Behind the annual drive to collect Tesco vouchers for computers in schools, there is an unquestioned assumption that the sooner children start learning on computers, the better. Any child who doesn't have a computer at home or the classroom is nearly seen as "disadvantaged".

Over three years, the Department of Education and Science is investing £85 million in information and communication technology (ICT) for our children. The Department of Education wants at least one computer for every eight children at primary level and one for every five children at second level. Eighty per cent of Irish teachers have now had some training in ICT - a far higher proportion than in the US and elsewhere in Europe.

In fact, schools are already so well equipped that James Morrissey, director of the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE), sees the Tesco drive as "unnecessary" and a "distraction" - though he supports schools' rights to decide for themselves.

Parents and teachers alike are so entranced by ICT that nobody is asking the obvious question: what proof have we got that computers are good for our children?

The answer is none. Thirty years of research has found no positive impact on children from computer based learning, according to the Alliance for Childhood, an international partnership of educators, health professionals, parents, and other child advocates who are concerned about the pressures on today's children to grow up in a hurry.

"Hundreds of millions are being spent worldwide on ICT, yet there is a scarcity of research to show it is actually is enhancing learning in the classroom," Morissey admits. He says he is convinced, nonetheless, that there is so much positive potential in ICT that it would be "foolish to ignore it" merely due to a lack of affirmative research.

However, developmental experts are expressing serious concerns that computers may actually have a negative impact, particularly in the early childhood and primary years. Among the signatories of the Alliance for Childhood's call for a moratorium on the introduction of ICT in US schools were child psychiatrists Alvin Poussaint of Harvard Medical School and Marilyn Benoit of Howard University Hospital; Andy Baumgartner, the 1999 National Teacher of the Year and Professor Larry Cuban of Stanford University, a former president of the American Educational Research Association.

Our own Department of Education has no such doubts, having invested heavily in ICT - £25 million on computer equipment and £60 million on enhancement of that equipment through projects such as the interactive website Scoilnet (which gets one million hits per month), plus £6 million per year on running costs. The huge confidence the Department has in ICT seems to ignore the fact that the investment is being made in something that has no predictable positive outcome - and may even conceivably be harmful.

It's impossible to escape the conclusion that our children are a generation of guinea pigs for computer-based learning. As their minds are moulded in a computer-friendly shape, their future spending loyalties are being formed as well. Microsoft, for today's child, is as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola.

Computers are reshaping our children's lives - at home and at school - in profound and unexpected ways. Computers pose serious hazards to children: repetitive stress injuries, eyestrain, obesity, potential radiation damage, social isolation and, for some, longterm physical, emotional or intellectual developmental damage. That what's the Alliance for Childhood claims in its report, Fool's Gold: A Critical Look at Computers in Childhood.

It states: "Those who place their faith in technology to solve the problems of education should look more deeply into the needs of children. The renewal of education requires personal attention to students from good teachers and active parents. . . It requires commitment to developmentally appropriate education and attention to the full range of children's real low-tech needs - physical, emotional and social, as well as cognitive . . .

"Children need stronger personal bonds with caring adults. Yet powerful technologies are distracting children and adults from each other."

Colleen Cordes, editor of the report, told The Irish Times from her office in Washington DC that from her observation of computers in classrooms, what appears to be "motivational" in the beginning can become "mesmerising" once the novelty has worn off - particularly for difficult children who teachers will stick in front of a computer because it keeps them quiet.

"Children need time for active, physical play; hands-on lessons of all kinds, especially in the arts; and direct experience of the natural world," Cordes says. These are the areas educators should be spending money on, Cordes argues. "The hoopla about computers is diverting time, attention and money from what are proven early learning essentials: active, physical, creative play. There is strong research evidence that active, hands-on play bears fruit in later academic achievements. Children first learn in the body the things they later learn to reason out."

Child-development experts emphasise that moving in three dimensional space stimulates both sensory and intellectual development. According to educational psychologist Jane Healy, author of Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds - for Better and Worse (New York: Simon and Schuster), research with physically disabled children suggests that those who are restricted in freely moving around and applying all of their senses to exploring the world are at higher risk of developmental delays in seemingly unrelated mental abilities, such as comprehending abstract verbal concepts.

Dr Stanley I Greenspan, author of The Growth of the Mind and the Endangered Origins of Intelligence and former director of the Clinical Infant Development Program at the US National Institute of Mental Health, says "an emphasis on computers in childhood exacerbates the tendency for our increasingly rushed and impersonal culture to harm the emotional development of children. That will take a toll on their intellectual, social and moral development as well, because emotions guide human learning and behavior."

Reading on an adult's lap encourages a child to reflect and discuss in ways proven to nurture literacy. Software programmes which illustrate the story demand action - and have not been proven to enhance reading skills.

This impersonal "interaction", coupled with a paucity of real interaction with parents, enthusiastic teachers and other mentors, will lead, he predicts, to "increasing levels of violence and extremism and less collaboration and empathy".

In Fool's Gold, Cordes and her colleagues challenge "the popular image of the child's mind as a `biological computer' to be jumpstarted . . . We are being sold on the idea of an upgrade to childhood itself. Children are pushed to master much more, much sooner than ever before."

Jerome Morrissey is critical of the Alliance for Childhood report for having, he says, an "agenda" which assumes that technology is damaging. Rather than isolating children and young people, he says, ICT is helping students and teachers to develop "new and more positive relationships in terms of learning.

"I don't agree that computers depersonalise. It's not about a child sitting isolated in front of a computer - it's about teamwork and sharing," he insists.

Currently working with the OECD to develop quality criteria for ICT in schools, Morrissey says teachers must provide a context for the technology. "Our own experience is that ICT and open ended software encourage creative thinking and originality, rather than restrict it. It's all in the way teachers are trained to use ICT. Teacher-training is what it is all about."

The Alliance for Childhood report also concludes that computers are only as good as the teachers who use them.

In Ireland, 13 primary schools (see accompanying article) are using a computer-programming language, "Logo", developed by Seymour Papert, co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Papert has been particularly influential in promoting the use of computers by young children. Colleen Cordes says the MIT initiative is "designed for training children to think in ways that appear more mechanistic than childlike".

Papert's own explanation of Logo doesn't appear to disagree: "I have invented ways to take educational advantage of the opportunities to master the art of deliberately thinking like a computer, according, for example, to the stereotype of a computer program that proceeds in a step-by-step, literal, mechanical fashion . . ."

Cordes wonders if young children really can differentiate between their own human thinking and the powerful operations of a machine and, she asks: "Is it even fair to impose such a task upon them?" It's a good question, especially when there is no hard, objective evidence that it will enhance their learning anyway.

But the fundamental question is simpler: why are we spending so much of our money and our children's time on computers when we don't really know the effect they will have?

For the full report see www.allianceforchildhood.net