First-Hand:Educational Technology
Submitted by A. Michael Noll
February 11, 2025
When I went to Washington in 1971 to join the staff of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) at the Executive Office of the President, I was only 32 years old – naïve, inexperienced, and an idealistic believer in technology as the solution to all our problems. I believed that digital computers could reform education as an educational tool.
Dr. John M. Mays (1923-2011) was at the OST and was its expert on matters dealing with education. I told him of my belief in the advantages of digital computers as an educational tool. John, who seemed senior and somewhat imposing, told me to read some books about education, such as “Up the Down Staircase” and “Summerhill.” John wanted me to learn that the broader problems and challenges to education involved institutional and other factors that could not be reformed through the use of computer technology. I became less a true believer for the use of digital computers in education.
When the New Technological Opportunities Program (NTOP) was instituted in the early 1970s, the Director of the OST (Dr. Edward E. David, Jr.) told me to prepare a proposal for an initiative to introduce computers into classrooms so students could learn about programming. Dr. John G. Truxal (a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn) was a proponent of computers in education, and assisted my work on drafting the proposal. In the end, sanity prevailed at the White House and the Office of Management and Budget, along with the realization that technology was not the solution for the Nation’s problems -- the NTOP was abolished – its doors closed. I became more skeptical of technology as the solution to every problem.
John Mays was a believer in the need for national standards and measures of education and its quality and performance across the states, and also research to improve the quality of teaching. He went from the OST to the National Institute of Education (NIE) within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW), and then to the Department of Education (DOE), when its was carved from the DHEW around 1980.
John retired from government and had a home in Malibu, California, where I would visit him for dinner during my years at the University of Southern California. In his later years, John advocated the use of computers for educational purposes, and seemed to have abandoned his earlier skepticism from when he was at the OST. But he always believed in the importance of education and research to improve teaching and learning. He had challenging influence on my thinking and I miss him, his witty comments, and our dinners in Malibu.
