetic literacy. His argument centers around the idea that since the alphabet encodes oral language more accurately and more efficiently than any previously invented form of representation, it allowed for changes in the way that memory worked, in that language no longer had to be shaped in ways that made it easy to remember. It could now be represented and "remembered" visually. Havelock argues that abstract thinking grew out of the new-found ability of Classic Greek literates to create concepts that were divorced from the personifications required by the constraining nature of orality and its dependency on narrative.

[Literacy] wiped out, at least theoretically, the prime function of acoustically trained memory, and therefore the pressure to have storage language in a memorizable form. As the memory function subsided, psychic energies hitherto channeled for this purpose were released for other purposes. ... The removal of the pressure to memorize ... freed the composer to choose subjects for a discourse which were not necessarily agents, that is, persons (Havelock, 1986,:100-1).

Once the reader found himself set free to compose a language of theory, with its abstract subjects and conceptualized predicates, he also realized that he was employing new mental energies of a different quality from those exercised in oralism. ... One can say that the entire Athenian `enlightenment' ... revolved around the discovery of intellectualism, and of the intellect as representing a new level of the human consciousness (Havelock 1986,:115).

Havelock is clearly establishing the original Great Divide in human history. The core of his early argument in "The Origins of Western Literacy", upon which he bases the argument in his later work, is that the ability to write things down and retrieve them later lead to the ability to produce new or novel thoughts and act on them at a later date. This point of view totally ignores the influences outside literacy itself, influences like the political and cultural environment, that allow for the creation of an atmosphere where the production of novel, abstract thoughts can take place. Havelock goes too far in crediting the rise of Greek scholarship to just the invention of the Greek alphabet and the rise in Greek literacy. In his willingness to see the technology of communication as the force behind major social and intellectual structural change, he places himself in the company of technological determinists that would later be joined by the computer literacy theorists examined here. Just as Havelock finds monocausal forces in the history of alphabetic literacy, so do many, if not most, of the theorists of computer literacy attribute to the computer the ability to change society. Neither of them asks what other factors of the social context in which the technology is embedded are equally powerful driving forces for the changes that occur.

E. D. Hirsch
Literacy as social control

One closely related view of literacy is proposed by E. D. Hirsch. Hirsch views literacy as a properly conservative force in society. He maintains that a traditional notion of the content of literacy, what he terms "cultural literacy", "constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children, the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents" (Hirsch 1988:xiii). Hirsch calls for a conservative approach to literacy and its contents because it is, as he sees it, the only way that a large, diverse group of people like the those of us in the United States can talk to one another. His is a homogeneous rather than heterogeneous view of both culture and society.

Hirsh's idea of useful history as cultural literacy is what Williams labels the "literacy" of the dominant social order, the:

selective tradition: that which, within the terms of an effective dominant culture, is always passed off as ' the tradition,' 'the significant past'. But always the selectivity is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded (Williams 1980:39 italics in original).

...penis envy, macho ... vasectomy, ... mastectomy, gynecology, ... Georgia O'Keefe ... alcoholism, internment camps, Bhagavad Gita, Pele, rhythm and blues, computer crash, El Salvador [and] One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Hirsch doesn't seem to consider it of value for Americans to know about food and agriculture, the environment, world geography, non-European history, or the plants and animals with whom we share the planet (Simonson and Walker 1988:xii - italics in original).

Literacy and Mediation

The main focus of Scribner and Cole's work is to demonstrate that the intellectual and cognitive consequences of certain kinds of literacy arise out of the ways in which literate practices are mobilized in given social situations. This is in sharp contradistinction to Havelock who sees social situations as a function of literacy practices and Hirsch who cannot seem to separate the two. While the focus of Scribner and Cole's work does not include the consequences of computer literacy per se, it is presented here because their research into the social consequences of literacy practice provides a critical vantage point for viewing the connections between literacy and the potential for human communication.

Scribner and Cole define literacy as:

[A] set of socially organized practices which make use of a symbol system and a technology for reproducing it. Literacy is not simply knowing how to read and write a particular script but applying this knowledge for specific purposes in specific contexts of use (Scribner and Cole 1981:236).

Scribner and Cole found different "cognitive consequences" for each of these different literacy practices. In short, the result of the Scribner and Cole study of the Vai is that cognitive consequences of literacy were more or less dissociated from the school setting and found to be traceable to the practices of each of the "literacies" -, the consequences of literacy are not generalizable. This is a refutation of the developmental notions of literacy voiced by Hirsch, Bloom, Havelock and others. Instead of literacy as the context for social stability, and something that needs to be accomplished by everyone, literacy in the view of Scribner and Cole is seen as something that is useful in specific contexts and for particular purposes and constrained by the socio-cultural forces surrounding the particular literacy practices.

Of primary interest to a redeveloped notion of computer literacy is the Scribner and Cole idea that literacy is a practice that ties symbol systems and reproductive technologies together with social practice. Previous conceptions of literacy and computer literacy took the reproductive technologies as primary, the symbol systems as "transparent" (Havelock 1976) and the social practices as derived from the technology. The position argued here and derived from the theories and work of Scribner and Cole is that the use of the technology is a social practice and the symbol system used needs to be problematized to show that it is not as transparent as most people take it to be.

Shirley Brice Heath, Olga Vasquez
Literacy as the production of texts

The Scribner and Cole work among the Vai is the seminal work for much of the research into functional uses of literacy in the 1980s. It is central to the work of both Heath and Vasquez. These two researchers look at literacy at its inception, from the perspective of how oral language use evolves into written language use in everyday practice. They argue against the notion that there is a "literacy dichotomy" that separates literate and oral language use or literate and non-literate thought. Their work attempts to show that the places where oral and written language cross and touch upon each other in cultural groups blurs the boundaries between the two, giving rise to new forms and new definitions of literacy.

Shirley Brice Heath spent over ten years working as an ethnographer among black and white working class families in mill towns in the deep south. Heath's work is notable in that it establishes new ideas about the ways in which the uses communities make of oral and written language can be seen as literate practices. In her definition of literacy, Heath focuses on what people do with reading and writing, instead of focusing on any kind of testable standard, i.e. California Achievement Test or Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, as a way of measuring literacy levels. Heath defines "literacy events" as "any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants' interactions and their interpretive processes. ... A literacy event can then be viewed as any action sequence, involving one or more persons, in which the production and/or comprehension of print plays a role" (Heath 1982:93). The notion that it is what people do with their language is what is important, is an idea that is important as well in defining computer use in education in that it allows us to conceptualize computer literacy as something more than programming and applications skills. It allows for the formation of a definition of computer literacy based on how people make use of computers to take up texts and reformulate them in holding discussions with others.

In her work, which branches off from that of both Scribner and Cole and Heath, Olga Vasquez makes a connection between oral language activities in the natural setting of the home with those that Heath and Hoffman call literate behavior in institutional settings. Vasquez makes a distinction between literacy skills and literate practices in the oral activities that emerge out of the encounters with the oral and written texts that were in common use in the Mexican immigrant households where she did her research. For Vasquez, analytic literacy practices are oral language activities that take place around a variety of "texts" - i.e. "cuentos" (stories), public documents like job applications and income tax forms, etc.

In four Mexican immigrant households, Vasquez found three new ways of dealing with text that could be labeled analytic or literate language activities: "the transfer of the knowledge in the text to the immediate social situation, the transposition of an aspect of the social situation to the context of the text, and the combination of the interpretation of the immediate text with previous contributions by others to reach a lemma (an intermediate decision that leads to achieving a broader goal)" (Vasquez 1989:3). While many of these activities involve print texts, the notion of print is not what is important here.

For both Heath and Vasquez, what is important is what is done with the texts. Heath and Vasquez both want to move the concept of literacy beyond the point of interaction with just "reading and writing to include culturally based, situationally specific, and socially interactive activities" (Vasquez 1989:11). Essentially the two of them view literacy as the process of taking texts from the world and reshaping them to serve the practicioner's ends: "today we talk about `being literat'' as being able to consciously abstract and manipulate languag" (Vasquez 1989:10). One of these abilities to abstract and manipulate language is what Vasquez calls "reconstructions", the ability to negotiate the meaning of given print texts with other people in the immediate social situation, to build on that commonly understood meaning and to use this new information to make decisions. This notion of de- and reconstructing the world from the collective experiences of the group is a central part of the new definition of computer literacy proposed here. Since all understanding is acquired in interaction with others then one way of conceptualizing literacy is to see it as the process of coming to new understandings about the world. Computer literacy then can been seen partially as the process of reconstructing the world through dialog with others in a computer-mediated environment.

For Heath, and Vasquez, the idea of "being literate" is not limited to written language. It includes the extension, analysis and critique of knowledge or information transmitted in oral language as well. For Vasquez the inclusion of orality into the notion of what constitutes literate behavior is very important. It allows us to consider the ability to orally discuss the content of a written text a literate activity. Being able to talk about a text from one sphere of discourse into another sphere, to "analyze, discuss, interpret, and create extended chunks of language" (Heath and Hoffman 1986:4) in a forum other than that where the text originally appeared, is in a Freirian sense, what is central to a concept of the literate use of computer technology.

The differences between Heath and Vasquez are that, for Heath, the practice of literacy is closely tied to a notion of print texts, while for Vasquez the notion of "text" is more ambiguous. This is interesting in the context of computer literacy because of the problematic notion of text and computers. Text, "written" words, do not really exist in a computer discussion in the same ways that they do in "print" texts. There is an ephemerality to computer texts that places more demands on the kinds of literacy skills that interest Vasquez. These skills rely more on memory and interaction with others for interpretation.

In a sense, both Heath and Vasquez present an appropriation model of literacy, one where existing texts, produced by others, are taken up and reworked to one's own use. This way of thinking about literacy is related to the work of Paolo Freire who says that literacy is the ability to relate text to self in an analytical process of "reading" the world.

Paolo Freire, Donaldo Macedo and Henry Giroux
Literacy as political empowerment.

The work of Paolo Freire is well known for his idea that literacy should be seen as a practice that enables people to understand and change their lives. For Freire literacy is the process of taking history into one's own hands, distilling from that history those things which make sense in light of the current situation, and writing the present as a way of shaping the future. Part of the argument being made here about computer literacy is that it needs to be reconceptualized to include the process of making use of computer technology to grapple with history and the present in interaction with others as a way of politically shaping the future.

For Freire's notion of literate activity to take place one important concept must be grasped. This is the notion that literacy is the taking control of the naming of things that exist in one's world. In her essay "In Plato's Cave," Susan Sontag argues that real understanding is based on a questioning intellect, the refusal to take things as they seem, "not accepting the world as it looks" (Sontag 1977:23 italics in original), and the willingness to dig into what things are. The ability to dig into something is constrained by the medium of interpretation and interpenetration. For Sontag the medium is photography and understanding is constrained by photography's inability to show what lies under the surface of its images. For computers as a medium of understanding, the way that computer literacy is presently conceptualized is the constraint. So long as computers are primarily a means of manipulating data provided by someone else (turning it into "information") and computer literacy programs are designed to foster that kind of ability, computers will enhance rather than challenge entrenched bureaucracy and concomitantly impoverish life.

To bring the discussion back to Freire and his notions of literacy, it is important to draw the connection between Sontag's ideas and language as a medium for understanding and to note that language has constraints of its own that it places on understanding. An understanding of these constraints is tied to the Sapirian notion that language constructs and constricts reality. The words a language makes available to its speakers, limits and defines the ways in which they can see and can interact with the world. Language places limits on the ideas that an individual has to work with in their construction of reality (Whorf 1967).

The act of seeing something is tied up in the act of naming that thing, and vice-versa. Freire elaborates on this by saying that an individual can't name the world until s/he can act in it and likewise, that individual can't really act in the world unless s/he can name it. Freire's practice of teaching people to write the word and world can be seen as an activity of teaching people to see new things. By coming up with new words individuals come up with new understandings of potential realities. For Freire and Macedo literacy is the acquisition of a voice in the world, the right to define the terms of one's existence as well as the right to argue about the definitions with others as part of the coming to understand and use that voice.

These two sets of theories about literacy establish the ends of a continuum. The instrumental model end, Havelock, Hirsch and others, envisions literacy as enabling people to participate in society as already constructed. The ideological end (to use Street's term) - Freire, Macedo and Giroux - sees literacy as a practice that seeks to enable people to take control of where society is going and better shape the forces that mold their lives. For the notion of computer literacy being developed here, these ideas have implications for understanding how the ability to use computers to hold discussions could lead people to conceive of new possible realities.

Notions of Computer Literacy in the Educational Press

The range of debate over the term computer literacy in the educational press covers just about every conceivable notion of the term but that debate is heavily weighted towards developmental-modernizationalist approaches and instrumental solutions. The dialog is replete with ambiguous, general statements: "Every student should have first-hand experiences with both the capabilities and the limitations of computers through contemporary applications" (Mathematics Teacher, 1978:468).

The most simple of these discussions are guilty of assuming that their readers understand and agree with their author's goals. For these people computer literacy usually consists of "an understanding of uses, advantages and limitations of computers" (Adams 1984:96,7) or computer literacy means "developing skills to use computer applications which bear on persistent life situations such as communications, education, governance, consumerism, entertainment, and employment (`"Eisele 1980:84). The most extensive are huge, unmanageable lists of goals and objectives drawn from surveys of a wide variety of computer literacy curriculums and which try to incorporate every aspect of every course surveyed.[3] They provide a kind of encyclopedia of contemporary computer literacy thinking, but would be almost useless for trying to establish a curriculum because of their complexity. They might be useful if one were trying to set up an independent school to produce computer scientists with a liberal arts background.

A general overview of the majority of work in computer literacy shows a number of "universal" understandings for computer literacy programs. These include: [4]

• A knowledge of computer theory, including some knowledge of how computer hardware makes possible and constrains the things a computer can accomplish (Adams 1984, Inskeep 1982, Tannenbaum and Rahn 1984, Uthe 1981).
• Learning hexadecimal and binary number systems (Price 1978, Steen 1984).
• knowledge of algorithms and data structures, where "one who is truly computer literate must be able to 'do computing' - to conceptualize problems algorithmically, to represent them in the syntax of a computer language, ... and to express computational ideas clearly ... and with a high degree of organization and readability (Arthur Luehmann in Douglas 1980:97). These skills are said to provide the basis of an "educationally sound preparation for the information age" (Steen 1984:517).
• A knowledge of the history and development of computers (Inskeep 1982, Tannenbaum and Rahn 1984).
• A knowledge of what a computer is and what it is capable of doing (Adams 1984, Inskeep 1982, Wilburn 1989, Uthe 1981).
• Some programming ability, usually in BASIC, Pascal or Logo. This is usually characterized as a lesson in "structured thinking" which the student is supposed to get from exposure to programming (Adams 1984, Inskeep 1982, Wilburn 1989).
• The ability to apply computer skills to information retrieval and communication in the process of problem solving, and decision making (D. Levin 1983). This includes the ability to use computers to access information that is unavailable or difficult to access via other means.
• The ability to choose software and applications in support of some defined objective. Includes the ability to distinguish between applications that suit one's needs and ones that don't (Inskeep 1982, D. Levin 1983, Shore 1984, Wilburn 1989).[5]
• The ability to apply computer skills and tools to the problems of everyday life at work and in the home. Here, computer literacy means "the ability to process information in support of the decision-making process" (Shore 1984:329) (Adams 1984, Eisele 1980, Pickert and Hunter 1983, Wilburn 1989).
• An understanding of the "social impact of computers", by which some mean that computers are sometimes used to "steal money and information" (Johnson, David et. al. 1980:95) and that computers have both positive and negative social impacts (Adams 1984, Eisele 1980, Pickert and Hunter 1983, Tannenbaum and Rahn 1984, Uthe 1981).
• The ability to control a program and a computer to achieve a variety of personal, academic, and professional goals (Tannenbaum and Rahn 9184).

The length of the David Johnson et. al. list notwithstanding, no one author has done a thorough job of defining the term computer literacy. Perhaps Albert Goldberg has it right when he says that terms like computer literacy "mean whatever one wants them to mean, applied to whatever educational environment one works in, institutional or otherwise" (Goldberg 1984:34 - italics in original).

What all of these definitions have in common is that none of them incorporates any critical understanding that moves beyond computers themselves. What critical understanding there is - calling for an appreciation of the "ethical and legal implications of computer usage" (Adams 1984:97) - never challenges the assumption that computers are part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Additionally, many of these definitions are completely focussed on computer technology and ignore the goals and objectives of the people involved. They assume that computers are amoral, benign devices, something to be known objectively. In general, their view of computer literacy is one that glorifies computers. It is one that exhorts computer literacy programs to train entry-level computer operators. It is not one that would produce students who are critical of the activities in which they are engaged. In short, for the majority of the educational press, computer literacy is simply the ability to deal with the computer itself in terms that it understands. Any other uses for computers grow out of and are incidental to these skills.

There is a sharp contrast between the clarity of the goals and means to those ends when educational authors talk about the technical-rational part of computer literacy and when they are discussing the socio-political actions and consequences of computers. The discussion is quite sharp, with little in the way of ambiguity, when these authors are discussing how computer language training should take place. Completely the opposite is true when they begin talking about how students should come to understand the impact(s) of computers in society. In most cases, this topic is dismissed with a few, general comments, calling for "an understanding of X," and then moving quickly to the point of the article, which is usually to elaborate some notion of how computers are useful for increasing a student's technical-rational problem solving skills.

All these definitions are both right in some senses and completely wrong at the same time. They are correct in that, given that it is highly unlikely that computers will somehow disappear from society, everyone should know something about them, even if they do not own one or even expect to do so. On the other hand these definitions are seriously problematic because they are basically technologically determinist.

This view of computer literacy as focussed on the applications end of the use of computers is not, as has been noted, one pole of the argument, offset by a different view of computer literacy as programming ability. It is rather, the logical progression of the development of the idea as those who sought to define the concept tried to keep pace with the developments in the computer field itself. By the mid-1980's, definitions of computer literacy came to focus more and more on the abilities of users to extend themselves into the world at large with the help of a computer. Computer literacy was no longer defined as just the ability to write programs and understand how computers themselves work. The definition was being expanded to include the ability to pick a proper software applications package, modify it if necessary (although not necessarily by modifying the code internally) and put it to work to solve problems. In one sense, the notion of computer literacy was being expanded to include the "degree of competence required to function in today's world" (Longstreet and Sorant 1985:118). Note that this extension is not away from computer-centered activities. There is no mention of using computers to exchange information the way that books are used to build a bridge for ideas across time and space. These definitions see the computer and its applications packages as the central organizing tool. What these definitions of computer literacy fail to note is that a computer is a tool that places constraints on the work being done by virtue of the kinds of problems it is capable of addressing and "solving."

As the debate about computer literacy moves into the future it looks more like a codification than an argument. That is, the same issues - students need to be computer literate - constantly come to the surface and the same debates - computer literacy as programming vs. applications knowledge - go around while little gets added to anyone's understanding.

This is evident in a very recent article concerning computer literacy and librarians. The argument in this 1989 article looks surprisingly like that found in the 1980 Johnson et. al work mentioned above - with novice, mid-level and advanced computer literacy levels for each of four areas of competency - hardware, languages, operating systems and applications. Although the article doesn't have the elaborate detail of the Johnson, Anderson, Hansen and Klassen article, its conclusion, after 13 years of debate, remains the same, computer literacy is solely the interaction (interface) between human and machine.

Another Side of Computer Literacy

There are a variety of arguments posed against those touting the value of computers in society and of computer literacy to individuals. Rather than directly debating the points of the computer proponents' arguments themselves, these arguments tend to focus on examining the underlying assumptions of the proponents of computer literacy. They ask deeper, more critical questions of computers, their use and potential.

The core of these arguments is that, in society's willingness to computerize, or perhaps more properly in society's seeming indifference to the computerization of every possible aspect of daily life and social interaction, society is concomitantly impoverishing itself in the education of its children, deluding itself about the necessity and value of computers in general, wasting its money on computer literacy programs that will not advance individuals or society in any kind of reasonable, useful way, and empowering the military, computer and pharmaceutical industries. Given the instrumental goals that seem to pervade most of the notions of computer literacy, these points deserve careful consideration.

Much of this criticism asks why educators are so eager to jump uncritically on the computer literacy bandwagon (Sloan 1985, Bowers 1988). The critics of computer literacy accuse educators of buying into the notion that computers are an inexorable condition of the future (Sloan 1985, Noble 1984a, 1984b) and accepting the concomitant notion that the majority of the population have no control over shaping this force (Bowers 1988). The deeper criticism that is offered in answer is that there seems to be little conflict between the widely accepted goals of education - the development of "concrete-operational skills of technical reason coupled with functional, utilitarian language skills" (Sloan 1985:3) - and computer use - cost cutting in educational institutions by the institutionalization of the computer as deus ex machina, coming to solve the difficulties education faces, usually through CAI activities instead of human teachers.[6]

Computer systems foster and abet a mechanistic kind of thinking that "has been exceedingly powerful in our uncovering and coming to understand the mechanical, physical cause-and-effect dimensions of reality" (Sloan 1985:7) but is not adequate to the job of understanding the whole of the reality of a given problem or issue. By introducing computers to children at an ever-earlier age, we are setting ourselves up for a mechanistic, bland and colorless world in the future. Education has emphasized the development of technical-analytical skills for quite some time now, and the introduction and proliferation of computers in the classroom only exacerbates the trend (Bowers 1988, Sloan 1985, Sardello 1985).

All of this begets the question of whether or not everyone really needs computers and computer literacy in the first place. The assumptions and statements of the proponents' literature break down into four categories of people: students, workers, consumers and citizens (Noble 1984b). Students and workers need to be able to use computer technology in schools and the workplace, the others need to know computers to be effective as consumers and citizens.

For the first two of these groups - students and computers - Noble argues that computer literacy is necessary for some of the people in each of these groups but not for the vast majority. What computer literacy really means for those people who do need it, is going to be determined by the specifics of the situations where they find themselves.

People can learn whatever they need or want to about computers [as the need arises and without] having to be prepared or "literate" beforehand. The idea of computer literacy as preparation for later application, seen, for example, in comparisons between computer literacy and music appreciation, fits nicely within a "basic-skill" mentality that refuses to allow that fundamental knowledge is best acquired in the process of useful activity, not beforehand in useless introduction" (Noble 1984a:603).

For the second two groups, consumers and citizens, no computer literacy is really necessary at all. Given the power that the market exerts in the daily lives of people in the US, if someone has something to sell and it necessitates the use of a computer to sell it, someone will create a software and hardware package that makes it possible to sell that product to the functionally illiterate. A good example of this is the "Lotto" machines of the California State Lottery. Anyone with the most rudimentary reading skills can buy all the Lotto tickets they want. Given that "citizens" are really more consumers of politics than they are participants in political process means that they are in the same camp as consumers of goods when it comes to worrying about their computer literacy.

Another aim of the critics is to demonstrate that the pursuit of computer literacy reinforces the hegemony of the status quo. The main thrust of this argument is that by creating a computer-literate populace, in the manner conceptualized in the current discussion of the term, that populace would be more inclined to accept the idea that technological solutions to the problems of society are the way to go. In other words, a computer-oriented society is one in which the high-tech imperatives of the military-industrial complex take precedence and those imperatives are unlikely to be questioned. Noble notes that many people - educators, merchants of computer machinery, politicians, parents, journalists, etc. - seem to be behind the idea of some kind of universal computer literacy. He makes the point that much of the argument about computer literacy centers around the idea that it is somehow implicit in the maintenance of America's superiority in the world technological marketplace.[7]

In terms of the value of computer literacy, much of the rhetoric about jobs and skills just doesn't hold up under close examination. The vast numbers of jobs that computers are supposed to create for the "post-industrial" society simply do not exist. If anything, computers eliminated many jobs and degraded the required intelligence needed to perform many others (Shaiken 1986). As for those people who expect to see more jobs in the future, based on the introduction of computers in new fields, Noble notes that they are guilty of falsely equating the superficial kinds of skills gained in computer literacy programs with the highly technical kinds of knowledge necessary for taking what jobs there will be in computerized industries.

This will be even more true as time passes. Advances in software and hardware (most notably the Apple MacIntosh) are making even simple programming skills less and less necessary for the average computer user and therefore for computer literacy programs as well (Levin and Souviney 1983, Noble 1984a) - but no one seems to have told this to the computer literacy program designers and journal writers who seem stuck in the late-1970s. The ease of use of the newer systems, coupled with a burgeoning software industry that seems to be willing to produce any conceivable kind of program, has all but eliminated low-level programming needs and skills - why would anyone wish to go to the trouble to write a program that can be bought for a few dollars and comes with a guarantee?

Finally, with the exploding popularity of the Apple Macintosh and like computers and software, the time it takes to become familiar enough with a machine to make beginning use of it has dropped from days to hours, perhaps minutes. Yet, there has been no discernible change in the agenda of the educators pushing the mainstream views of computer literacy. In fact their views have not so much changed as remained the same. Proponents of computer literacy still talk about which language students should know and how best to train people so that they can pick the proper application for a given job.

Newspaper Coverage of Computer Literacy

The one place where the notion of computer literacy is most problematic is in the newspaper press. A survey of 14 years of the The New York Times, theLos Angeles Times, and the Washington Post newspapers, from 1976 through early 1990, reveals that there is not much interest in debating the notion of computer literacy or debating how it might best be applied in the classroom.[8] What coverage there is in the newspapers focuses mostly on specific classroom settings and specific computer programs, Computer Aided Instruction and grand expectations about future implications of computer use in education. In the newspaper coverage, definitions of the term "computer literacy" are more often than not, not given. When definitions are provided, they are superficial and work toward revealing more about the assumptions of the writer than they do toward expanding the readers' understanding of the term. Although the term computer literacy was being widely debated in the educational press in the late 1970s, it isn't until the early 1980s that it is even used in the mainstream newspaper press - in the Los Angeles Times in 1981 and in The New York Times in 1982. Nowhere in the newspapers surveyed was the meaning of the term debated.

It is difficult to tell which is more striking, the lack of definition and argument about the term computer literacy, or the assumptions that the education writers for newspapers make about their readers. When computer literacy is defined in an article, it is usually defined as "acquainting students with computers and teaching them to program the machines" (Fiske 1984, Lewis 1988, McCarthy 1982:8, Real 1982) or "the skills necessary to get an entry-level job in the data processing industry" (Johnson, Dirk 1986).

On the other side of the problem are the assumptions of the writers when they make statements like: "Curriculums are undergoing major revisions, and some schools are imposing a formal requirement of 'computer literacy' for graduation" (The New York Times, staff 1983:1). What is interesting is that there is no further elaboration of what the term means - its meaning is taken for granted even when it is enclosed in quotes in the original text.

Frequently the definition takes on some of the instrumental flavor found in the educational press: "Interviews with students, teachers, principals and others disclose that most schools use computers mainly to teach computer literacy - teaching about computers themselves" (Fiske 1984:1 - italics added). This kind of analysis (if it can be called that) resonates nicely with the objectives of the developmental theorists of the educational press. Here is a popular presentation of computer literacy that echoes the idea that computers are built and used in a vacuum.

Given that there is no critical examination of the term in the newspapers, it should come as no surprise that there is little development of what the term might mean as well. At times what constitutes computer literacy is presented as having been "revised" in the process of distinguishing it from "real literacy" (reading and writing). In this view, computer literacy is defined as "being familiar with the computer's parts and knowing how to do rudimentary programming" (Lewis 1988:16). Despite the appearance of the word "Revised" in the title of this 1988 article, how this author's view represents a revision remains unclear. The implications are clear however. After 12 years of discussing computers in The New York Times Educational Supplement, the song remains the same - computer literacy is programming.

If the term computer literacy is not clearly defined, the applications of computers in the classroom are, at times, more clear. The virtues of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI), roundly debated in the educational press, are as taken for granted as the definition of computer literacy. Here, the notion of computers and CAI as the deus ex machina of education is strong.

One examination of computer assisted instruction notes that computers are wonderful devices that "are completely and perfectly consistent" (Goldberger 1981:19).[9] This notion is coupled with the idea that computers are "colorblind" and do not discriminate in the basis of race or ethnicity. The conclusion therefore is that computers are impartial teachers. However no mention is made of the not-so-colorblind distribution of computing resources in inner-city schools. Nor does much of the newspaper or educational press mention that the dryest, most instrumental CAI programs are the least expensive and most likely to be in poorer school districts while the wealthier schools get the less instrumental, more interesting and newer programs. Only the dullest, rote-drill programs are found in the poorest districts - those poor districts which can afford computers (CUSG 1983).

This return to CAI in the newspapers is just in time for the "Back to Basics" educational movement resurfacing in the rhetoric of the George Bush 1990s. A feature article that praises CAI as the best way to put computers to use in the schools has nothing but praise for a program that drills students in reading skills, noting that the use of computers and CAI raised the students in Calvert County's Sunderland Elementary School District from 12th in the state to 3rd in terms of their California Achievement Test scores between the 1980-81 and 1986-87 academic years. This program focuses on "basic skills," but the author doesn't define the term, and has helped "boost 83 percent of the students above the CAT's 50th percentile" (Tonacci 1989:Md.12). According to Tonacci, the CAI programs also allowed the Sunderland school district to reduce the number of remedial teachers from 20 to one, which the district kept because the administrators felt like they should have one. How nice.

This is obviously a misuse of computers. To substitute machinery for real people and real human interaction is to set up the potential for total impoverishment of the students. This tendency has not gone totally unnoticed in the newspapers however. In the 16 years of newspapers surveyed there was one article that warned: "if your local likes to brag about its PC population and how computers are 'an integral part of the classroom learning environment,' get yourselves down there and find out just what that means. ... For most students, real education from classroom computing is a hoax" (Schrage 1986:WB10). On balance with the educational press, this kind of critical appraisal is about par. In the newspapers' coverage of the issue of computers in schools, they are overwhelmingly on the side of the development side of the debate.

One thing is clear from reading the newspapers. Writers in the newspapers don't read or follow the arguments in the educational press, not even the "education" reporters. A 1988 report on a NEAP study reports: "Knowlegeabe computer using teachers are increasingly aware that drill and practice software is far less powerful an educational tool than the major 'computer as a tool' applications: word processing, database management, and spreadsheets" (Balajthy 1988:242). What little criticism and debate about the idea of computer literacy there was in the educational press, none of it showed up in the newspaper coverage surveyed here.

If reporters paid more attention to the "serious" press then they would be contributing more to popular understanding of computers. Then the might leave themselves less open to the kinds of criticism which notes that:

Coverage of the computer-literacy movement in general has been characterized by a less blatant but more insidious variety of [an] approach that allows for a debate, but effectively keeps it within narrowly established limits. [...] The truly difficult questions about whether or not the nations classrooms should be computerized are neatly finessed. Instead, discussion is limited to how this process should take place (Menosky 1985:80).

Given the ways in which the press regulates itself, its claims to "objectivity" and "balance" it's not surprisingly there is very little in the way of press critical to computer use in the schools. Instead, as Menosky notes above, what there is is the sense that computer literacy and computers themselves are a necessary change, necessary to maintain the technological superiority of the US in the world:

The wholesale introduction of computers into classrooms since 1980 amounts to a quiet revolution that will help meet the demands of scientific and technological change as well as economic competition in world markets. A decade from now American students ... will have a real advantage in their technical and higher reasoning skills. Compared with their counterparts in other countries, they will be better prepared for competition in a world economy (Bencievenga 1984:19).

If this sounds familiar, it should. It is precisely the same line of rhetoric voiced by Deringer and Molnar above and resonates in tune with the Education Czars of the Reagan and Bush administrations.

From this admittedly narrow survey it would appear that there isn't much interest in discussing definitions of computer literacy or discussing the use of computers in education much beyond specific settings. This lack of interest in the newspapers keeps their writers from contributing much to our understanding of the term. Apparently it also keeps them from developing their own understanding of what computer literacy and computer use might be as well.

If one looks through the newspapers, it is difficult to find much in the way of critical thinking about the issue of computer literacy and computer education. Just as there are occasional articles that take a critical stance on computer literacy, so to are there articles which see computer literacy in more than the traditional, instrumental ways. One article which does this, interestingly enough, is from 1981, and defines computer literacy in terms that have to do with computer retrieval of information in a library setting (Crooks 1981). The "Computertown" project was an early attempt at reaching out to the community by making library information available via a microcomputer in the library itself. It is particularly interesting in that the conceptualization of computer literacy is information-oriented and not programming-oriented. One other bright note in the newspapers, is an article that notes the empowering potential of word processors when coupled with desk-top publishing software and new printers (Naiman 1988:19). These two articles are among the few which take the perspective that computers are not just replacements for teachers, replacements whose use implies a new "literacy". Instead, these articles point at a conceptualization of computer literacy that looks beyond instrumental uses of computers at their potential for increasing human understanding and political empowerment.

These voices are steadily being overwhelmed however. The strong voice, that of instrumental reason looking for quick, technological fixes, is the one that finds its way into the newspapers more readily. It is a voice that should be criticized, both by the popular press itself and by its readers. As Joseph Weizenbaum notes:

Our schools are already in desperate trouble, and the introduction of the computer at this time is, at very best, a diversion - possibly a dangerous diversion. Too often the computer is used in the schools, as it is used in other social establishments, as a quick technological fix. It is used to paper over fundamental problems to create the illusion that they are being attacked (Weizenbaum 1984:225).

Critical-Functionalist Views of Computer Literacy

In opposition to the dominant view of computer literacy explored above, one that takes the technology as given and asks the student to learn how to accept it uncritically, this paper proposes a different way of addressing the issue. As noted above, this view is grounded in the work of Paolo Freire and elaborated on with ideas from Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, Shirley Brice Heath and Olga Vasquez.

This argument about the place of computers and computer literacy in education not include the two most popular elements from the discussion of computer literacy elaborated above, i.e., programming and applications. For the first, learning to program only serves those who have particular needs, most notably the defense industry. Few individuals ever find a need to write programs for their own use. Employers will hire highly-skilled programmers to write the code they need and there will not be all that many jobs for programmers. There will be even fewer jobs for people with some knowledge of programming, despite trade school claims to the contrary. For almost all users and needs, there are and will be a selection of already-prepared applications programs available from commercial sources. Programming for the private citizen then gets reduced to the level of a hobby. Anyone that interested in programming can and will learn how to program without having to be taught how to do so as an integral part of their formal education.

And for the other question - having the ability to chose between applications to get the one that best matches the job at hand, this is a non-issue. Most people, with the exception of high-level bureaucrats in large commercial concerns and government agencies, will chose applications like they chose automobiles (and the differences between applications are about as distinct). They will ask their friends, they will "test drive" the package and sometimes they will make mistakes. Just as no one is arguing that people should learn about the internal workings of automobiles before they buy a car neither should we worry about learning to chose between Lotus and Excel. Just as the differences between Toyotas and Nissans or Fords and Chevys is more in the mind of the buyer, so are the real differences between "Wordperfect" and "Wordstar" or "Ready, Set, Go", and "PageMaker." The consequences of picking a program that is less than optimal are equally insignificant.

Essentially all the previous arguments labeled here as "developmental-modernizationalist" are, at bottom, the wrong way to conceive of computer literacy. They take the technology as given, as inflexible and as a tool for "serious" work like mathematics and accounting. They tend to ignore the fact that most of the population has little need for any of the functions they ascribe to computers. Most of us are perfectly capable of screwing up our checkbooks with a hand calculator. A computer would only make the job more thorough.

In addition, these theorists fail to see that the kinds of activities that would make people more able to define their own lives are precisely the opposite of the kinds of activities they have outlined for computer literacy courses. The computer program that teaches individual critical reasoning skills has yet to be written and probably never will be. The skills that come with learning to program and to run a spread sheet are extremely valuable for anyone going into business and wishing to make a profit or for figuring out what kind of business one might go into. But those skills are of little use when it comes to figuring out whether or not the business is something that society really needs. In other words, computers are useful for establishing certain kinds of goals, and for figuring out how to reach a predetermined goal. They are of much less use in asking or answering the philosophical, value-laden questions that one needs to explore in setting those goals, particularly in modern society where such goals are all too often set without any examination of the larger value questions.

This argument will take an entirely different tack. It argues that what is important is learning to use computers as a medium of communication so that those users can participate in electronic discussions. These discussions are already taking place on a multitude of private bulletin board systems and numerous commercial ones as well. In addition there are new technological developments in data transmission on the horizon that will bring even more opportunities into people's homes and lives (Horwitz 1989). This paper tries to blend Scribner and Cole's view of literacy as tools and practices with Heath and Vasquez's notion of literacy as the activity of interpreting the world through interaction and adds Freire's mandate that literate practices allow one to change the world by reading it, so that computer literacy can then be seen as the activity of creating the kinds of understanding that would allow people to take advantage of current information systems and new developments in that area for the purpose of expanding their view of the world and their political participation in that world.

Computers and Competency

Scholarship, citizenship and political activity, if the last can be thought of as separate from the first two, are all communal activities. Despite what appears to be the prevailing ideology, e.g. that individuals are all-important and sole causal agents in the creation of their own realities, people still feel the need for interacting with their communities, however this last is construed. The critics of mass-society theorists notwithstanding, there is more than a little truth to the criticism that modern mass media push people away from political and social interaction with each other and into atomized spaces.[10] The result of this is the creation and maintenance of the illusion that individuals are the powerful, causal agents of their own destiny and that cooperative, collective social action is somehow an activity of the "lunatic" fringe (cf. Gitlin 1980).

Computers too have their aspects that push people off by themselves. Computer games, playing with numbers, shopping services, keeping accounts and the like, all are activities that allow individuals to keep to themselves in a private, individualized space. But computers, unlike most of the earlier electronic and visual media (with the exceptions of photography and, more recently video) allow for interactive participation with other people via the medium. The mass media of the late 19th century and present - radio, phonography, film and television - allow the audience to sit and watch or listen. What discussion there might be about the content of the medium, takes place elsewhere, either in newspapers and magazines in the form of criticism or around living rooms, in restaurants etc., where people gather to talk about the films, television and music they've heard or seen. In computer-mediated arenas, the primary effect of participation is interaction. Rather than more or less passively accepting what's on the tube, the participants create what's on the tube.

The participation in a computerized activity of discussion requires two things: technical competency, what would normally be subsumed under traditional definitions of computer literacy, and some motivation to participate in discussion with others. What follows here is a discussion of the first: technical competence. The discussion of real computer literacy, which involves the issue of motivation, is discussed in the next section.

The definition of technical competency proposed here is the practice of learning enough about computer-based technology in non-specific ways so that the individual can engage in activities that bring him or her into contact with other people to discuss, argue, and coordinate activities that are outside the use of the computer itself. This does not imply or demand knowledge of particular computer operating systems, software or computer languages. It is rather, the acquisition of an indeterminate set of skills which allow the user to hack his or her way through encounters with new technology.[11]

This kind of competency comes from several sources. First is the opportunity to work with a variety of computers and applications. In the world of the 1990s this means some experience with both Macintosh and IBM/MS-DOS operating systems. This does not mean a thorough knowledge of either system, just knowing the basics of each so that when either is encountered the user can do more than just stare helplessly at the screen. Part of this knowledge is knowledge of at least one word processing software package. Which package doesn't matter. What is being sought is a sense of the kinds of things that word processing software is capable of doing, what kinds of tools are provided as part of a word processing package and what they allow the user to do. For instance all word processors allow the author to create text, to delete and change words and lines of words and to move lines, paragraphs and sections around in the body of the text. Once a user understands these few basic ideas they will begin to build a set of expectations about word processing software, expectations that they will carry to their next encounter with a new package and which encourages them to experiment with that new package to get it to perform up to their needs.

This sense of expectation and experimentation is central to the entire notion of technical competency being proposed here. The same sense can and needs to be acquired through exposure to some kind of distributed system like USENET, PEACENET or The Source. Here what the user should acquire is some sense of what kinds of things an electronic mail system or bulletin-board system usually provides. Electronic mail systems usually allow the user to read and send mail, to store and retrieve old mail and to integrate a word processor with the mail program so that they can create and edit their outgoing mail. Most programs allow the user to forward received mail to other users as well. Most bulletin board systems allow participants to read and post messages in the public space of the system and many allow electronic mail along side of the public discussion space. Once again, tools learned in one computer-mediated environment will be expected in another and, when they are not found, the user is likely to either ask that they be provided or to hack together some substitute from what tools are available on that system.

The kind of competency suggested here goes deeper into the psychology of the individual than just encountering computer hardware and software and acquiring some facile mastery. It is the coming to understand the mindset of technological competence, a mindset that views any technology as ultimately understandable. Additionally, one cannot put a technology to use successfully if one does not understand that technology and is therefore limited to making use of it in ways predetermined by others.

In terms of my own understanding, this goes back to my childhood and two experiences. These both happened in the late 1950s. When I was between the ages of 8 and 12 years old, my father worked at a U.S. Navy supply dump. He frequently brought home radar machinery that was being scrapped. We lived in northern Illinois and I spent many cold, winter evenings in the basement taking apart those radar sets. The other experience was knowing my Uncle Ernie. Ernie Topping was a man who, when he needed another automobile, went to the local junk yard and brought home something that was more or less whole and made it run for very little money. My father once claimed that Ernie never spent more than $20 on a car, and that included the money needed to get it running. Ernie made his own wine, crafted his own canoes, loaded his own ammunition, and built his own house. He was someone who, when he didn't understand how something worked, sat down and stared at the object until he did. From watching Ernie and from dismantling every mechanical object I could get my hands on I learned that technology is both comprehensible and, more importantly, more or less self-explanatory - it has an internal logic that can be grasped if you understand a few, basic concepts. At a certain level of self-confidence, acquired with an understanding of the the idea that much of the world is self-explanatory, you learn that you can teach yourself most anything you want to. This is important understanding for anyone who finds themselves in new interactions with peripherally familiar technology. It gives them the confidence to experiment and to build from previous understandings to new ones.

This kind of understanding is being acquired by the current generation of children. For those people who are over 25 years old or so, micro-computers are something that came along after they were into their teenage years or later. For the children who were growing up in the 1980s, microcomputers are part of almost every human-made object with more than two parts they encounter. For them programming a VCR or dishwasher poses little in the way of a threat. And, for them, moving to computers will pose little in the way of the technophobia that characterized the first computer interactions of their parents. Computer literacy should then be the process of building a critical understanding of both the technology and the world, on top of that technical competence.

Computers and Literacy

Having separated the ability to manipulate technology from the notion of computer literacy, it is time to talk about a new formulation of the notion of computer literacy. The view here is that computer literacy is the practice of making use of computer technology to find out and act on the information that computers make available. This view relies on the idea that computers are useful for holding discussions wherein the participants can come to know their own voice and where they can use that voice to make sense of their own history. The framework for this conceptualization of computer literacy comes from an interpretation of the work of Paolo Freire. Freire's notion of literacy is one that sees literate practice as a way of taking hold of the world one lives in and, through the process of naming the objects in that world, taking hold of that world as well. This argument centers on the use of the computer to enact an elaborated version of Freire's notion.

According to Freire, finding and speaking one's own voice in the act of naming the world is an act of profound political empowerment. It is an act of empowerment because it implies that some people do not sit passively while others make the decisions that affect their lives, those who speak are those who decide. In Freire's view, everyone has and should be permitted to speak and be heard. Implicit in this process is some forum for speaking. In the modern world, those platforms are sadly lacking. Computers and the information services they allow access to are one place where new platforms are opening up. This means that computer literacy is the ability to make use of computer technology for investigation of the world, and coordination and disagreement with others. Finding and using ones' voice ala Freire, Heath and Vasquez, implies the ability and opportunity to engage in the interpretation and reinterpretation of texts with others as a way of engaging in political action.

History exists in two places - in books and in peoples' minds (Cole, 1984). Freire talks about history as useful for shaping individual lives if that history is part of and relevant to the lives of the people who attempt to mobilize it. The importance of these notions of history and its usefulness for the practice of computer literacy as defined here is that the discussions this notion of computer literacy calls for would afford people the opportunity to come to understand their history in new ways that lie outside the history of William's "selective tradition" - history as recorded by others in books.

Part of learning one's own voice is learning what Macedo calls a "'language of possibility' [which enables] learners to recognize and understand their voices within a multitude of discourses in which they must deal" (Freire and Macedo 1987:54). Essentially what Freire and Macedo are calling for is a political plurality, in which the speaker learns both to distinguish his or her own voice and in which the speaker learns to respect the voices of others. What this activity requires is some place where one can put one's own voice in debate with others. The activities that take place on computer bulletin board systems and in other computer-mediated environments are an excellent place to experiment with and develop a voice.

There are a variety of reasons for this. One depends on the range of political beliefs on a given system, the wider the range the more opportunity for debate. But on any system there will be some measure of debate and the user will be called upon to defend his or her opinions. One of the interesting things about computer interaction in a well-distributed system is that anyone who participates will soon find themselves with both supporters and detractors. Posting political opinions, no matter how mild, almost always insures a response from both sides of the issue. The response of one's "friends" gives one the courage to continue and the criticisms of the others adds impetus to sharpen one's arguments.

If one takes the example of reading and writing words as the archetype literacy - literacy in its most basic sense - then computer literacy needs to be seen in its relation to reading and writing and the equally important relation between reading, writing and the creation and transmission of information. Computer literacy then, comes to encompass as well the ability to make use of computer technology to understand, store, retrieve and manipulate information, coupled with a critical understanding of the particular medium itself.

Computer literacy, like general literacy, should not be thought of as a specific set of skills (ala Hirsch or Havelock) which allow the student to read and write at some imagined level - i.e. the "sixth-grade level". Computer literacy is part of a process of opening a "writable" window on the world. [12] As Douglas Noble notes, computer literacy is not necessary for the daily lives of most people, but in Freirian terms, it is another way of writing the world.

Conclusion

Computers have a place in the daily political lives of the people of this country and any worthwhile definition of computer literacy should include the ability to use computers to enter into discussion with others. These discussions are not something that will be happening in at some idealized point in the future. USENET, Fido-net, Compuserve, The Source, Genie, Peacenet and the host of private bulletin-board systems across the country have already provided the technological services and social structure necessary to hold the discussions. Indeed, those discussions are already going on, all one needs to do is dial up and engage in the discussions.

Instead, we need to move beyond the attempts to define "computer literacy". In the first place the attempt is the imposition of a metaphor that doesn't work as it stands. As Larsen notes: "we do not talk about 'book', 'pencil', or 'typewriter literacy' in the case of reading and writing - the physical realization of the technology is less important than its psychological contents" (Larsen 1985:95). More to my point, since we do not speak of a carpenter as being hammer-and-saw literate, or as wood-literate, neither should we speak of someone with a good technical command of computers as computer literate. The more accurate term is technical competency. The notion of literacy should come out of the ability of a person to make use of the information that any technology makes available, including that which they can access through computers.

Computers are definitely a part of this process. Computers have, or make available, access to a wide variety of information. Libraries have come to rely more and more on computerized cataloging. Many private computer companies like The Source and Compuserve have on-line educational and professional databases available for a fee. With the advent of fiber-optic cable in homes, more will come (Horwitz 1989). Computer literacy as it is conceptualized here is a necessary part of gaining useful access to these services. Literacy, in not-strictly Freirian terms means understanding and reshaping the world. Computers are a very powerful technology that can be put to use in the service of those goals, just as they can be put to use to suppress them. It's time that the skill of manipulating technology was separated from the cognitive ability to rethink the world. In the separation what both of them mean is likely to come into sharper focus. This focus, and the ways in which computer technology is mobilized in the service of rethinking life is nicely summed up by a quote from William Golding:

Our humanity, our capacity for living together in a full and fruitful life, does not reside in knowing things for the sake of knowing them or even in the power to exploit our surroundings. At best these are hobbies and toys - adult toys, and I for one would not be without them. Our humanity rests in the capacity to make value judgements, unscientific assessments, the power to decide that this is right, that wrong, this ugly, that beautiful, this just, that unjust. Yet these are precisely the questions which `Science' is not qualified to answer with its measurement and analysis. They can be answered only by the methods of philosophy and the arts. We are confusing the immense power which the scientific method gives us with the all-important power to make the value judgements which are the purpose of human education (Golding 1967:130)