From: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: seattle.general
Subject: Re: SCREW - Support Citizen Reform of Educa
Date: 24 Jan 93 00:02:48 GMT
Reply-To: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Distribution: seattle
Organization: Zortech, Seattle

In article <C12qvE.7uI@bcstec.ca.boeing.com> hall@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Robert J. Hall) writes:
/>       Classrooms have worked for
/>       a thousand years with a teacher, blackboard, and a room. Adding
/>       technology only provides another excuse for non-performance.
/The national classroom allows you to recruit the best lecturers for each
/topic - thereby improving the student's interest and attentiveness. The role
/of the teacher will then become one of answering questions, rather than 
/talking to a bunch of half-awake students. Computers are also great for

And the students won't sleep through the video?

/repetitive learning - especially when the citizenry is unwilling to pay for
/the alternative of a low teacher/student ratio.

Yeah, I saw once on TV a plug for how computer aided instruction was so great
because a student could "go back over a lesson if he didn't get it the first
time". I thought, "just like a book!"

/Granted, the old ways worked great - for the 1950's. Now we are competing with
/the rest of the world and we need every edge we can get.

I recommend we return to the old ways. Our national academic performance has
been declining since the 50's. There is no magic, there is Reading, Writing,
and 'Rithmetic. It's pointless to expect a computer to magically transform
a student who can't read the screen, can't type in a command, and cannot
formulate a problem that the computer can solve.

/My experience with Calculators in high school, college, and onward, is that
/they do not hinder learning - and may in fact encourage some less academically
/inclined students to remain interested in their work.

I'd claim that a calculator is useless to someone who doesn't know the
multiplication tables, and who doesn't know the mathematical basis of %.
(I've heard cries from people who couldn't figure % because their calculator
didn't have a % key, sigh.)

/IMHO, computers are not important due to their number-crunching capability,
/but because of their infinite patience and networking capability. They are
/also going to be everywhere in a few years and the kids might as well start
/getting used to them.

When the schools manage to teach the 3 Rs, then we can talk about extras.

/While I agree that technology by itself will not improve our education system,
/when included as part of a solid reform package, they are great 'force
/multipliers'. (To use a military adage.)

Another reason why I am disinclined to believe computers will help matters is
because computers are fragile machines. If you get a bunch of expensive
computers in the classroom, I expect that students will treat them with the
same respect they treat their lockers and books, i.e. probably less than 10%
will be functioning at any one time. When I was in school, I remember how
well the film projectors kept functioning, and they were only handled by the
teachers! (It was tough to find *any* that worked.)

Ok, enough complaining, here's my (boring) proposal:
o	Switch to a voucher system.
o	Hold students accountable for failure, instead of blaming everything
	but them for failure to achieve.
o	Have some obvious recognition for success. For instance, when I
	graduated from high school ('75), the Valedictorian and Salutatorian
	were not mentioned in the yearbook, in fact, the entire yearbook
	was on the sportsTrges om (Dbermodems Re: Te