This paper is based on a 1988-89 international cooperative study funded by the Harold Macmillan Trust. Teachers and officials in several African, Asian and Arabic-speaking countries worked with the authors in describing and evaluating how computers arrived in their schools and what the machines are used for. Considerable data on national policy and practice came from China, Kenya, Jordan, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe. Drawing on these reports and other sources covering 23 developing nations, mainly Eastern Hemisphere, the authors wrote "Computers in Third World Schools" (Macmillan Press, May 1990). This paper: (1) analyzes the position facing developing Third World governments seeking a strong rationale for computer education and reviews four rationales: the Social, Vocational, Pedagogical, and Catalytic; (2) offers a critique of findings of the UNESCO Congress on Computers in Education in Paris in April 1989; and (3) asks whether dependency and unequal education are inevitable--in computer education--for Third World countries. (Author/DB)