Clinton Pledges To Get Every Classroom Wired

In this vote-rich land of morning fog and microchips, President Clinton pledged his support Thursday for connecting every classroom in the country to the Internet with modern computers by the year 2000, and announced a project sponsored by private companies to get started toward that goal in California.

“Tens of millions of parents all across our nation have watched their children play every kind of video game from Mortal Kombat and Primal Rage to Killer Instinct and Super Streetfighter,” the president told students and computer industry executives at the Exploratorium science museum here. “But the really important computer game in America is learning, and we are going to put it at the disposal of every child in this country by the end of the century.”

Making the announcement on connecting the state’s schoolchildren to the Internet amounted to a bit of political one-upmanship against the Republican governor, Pete Wilson, who has been traveling around the country in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

Clinton’s pronouncement was short on details, and aides said he would announce the specifics of how he proposes to achieve his nationwide goal through joint federal-industry efforts this fall.

But he sketched the highlights of an effort, sponsored by private computer and communications companies in this state, that aides said would cost several million dollars and aim to connect one-fifth of all public and private school classrooms in California to a nationwide computer network this year.

The president made his comments on the fourth day of a five-day political and fund-raising swing that has taken him from Philadelphia to Florida to an unseasonably early snowstorm that delayed his departure from Denver on Wednesday night.

The school computer program is part of a broader White House effort to emphasize support for education and high technology as the keys to economic security.