Abstract
ERIC and NCTE combined, in 1983, to produce a small, fifty-page booklet giving English teachers the no-nonsense lowdown on the use of computers for instruction.Its name was straightforward, Computers in the English Classroom , and its advice was traditional.After mentioning various drill and practice and record-keeping possibilities, the document informed us, with time-honored NCTE gentleness, that "the value of the computer lies in the fact that it provides one more tool for the teacher to use."It then made what seems to me a manifesto of sorts."[The computer] frees the teacher from certain mundane chores so that instructional time is better utilized."Isn't this the way most of us have always thought about computers, as mechanical servants which can take over "certain mundane chores" so that we can get to the higher-level stuff?When you think about it, the idea is not all that comforting.It lies at the heart of the scary theory that computers intended to replicate low-level skills may someday co-opt skills considerably above the "mundane-chores" category so that the servant becomes the master or, at the very least, the master finds himself tailoring and limiting his activities for the convenience of the servant.The concept of a "servant-master" relationship between computer and human being suggests an anthropomorphic view of computers which, I think, channels our attitudes and severely limits our options in using computers.What I call the "Replacement Fallacy," the belief that computers are most successful when they are most human, hems us in between
- Journal
- Writing Center Journal
- Published
- 1987
- DOI
- 10.7771/2832-9414.1147
- CompPile
- Open Access
- OA PDF Gold
- Topics
-
- Export
- BibTeX RIS
Citation context
Cited by in this index (2)
-
Grimm (1995)Computers and Composition
-
Rodrigues et al. (1989)Computers and Composition
References (0)
No references on file for this article.
Related articles
-
Computers and Composition Jun 2026Evaluating students’ Coded animated stories as multimodal narrative composition in the middle school English curriculum ↗Len Unsworth
-
Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Jan 2026LinkedIn in Business and Technical Communication: A Textbook Analysis Grounded in Digital Literacy ↗Sarah Moore; Kathryn Lookadoo
-
Pedagogy Apr 2025modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism african american rhetorics cultural rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy basic writing graduate education two-year college teacher development writing centers technical communication professional writing labor and working conditions digital rhetoric multimodality social media literacy studies race and writing gender and writing community literacy literary studies editorial matter
-
Business and Professional Communication Quarterly Mar 2025Fadi Bou Reslan; Jihad El Hokayem
-
Computers and Composition Dec 2024“Wayfinding” through the AI wilderness: Mapping rhetorics of ChatGPT prompt writing on X (formerly Twitter) to promote critical AI literacies ↗Anuj Gupta; Ann Shivers-McNair