High Tech, High Stakes Educating Today’S Young Involves Dealing With New Challenges And Uncertainties
At a recent public meeting in Spokane, a technology expert from the state Superintendent of Public Instruction’s office unveiled the Washington state “Technology Plan for K-12 Schools.”
The appointed committee members who created this plan are educational movers and shakers, business representatives from Battelle, Boeing and the Washington Business Roundtable, and two legislators, both Democrats.
A Boeing representative at the meeting made his pitch for the ideal worker of the 21st century: the “collaborative,” non-competitive, team-playing, groupthinking employee of tomorrow. But many employers and parents prefer self-reliance, and the kind of personal integrity that, if necessary, is able to stand against the crowd on principle.
Much time at the meeting was devoted to a “gap analysis” of what public schools have, what they need, and how to move from where they are to where they want to be - what it will cost and creative ways to fund it. In other words, more taxes.
The estimated costs of bringing a typical Washington classroom up to the “best practices and technology” is a whopping $53,988, more than $2,000 for every student in the state. These hefty expenditures will purchase computers, software, etc., so all classrooms and students can be electronically linked within Washington as well as globally.
Should students “cruise the Internet”?
Perhaps, but consider this. The Internet is a vast global network that permits computers of many kinds to interact like one giant computer. Who will guarantee Johnny or Jane will not access a porno-pal or run up a $4,000 phone bill for the district by mistake, infochatting with Japan?
Time magazine’s recent cover story on the Internet reports it is very difficult to block anything out, thus the potential for minors to access pornographic material “is clearly an embarrassment to the Clinton administration, which has been trying to make a virtue of getting the Internet into schools.”
Will the system be accountable to parents for where “in the world” their children have been?
Another important part of the technology plan includes records the state will keep on students and families. No guarantees have been forthcoming from educational leaders regarding privacy of electronic records. The 1994 Grassley Amendment to the federal Goals 2000 plan, gives students and parents legal recourse if invasion of privacy or the use of psychotherapeutics occurs without full prior informed consent, but it applies only to federally funded programs.
Public enthusiasm for this plan will depend on trust in the educational establishment to deliver on its promises, and taxpayer willingness to pay for it. Parents and taxpayers who have soured on the school system that brought us “invented spelling” want assurance children can identify misspelled words before they are taught which computer button to push for “spell checker.”
Credibility may be a bigger problem than the educational leaders realize in selling this plan to the taxpaying public.