This question was posed by Robert Pearlman at the conference in his paper, " Can K-12 Education Drive on the Information Superhighway?" Were I still a teacher at Eli Whitney Regional Vocational Training School in Hamden, Connecticut , this question would cause me great concern. Not only does it attack the validity of traditional education practices..it presupposes that the need for teachers will diminish as technology, as it relates to the National Information Infrastructure (NII), becomes more sophisticated and widespread.

I submit to Dr. Pearlman that his query deserves a definitive answer...and that answer is as follows: The possibility of schools operating more effectively with fewer teachers would only be of use if there ceased to be a need for expertise in the area of telecommunications, informational systems, adult interactive role modeling and in the creative aspects of the dynamic emerging technologies .  We must also not forget that someone still needs to teach ' reading, writing, and rithmetic'. Has the need for more hamburgers diminished the need for workers in the McDonald food chain?

In fact , the expanding need for quickly communicated information over great distances in shorter timeframes is increasing the necessity for not only teachers...but for a whole cadre of teachers to teach teachers how to teach others to use the computer and its related periphery! There are , however, a few theories floating around of interest that are on the drawing board and in various stages of testing throughout the United States. Before I began to pontificate upon the advantages and disadvantages of the Global Village School and the 'shamrock organizations;' let us first take a look at some things that are happening in today’s traditional school houses. I will concentrate on inner city schools with comparisons from time to time with suburban counterparts.
 

"Teachers Operate in a Factory Type Environment with High Noise Levels "

Robert Pearlman, a private consultant and speaker at the conference, may or may not have experienced education through the eyes of a secondary school teacher. The average teacher today operates in a factory type environment where the noise level is excessively high. Shootings in and around the school occur on the average of about twice a year. Cursing , swearing, and disrespect are the norm for roughly forty-five percent of the students. Teachers lives are threatened; tires are slashed; pocket books are stolen, and armed gang members stalk the hallways uncontested. Fights and near fights are an everyday occurrence. A student at a suburban Connecticut High School took a rifle to the top the school and began firing random shoots. Students were fired on in the doorway of one New Haven school while two gang members were found shot to death adjacent to the school grounds at another. A teacher was shot and killed at the same school while the life of a female teacher was threatened at gunpoint at Eli Whitney High School in adjoining Hamden, CT. I don't think Robert Pearlman has had to deal with levels of stress that teachers at these schools have had to deal with. Multiply these incidents a hundred fold and you have a New York Public School. Multiply by seventy-five and you can visualize the chaos at a Washington, D.C. school. I will refer mainly to the schools in Connecticut for two reasons. (1) I taught in the State Vocational School System there for a period of five years and (2) This State has produced a judicial system that set back the civil rights clock more than forty years and has a governor who presents the State's attorney with a bottle of Champaign for what he term a 'victory' for aiding Hartford schools in maintaining a 'separate but equal' educational school system. Incidentally, Hartford, the State's Capitol, recently initiated a new educational paradigm under the auspices of the 'Edison Project' which is unsuccessful at best.

Pearlman, a sophisticated private consultant who has the ear of public , governmental and corporate bosses, is not one of those 'imbeciles drinking champagne' around the Statehouse in Hartford, Connecticut. His article indicates that he is knowledgeable of the NII and has thoroughly and efficiently analyzed many of the problems associated with universal access of K-12 educational plants to the telecommunications/infrastructure on ramps.He is a highly competent consultant with only one major flaw underlying the motifs in his assessment of how K-12 schools should deal with the issue of telecommunications He has not been there as a teacher during the 1990s.
 

" Had Pearlman 'Been There' He Would Have Known Better "

Had Pearlman 'been there' he would know that in addition to the aforementioned disadvantages that teachers experience in the public schools concerned with disciplinary problems; they are grossly over-burdened with paper work and in many instances saddled with administrators who view themselves as plantation type bosses with teachers as merely whipping post or lackeys. Classes , for the most part, are overcrowded and quality teaching time is close to non-existent. This lack of sympathy for the plight of the teacher on the part of many administrators may find its roots in their fear of being sacked or disciplined for showing any disatisfaction in administrative policies and mandates. In a word, teaching for the most part during the nineties had regressed to a profession that spends most of its time 'baby-sitting ' a group of students who, in general, could care less about learning the three 'Rs'. or anything else.

If anything, there should be at least two teachers in every classroom. One to baby-sit and the other to facilitate the subject matter. In fact, the ideal situation would add another entity to the mix...a computer literate secretary to deal with the mounting mountain of paper work associated with evaluations, lesson plans, grade sheets, disciplinary slips, and periodic reports. If our colleges and universities told the truth about the pitfalls of teaching grades K-12, during freshman orientation week, Pearlman's desire to cut down on the amount of teachers would be realized. No student in their right mind would pursue a career where they put their life on the line every time they walk into a schoolhouse. If Pearlman thinks I'm joking; he should spend one week as a substitute teacher in a secondary school located in a city with a population of more than 100,000.

Computer illiterate administrators do not create an atmosphere for computer literacy. Computer illiterate teachers do not facilitate an atmosphere for learning about computers.In fact , in many schools the students in general are computer literate while their teachers, in general ,  are not. My initial steps into the world of computer literacy were prompted by students playing electronic games in my classes. Students are not blind. Many of them have computers in their homes and have the expertise to create sophisticated computer applications using a variety of developmental tools such as FoxPro. Some are adept at desk top publishing using Pagemaker and/or Quark Express and can relate in several program languages. They live on the internet and take time out from 'surfing the net' to attend something called school for seven hours a day. Teachers believe these students do not want to learn anything. They definitely want to learn but they can't be taught by computer illiterate teachers using methods learned  prior the 'age of light'.
 

Computer Illiterate Administrators Create an Atmosphere for Illiteratcy

Computer illiterate ' idiots drinking champagne around the Statehouse'; computer illiterate administrators carrying out the mandates of these 'idiots drinking champagne'; computer illiterate teachers and computer illiterate parents blaming teachers trying to teach computer literate students how to learn does not a good telecommunications/infrastructure setting make.That is what makes Pearlman's questions vadid ones. He errs only in assuming that the crux of the problem lies with the teachers.Take away the human, nurturing element in an educational setting and all you have left is an undisciplined mob of individuals with disoriented objectives and non-existent goals. With these elements under full consideration, let us now turn to other well-founded questions and premises formulated by Pearlman.

(1)Pearlman states, " that the goal should be 'universal ' participation on the superhighway by the all of the nations students and teachers; (2) the governments goal to require regional monopolies to provide minimal service at affordable prices has not reached realization in over 100 years of telephone service , there are few phones in schools today." What then makes one believe that the analogous superhighway system will fare better? (3) Neither government nor state regulation can insure that access or teacher/student utilization of these services in grades K-12.
 

Computer Literate Teachers Have Closed The Gap

No Mystery to Educators

Pearlman indicates that real educators see no mystery about the capabilities of the powerful applications available to the K-12 environment. " Using technologies such as computers, CD-ROMs, videotapes, phones, cables, broadcast, satellite, local area networks, and wide area 'internetworking,' students and teachers today  in exemplary technology-using schools can do their work, access information, communicate via electronic mail with each other and with mentors, engage in professional collaboration and student collaborative project work, go on electronic field trips, create virtual learning communities, and receive and use course and mimicourses from any number of educational service providers." Pearlman goes on to cite several successful endeavors initiated by teachers and students on local, national and international collaborative efforts. The examples cited were:
(1) "In 1990 six Russian teachers and twenty students collected data on an eclipse and entered this information via computer and satellite into a computer thousands of miles away in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This information is now shared by students and researchers all over the world. Their effort was the forerunner of the now famous Global Lab Report highlighted by the Clinton administrations The National Information Infrastructure: An Agenda for Action (IITF, 1993)."
(2) Students at McKinley High School in Hawaii and a student group in Japan gave visual presentations to each other. The American school gave its presentation in Japanese and the students in Japan presented theirs in English. This interactive telecommunications project was immensely successful due to the students ability to see each other over long distances.
(3) A week long school restructuring conference was held in Indiana in 1990. Using Pic-Tel video conferencing system they were able to interface with outside consultants in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and California.
(4) Students at a high school in Fairfax, Virginia went on electronic 'field trips' in Germany.
(5) Students via distance learning, take courses in far away cities and countries in math, science, foreign languages and the humanities.

These examples demonstrate cognition in the K-12 educational systems but unfortunately these instances of educational collaboration are not self-sustaining. " Few have demonstrated independent  commercial viability". In the 'final reel' commercial viability will be the mainstay in determining the willingness  of school districts to allocate funds for local K-12 access to the information superhighway. The creative ability of teachers, parents, students, principals and dedicated community participants must be tapped before a viable telecommunications/infrastructure can be instituted.

COMMERCIAL VIABILITY

Pearlman indicates , " in the real economy, building the home school , school community, and wide area connections will require partnerships between the phone companies, cable companies, the schools and the states to plan local and regional infrastructures." He also cites research done by Henry Jay Beckner that concluded ; "annual personnel, hardware and software, cost at nearly $2000 per student for developing expertise in technology, use among teachers and providing students with a learning environment characterized by project-based learning, gathering information from diverse sources, and electronic communications with students 'all over the world, with scientist engaged in real world inquiry, and with data bases of enormous magnitude.'(Beckner,1993).

An undertaking of that magnitude would certainly require enormous amounts of funding. Realistically speaking, much of that spending would be beyond the scope of what the educational systems are attempting to provide. K-5 should be tailored to teaching basic skills in reading , writing and arithmetic. Middle schools should focus on perfecting the skills acquired in K-5. The thrust of secondary schools should be providing college preparatory and /or vocational skills. Inexpensive Macintosh or windows based personal computers giving children access to applications on the Internet such as For Kids Only may be sufficient for K-5 learners. A great portion of these computers need not be state-of-the-art. The Internet can be accessed at a cost of $9.95 monthly per classroom through America On Line. A similar arrangement is necessary for the middle schools. The upper two grades of secondary education is where most of the cost will be incurred. Even in the secondary schools, project -based learning can be approached incrementally and made available to serious students who will benefit from distance learning and visual interaction with foreign countries.Serious students come from all walks of life. The best path for turning out serious students is ensuring that ordinary or average students receive serious motivation.  The major cost for training at the secondary level can be circumvented by paying teachers, during the summer months, to take classes in computer literacy and computer teaching skills. Keep in mind, all teachers would not have to attend. Only the teachers that would teach other teachers in the school environment.

Teachers usually have to pay out of pocket ( an infringement of states and municipalities upon a persons right to work after spending thousands of dollars to obtain a college education) to take courses in special education or some other course related to obtaining or retaining certification. Evaluation of which courses are productive would yield surprising results. One course may be unnecessary and a computer literacy course could be substituted. Strategic relationships with telephone companies may yield cost cuts for school systems accessing the Internet via phone lines. Local and national businesses could pay to place advertisements in key applications.

Rewarding teachers instead of threatening their positions could result in an avalanche of creativity. Why cook the goose that lays the golden eggs? Pearlmans' question, although valid in the corridors of higher education and corporate boardrooms , is not the query that prompts the thesis that will hold water in the platoons on the  front lines of the K-12  In a society where the population is growing at an amazing rate with diverse cultures driving educational systems, a move to decrease the number of teachers in order to improve learning environments, seems somewhat contradictory.

If it is contradictions that create a substandard learning environment...it is the contradictions that must go...not the teacher. In the 'age of light' mistakes of this nature can become extremely expensive. No Dr. Pearlman. I'm afraid you must go back to the drawing board , or the chalk board, and gain a little knowledge...a little wisdom...and a little more understanding of how the K-12 systems operate.

This article is from the book Notes on the Information Superhighway. ISBN0-9618-2140-x
Copyright(c) May 1995.Carl Baker. All rights reserved. For use contact the author.