Around the globe, students 'do worse with computers' but better with books

An interesting article in the UK Guardian that's relevant to our recent class discussions:

An international study of about 100,000 15-year-olds in 32 different developed and developing countries suggests that the drive to equip an increasing number of schoolchildren in the UK with computers may be misplaced.

In a report to be given at the conference of the Royal Economic Society in Nottingham this week, Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann of Munich University say the research shows diminished performance in students with computers.

'Holding other family characteristics constant, students perform significantly worse if they have computers at home,' it says.

'This may reflect the fact that computers at home may actually distract students from learning, both because learning with computers may not be the most efficient way of learning and because computers can be used for other aims than learning.'

But if computers don't help then plenty of books at home do. The authors of the report found that 'students with more than 500 books in their homes performed better in maths and science than those with none'.