Hi Frank! Can you tell me more about the development of literacy in Ī© to S year olds? I've never studied that age range!
Sure.
In the earliest years of Ī© to S history, babies and small children were largely uneducated. They were "rudimentarily" literate in that they could write simple words, but they knew virtually no vocabulary except those words. (There are some records of "baby's first message," a handful of words read by computer screen and typed by the child at the age of one or two.)
The adults of the day were appalled by the technology. In one instance recorded by TLP historians, a man named Gerald Thrasher was quoted as saying,
the computer is the most hideous and vile creation of mankind. it makes a mockery of humanity, by claiming to "educate" our children when it is able only to substitute the primal "mimicry" of sign language for natural language, which we humans can learn on our ownā¦ the computer has brought about the death of learning; what it has shown us is that learning is not dependent on the machineā¦ this is a frightening thing, which must be combatted by every human alive.
Among other technologies, the machine that Thrasher and his contemporaries were concerned with was a rudimentary teaching machine called the "Askbot." The Askbot worked by waiting for the child to touch a touchscreen on which was projected a teaching animation. When the child touched the screen, the voice on the animation would speak, and the Askbot would analyze the utterance to make sure it was grammatical. (The Askbot didn't understand speech very well; sometimes it would get confused and misinterpret the utterance as the beginning of a new sentence, which would make the animation say something like "that's not grammatical. please try again.")
The Askbot worked on the principle that we understand language by observing it being used -- that we learn language (say) by hearing it spoken, and practice using it by speaking. This is a hard principle to do justice to when the machine is the one speaking. On the one hand, if the Askbot is not allowed to "speak," the child loses the opportunity to imitate sentences. On the other hand, if the Askbot speaks all the time, there is a danger that the "sentences" will be too simple for the child to imitate, and it will just pick up what seem to be "empty" strings of words -- which is exactly what happened. The Askbot had only a very rudimentary understanding of grammar (some of the time; sometimes it would "forget" some grammatical feature like tense). Thus the utterances it would produce could be (and often were) "grammatical" because they consisted of a series of correct syntactic sentences, each with a completely empty content. It was left to the child to fill the content in; when he failed to do so, the Askbot would "correct" him by ignoring him or saying "try again."
Thus, in this technology, "literacy" was never really meant to be a source of information or thought. "Literacy" was simply an ability to "parse" (produce grammatical utterances), and nothing else.
Nevertheless, babies and small children mastered this skill quickly and easily. When they were three, they could write (though not read) sentences like
House red, and cat yellow.
TLP historians speculate that it is easy for children to write such sentences because they are young enough to not worry much about "meaning"; it is not difficult, as an adult, to write a technically "grammatical" sentence (like this one), though it might be hard to say why one would want to write such a sentence -- but a child has no such adult mindset, and thus feels less constrained in its choice of subjects.
Increasingly, though, the computers were doing "real" things to children, trying to "educate" them as we understand education today. The Askbot was discontinued; in its place, a highly sophisticated keyboard and voice recognition were installed, which did not imitate adult speech at all, but were quite adept at language production and much better at parsing than the Askbot. These computers were able to "impose" complex grammatical forms on children (such as the ability to properly case-mark nouns), and probably "forced" them to learn many new nouns (these would never have come up in the course of ordinary conversation, only during formal lessons).
Instead of teaching words like "tap" or "house," now children were learning full-fledged sentences like
House purple, and tap green.
The adults of the time objected to this technology on the grounds that it was being used to teach children syntax instead of content, and that its expectations for "parsing" were becoming too advanced (demanding the children produce complete sentences, which they could not possibly understand, on command). Nevertheless, the technology was very effective; the kind of teaching done in Ī© to S was far more efficient than before, and children mastered the complex "nineteenth century" grammar much more easily than children in other parts of the world were doing. (This is one reason why the three-year-olds had such a leg up in the naming competition; the complex grammar "went over their heads," leaving them with a good grasp of its basics and making it very easy for them to describe the vast set of objects they came across in a technical, grammatical way.)
When the nineteenth century was over, many adults saw this technology as the first step to an inevitable culmination in a fully sentient artificial intelligence. Soon, they thought, computer programs would be perfectly adequate substitutes for teachers. The American government was sinking rapidly into debt. People began to fear what would happen if the government could no longer afford to support the education of young children.
Much of the opposition to the "teaching machines" came from the Catholic Church. The Church's anti-computer stance had become more radical during the war; it now held that all technology was contrary to the will of God. The presence of the machines in all schools, preaching the false doctrine of "education and technological progress," made it difficult to keep the Catholic children in the Church. The people who wanted to keep the Church functional needed to get the machines out of the schools.
But there was no broad consensus on this. For one thing, it was argued, the "teaching machines" were still a good substitute for human teachers, and they would be for quite some time -- perhaps for the rest of the century or longer. And although the children were learning the "grammar" of the nineteenth century, and not really learning much else, they were learning it. Of course it would be better if the children learned more than they were learning now, but it would be better for them to learn the "grammar" (which was after all "normal" grammar and thus an important part of the language) than it would be for them to learn nothing but superstitions and fables. Indeed, the "grammar" might be a good foundation for many other things that the children might learn later in life.
And it was not as though the machines were being used to impose "twentieth century" ideas -- or "nineteenth century" ideas, for that matter. The very worst that could be said about the machines is that their teaching was probably "too narrow" -- as were the lessons given by many human teachers. Some children had even suggested, albeit in the past tense, that the machines had "taught them about" various things -- had "taught them about 'tap' and 'house,'" for example -- but these were clearly fables. Still, if nothing else, the children were learning language.
Whatever the machines were teaching children, it was not "experience" -- and that is what most people want to see in their children, ultimately. Of course, humans can learn something by "experience," and if "experience" was what was being taught, perhaps that would be all to the good. (Of course, humans can also learn "experience" just by having experiences, without any teaching at all -- but then that would be a waste of time.)
A broad coalition formed, consisting of Catholics and all who felt uneasy at the rise of "technological progress." It had a very general agenda, which amounted to the claim that children should not be subjected to the "teaching machines," but instead should be kept in close contact with nature, taken out into the countryside, and given a well-rounded old-fashioned "human" education -- the kind of education they got from their human teachers before the nineteenth century. That way, they would have "experience."
This coalition got its name from a single speech, given on 12 November 1918 by a 42-year-old lawyer named Charles -- not Charles Graham, but Charles Hollis -- during the debate on education in the House of Representatives. It became known as the "Hollis Speech." Here are a few excerpts:
In my opinion, the children should be allowed to form their own ideas in a great many subjects, and should not be told, for example, that a certain thing is a thing. After all, whether a thing is a thing depends upon how you define the concept of "is."
