THE VIRGINIA State Senate currently is considering instituting a technology requirement for all students. While the idea of making all students technologically literate sounds fairly innocuous at first, it actually is a misguided idea.
The main impetus for this proposal is a resolution by the Senate, which calls for a group of government officials to study the possibility of developing a technology curriculum. This curriculum would include an across-the-board set of technical competency requirements for all university and college students throughout the Commonwealth.
This joint resolution passed the Senate unanimously -- who would vote that Virginia's students should be technologically illiterate? Computer Science Department Chairman John A. Stankovic summed up the general feeling when he said, "For a university to be a great university in the 21st century it has to be technologically advanced. I would love to see a requirement." ("Students could face technology requirements," The Cavalier Daily, April 6.)
That sounds nice, but the actual implementation of such a policy would be a waste of students' time. The first reason is that most University students are already technologically literate. Even a student majoring in an inherently "non-technical" major, such as philosophy, uses word processing programs, e-mail and the Internet at some point. Most students do not need much more than this, and these functions are all fairly self-explanatory. An entire class is not needed to teach students how to compose e-mail, or how to italicize a word on Microsoft Word.
A class that required more than those basics, such as programming, would be unnecessary for most students. Students who do need to program, like engineers, will already fulfill this requirement many times over.
A logistical problem is that there are currently only 200 slots available outside of the Engineering School for computer literacy courses. This figure will be raised to 500 next year, but this will not be anywhere close to what is needed for every student to fulfill this requirement. Presumably, more classes and teachers would be required to fill this need.
It is inevitable that some of the computer literacy courses offered will be "guts." When students are forced to fulfill a requirement, they have a magical ability to find those guts and overload them. A technology requirement would be no different.
Requiring students to take easy computer literacy classes would be even sillier than with other requirements. Since most of the students will already be technologically literate, the class will be a complete waste of time. This would be a detriment to the teacher as well -- it is difficult to care when your students don't.
University students certainly do not need more requirements clogging up their schedules. At the University, where the principles of student self-governance are so highly esteemed, students should be given the freedom to govern their own schedules. Course requirements are already unnecessary, and do not need to be expanded further.
It cannot be denied that a small segment of the student population will arrive at the University as computer illiterates. The solution is not to force all students to take computer literacy courses. The solution is to offer a few more computer courses that are available to non-Engineering students, which the University is already doing for next year. Students have the intelligence to know whether they personally need to take a basic computer literacy course or not.
When this requirement was discussed by officials at the University in the past, there was not much interest. Now it is being dictated from above. In response to the current resolution, University spokeswoman Louise Dudley told The Cavalier Daily, "Normally, curriculum regulations are defined by the faculty of different schools. It is unusual to institute a requirement." This seems to be a diplomatic way of saying that the University does not appreciate the heavy-handed meddling of politicians who are not as intimately involved with the University.
The only real reason to make a technology competency requirement is so that our senators can turn to our parents and say, "Yes, the University is preparing your children for the Internet age of the 21st century!" The truth is that the University already does this. Students should not be inconvenienced by a misconceived policy simply to allow politicians to say they have fulfilled meaningless, syrupy promises to the voters of Virginia.
(Nick Higgins is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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