From: TYLERI@RHQVM03.VNET.IBM.COM
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Subject: (no subject given)
Date: 5 Nov 92 23:05:04 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Comments: To: ethics-l@uga.cc.uga.edu

Newsgroup: ethics-l
X-Post-Me: Yes
Subject: Education and the future (was: kids 'n 'puters)
From: tyleri@rhqvm03.vnet.ibm.com  (Irv Tyler)
Organization: ISSC (An IBM Company)
Disclaimer: This posting reflects only my personal views.
The recent thread about ethics and youngsters and computers in education
have triggered the following thoughts.  If this is not the proper newsgroup,
someone please point me to the more appropriate one: the full network
address, please.

I am about to make a very unorthodox and what I believe will initially
be taken as a contentious assertion:

    The state, that is, the people of these United States, are
    required by the very nature of our nation, from its very
    foundations, to create and maintain a system of financial
    aid to schools within *ALL* of its educational systems, both
    for children and for adults.

Although it may appear that at issue here is something as old and worn
and as fundamental as separation of church and state, I contend that this
is, in fact, not the case.  At issue here is a basic but simple concept:
that our nation succeeds or fails as a result of the exercise of the
electoral process, and the strength of that process is the strength of
an informed electorate.

There is nothing more fundamental to the "preservation of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness" which our founding fathers affirmed as the
basis for our form of government, nothing more fundamental to the rule of
law, nothing more fundamental to the orderly transferrence of power from
one administration to another, nothing more fundamental to the act of
establishing and implementing the laws without which there is no hope
of gaining and maintaining a satisfying and peaceful "mental and physical
space" around each one of us.  An informed electorate is our best, perhaps
our only promise of avoiding or repairing the efforts and effects of
demagoguery, civil disorder, radical corruption of our government, and
the hopeless despair that too many of our citizens find binds them, one
generation after another.

Just what do we mean by "an informed electorate"?  I contend that this
refers to the actualized potential within two segments in our society.
The first segment includes all those adults of voting age who are qualified
to vote.  The second segment includes all those children now below the
legal voting age who will become of voting age and qualified to vote.
Simply, an informed electorate will be made up of those people who are
otherwise qualified, who are capable of becoming informed and who become
so informed.

We have clearly established the principle that in order to have an
informed electorate we must provide the resources with which to accomplish
this.  We, in fact, require the use of these resources to educate and
thereby create that informed electorate.  Unfortunately, that which we
require we do not provide.

The growing number of our people who can not read, or write a proper
English sentence, or add a column of figures, or locate Poland on a map
attests to our failure.  The growing number of resident aliens who have
lived here for years and still can not speak or read English attests to
our failure.

Nowhere and at no time have we publicly defined, for purposes of creating an
informed electorate, that public education is the only acceptable teaching
environment.  Nowhere and at no time have we publicly insisted that the
*only* educated mind is one which is "untainted" by religious teachings.
Nowhere is it publicly stated that we, the people, the nation, may not
teach adults so that they may become part of an informed electorate.  What,
then, am I saying?

  The Schools

     It is not an issue of support of religion and it is not an
     issue of public versus private schools but an issue of
     creating and maintaining an informed electorate that really
     must control the decision to provide school aid for children
     in *ALL* accredited schools, since these all are required to
     provide the level of secular education that we define as the
     minimum for an informed electorate.

     It is not an issue of support of religion and it is not an
     issue of public versus private schools but an issue of
     creating and maintaining an informed electorate that really
     must control the decision to provide bus transportation for
     children no matter what type of *accredited* school they
     attend: public religious, private, conventional, experimental.

  The Students

     It is not a matter of "legal age" but an issue of creating and
     maintaining an informed electorate that really must control the
     decision to provide evening school facilities and teaching
     resources for working adults who require remedial instruction
     in the basics, or who have, for whatever reason, an inadequate
     facility in English by which the overwhelming number of this
     nation's citizens conduct business and acquire the breadth of
     information that is necessary for them to become members of an
     informed electorate.

     It is not a matter of "legal age" but an issue of creating and
     maintaining an informed electorate that really must control the
     decision to provide evening school facilities and teaching
     resources for working adults who have, for whatever reason,
     inadequate essential reasoning skills that are necessary in a
     member of an informed electorate for recognizing demagoguery and
     political fluff and camouflage, for evaluating political hyperbole
     and misdirection, for considering issues and alternatives, etc.

The educational and social record of this nation in this century shows
us how poor a job we are doing in building and maintaining an informed
electorate.  We, as a nation, and the leaders in whom we have placed our
trust, must finally give this issue, this need, the high priority which
it merits.  Truly, the future of this country and the good it is capable
of performing will not outlast an electorate of misinformed and uninformed
and illiterate and unprepared people.

And I believe this is also an ethical issue.
Irv Tyler
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU