I’ve been watching a fishing program on TV. When I used to fish, as a small boy in Hong Kong, I used the local idea of fishing tackle- monofilament line, sinker and hook. That was it. We used to see people using fishing rods and wonder what that was about. I think I’ve figured it out now. Here’s what I believe are the most commonly believed functions of a rod.

1. Distance. If you’re fishing from the shore, or for that matter a boat, a rod allows you to dangle a line further away from you than your arm’s length. Since this takes the line away from tangles and gives you a greater area of water to explore, it’s an undeniable advantage of a rod.

2. Casting. It’s true that with a rod, you can cast the bait or lure further than by throwing; although not by much- air resistance is important, and a skilled hand liner can throw a baited line quite far enough for most conditions.

3. Speed. Some freshwater fishermen, and some tuna fishermen, use rods with fixed lines (no reels). The freshwater fishermen use lines approximately the same length as the rod. By simply lifting the rod, the fish is brought inevitably to the hand, making the process of bringing the fish as simple as a flick of a wrist. Tuna fishermen have lines the appropriate length to allow them to haul the tuna up out of the water, overhead and into the hold, where the barbless hook releases itself and the fisherman flicks the lure back into the water behind the boat to immediately catch the next fish in the school. No hand or reel technique can rival the speed of these fixed line rods.

4. Some vaguely held belief about preventing line breakage, ‘playing the fish’, helping with reeling a fish in. This is almost entirely unfounded. If you genuinely want to catch a fish, use a line that won’t break for the biggest fish you’re likely to catch. One of the most prized sport fish in the world, the bluefin tuna, is commercially caught on longlines that are stronger than the fish is able to pull. There is perhaps an argument that some fish have fragile mouths, and the rod softens the stresses of a struggling fish, making the hook less likely to pull out. But that’s about it. Modern sport fishing reels, with their drag settings, can be adjusted to release line well before the the breaking strain is reached, so the prime reason is certainly not the prevention of line breakage. Mountain climbers want to prevent line breakage. They don’t rope together via rods! I do accept that for the largest fish, there is an issue of fatigue, and it would be folly even with really good gloves to pull in a struggling tuna by hand, but the rod fishermen use reels that are essentially winches. There’s no reason not to use winches with appropriate drag settings.

These reasons, I believe are trivial compared with the main reason ordinary ’sport’ fishermen use rods. The biggest reason is that of self delusion. A rod makes a struggling fish appear to be much bigger than it really is.

Consider, for the sake of argument, a rod which is held by both hands, 30cm apart. Imagine that the rod extends 3m beyond the further hand. This is essentially a lever– a very long crowbar. If the fisherman is on a boat, and holds the rod horizontally, and a fish pulls vertically downwards with a force of 10N, he would have to balance this with a force downwards of 100N from the hand on the butt end of the rod, and upwards with a force of 110N with the other hand. As he is pulling a fish up from the depths, his attention will be on the hand pulling up- he will be pulling upwards with over 10x the force that the fish is pulling down. By contrast, the handliner catching the same fish will feel the real pull from the fish- a mere 10N!

I would suggest that the millions of sport fishermen all over the world, and especially those who use rods fishing from boats for dinner sized fish, are using extremely expensive gear, primarily to make fish appear larger than they really are. Am I being unfair?

What’s this got to do with computers and teaching? Well, I believe that in our complex modern lives there are many things that we use all the time, but we don’t know why we use them and what good they do us. 

My family car has an automatic gearbox with P R N D 3 2 1 ice and sport settings. Because I’m that sort of guy, I know what each setting means and when to use it. One of my cars has ABS and the other does not, and I know how to brake with either. It’s perfectly possible to drive the car with only the knowledge that R is reverse, D is forward, and the big pedal slows it down.

It is also possible to think that IT is unequivocally good for education- that investments in IT in schools will lead automatically to educational transformation, and in a good way. And to think that if results aren’t immediately apparent, the reason is that the school didn’t invest in enough training. All I’m trying to say is that if fishermen might not know what a rod does, or if drivers might not understand 7 out of 9 settings of their gearbox, or how to make their car stop as quickly as possible, how can we allow obvious complacency in educational IT to go unchallenged? Can we be sure that IT in schools is for teaching and learning, or should we assume that the only certainty is that it is for the profit of vendors? Can we be sure that investment in interactive whiteboards is more cost effective than investment in teaching manpower?