This letter requested Asst. Secretary Senese consider classroom teachers’ concerns related to the use of computers in the classroom. The letter also included the NEA Special Report on Instructional Technology which spelled out clearly the ability of computers to program students thinking using Pavlovian methods. Excerpt follows: “The profession will be faced once again with the challenge of leadership-by example and by effective communication-the challenge of convincing the public that education is much more than treating students like so many Pavlovian dogs, to be conditioned and programmed into docile acceptance of a do-it yourself blueprint of the Good Life. The problems associated with technology, in the final analysis, are problems of freedom and control. Whose freedom? Whose control?
Download NEA Letter to Donald Senese from Robert Snider-Instructional and Prof Dev-1982