ABSTRACT
Educational debates are increasingly limited to technical issues. In a number of countries, educational officials and policy-makers, legislators, curriculum workers, and others have been subject to immense pressure to make the ‘needs’ of business and industry the primary goals of the school system. Economic and ideological pressures have become rather intense and often very overt. High quality educational software is almost non-existent in our elementary and secondary schools. One significant social and ideological outcome of computer requirements in schools, then, is that they can serve as a means ‘to justify those lost lives by a process of mass disqualification, which throws the blame for disenfranchisement in education and employment back on the victims themselves.’ Educators can be guided by the critical positions on the introduction and use of the new technology that have been taken by some of the more progressive unions in a number of countries.
