TeleRead Update #2
TeleRead Update #2 
So What Else Is New? Reading Scores Down
Again, by David H. Rothman. Written in Spring 1995. I've done a 1996 Update (itself now in need of updating). -
D.H.R.
Donald Duck Schools: A, Like, Rez Peke at
Tommorows' Clasrom, by Michael Schrage
Clinton-Gore appointed just one K-12 educator and one librarian to the 30-plus-member NII Advisory Council more than a year ago--and the White House has yet to repair the damage.
The NIIAC is still too TVcentric with a gaggle of members from Walt Disney, CBS, Black Entertainment Television, Hubbard Broadcasting and other centers of learning. Why not more teachers and, gasp, librarians? Clinton-Gore might look at a much-needed warning from Education Secretary Richard Riley. Surprise of surprise, Riley's National Center for Education Statistics says high school seniors aren't reading as well as two years ago.
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On a scale of 500, reading scores of high school seniors fell from 291 to 286 despite a much-touted emphasis in many schools on reading and writing. Reportedly the decline is statistically significant. What's more, scores in the lower and middle grades have stayed basically the same. "Anticipated gains did not occur," the Voice of America said of the preliminary report from Education. William Randall, education commissioner of Colorado, said that "recreational reading" has "almost dropped off the table" among the time-pressed students.
TeleRead, while not a full solution, would help busy students and parents by bringing the library to the American homes and making books too ubiquitous to ignore. The Center's 1994 survey found a powerful relationship between children's reading habits and parents'.
What we don't need is mindless worship of technology--and accompanying commercialism--at the expense of reading and writing.
Encouragingly, the Washington Post of May 18, 1995, carried the following headline in the Metro section: "Library, Patrons on Different Channels: Popular TV Shows Shoot down Fairfax System's Educational Aims."
Librarians in Fairfax County, Virginia, a well-off area just across the Potomac from Washington, thought that they were doing families a favor by putting TVs in the libraries. Little did they know. Parents complained they wanted children to go to the libraries to read, not gawk at Hollywood trash on The Tube.
One patron with a five-year-old said, "Libraries are there to promote social consciousness and knowledge. I don't come to the library to watch TV. There are plenty of those around."
"It has turned out that books and magazines--either in paper form or computer--are much more important to our patrons," Mark D. Sickles, chairman of the library board's policy committee, told the Post.
You can bet that many parents would feel the same about the classroom, not just libraries. Despite the benefits of video in its various incarnations, reading should matter above all.
And note Sickles' comment that library patrons want books "either in paper form or computer." How true. Even without book-friendly, TeleRead-style technology, some demand is out there. When will the TVcentric crew in the White House realize that many parents and children want public libraries to put the full texts of copyrighted books and magazines online? TeleRead offers a cost-justified way for this to happen while providing fair compensation for writers and publishers, and in an austere era, it could start small and grow with demand.
Get libraries books out there--in homes, not just libraries--and the parents and children alike will want to read more, especially if they can choose titles that match their exact interests.
What happens if we forget the missions of schools and libraries? Michael Schrage, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who writes for the Los Angeles Times, has done a wonderful column poking fun at those who see a panacea in corporate sponsorship of glitzy high-tech in the classroom. See below.
Commerce should matter--TeleRead, in fact, would promote it by encouraging the mass use of electronic forms--but we mustn't let corporate priorities distract schools and libraries from their real work.
Hey, Bill and Al, isn't it possible you actually might have room on the NIIAC for as many K-12 educators and librarians as TV executives--in fact, for more? This is, after all, the National Information Infrastructure, not the National Entertainment Infrastructure. And warm bodies aren't enough. The NII Advisory Council and other NII offshoots needs members who'll serve the public, not just corporate interest. Listen to those parents in Fairfax County. Americans need a true national digital library full of copyrighted books for readers of all ages, not just a national digital storefront with links.
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POSTSCRIPT: I wrote the above in Spring 1995; the NII Advisory Council faded into the sunset in early 1996. To the end the White House ignored the pleas of teachers and librarians for greater representation on the Council. Coincidentally or not, the political donations from Hollywood and other major copyright interests kept pouring in to politicians of both parties. For a supposedly education-minded Administration and its friends, this is a real black mark.
So is the neglect of children's true needs. A report commissioned by the NII Advisory Council talked of glitzy, graphics-friendly hardware for our already-cash-strapped schools--no surprise, given that a Council Cochair was none other than Ed McCracken of Silicon Graphics. Supposedly schools could shift some textbook money toward purchase of "courseware." But guess what. U.S. schools are spending just $125 or so a year per student on books and other intellectual property, of which around $40 goes for textbooks; we're talking blood and turnips. And here the White House wants a pay-per-read ethos to reign on the information highways, meaning more costs for schools and local taxpayers!
--D.H.R., March 30, 1996
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By Michael Schrage
On the one hand, organizations such as Consumers Union complain about how commercialism is creeping into America's classrooms. On the other, parents, educators and policy-makers want to bring state-of-the-art information technologies into schools. A student essay from, say, the next decade offers a glimpse of how tomorrow's students will learn their ABCs.
This school is great, really rez! It's like Sega, MTV and DisneyWurld all mixed up together. There are ractive games, VR-PCs, really big flat tv sets and we're all real real careful not to break anything because the teachers sware if we do they will give us books because they are made of paper and don't break so easy. The teachers here are really res too. They don't make us learn anything. They just help us with the TVs, jack us into the Nets and give us these really rez learningames.
My favorite game is Burger Venture because I'm good in math. In BurgerVenture, Ronald McDonald gives you McMoney--sometimes hundreds of McDollars!!--and asks you to go to McDonalds and buy all kinds of hamburgers, apple pies, french fries and happy meals for different numbers of peeple. Like, if you have $76.43 McDollars, how many BigMacs, Cokes, Shakes and ExtraLarge fries can you buy for 12 people if you can only buy 4 shakes and have to bring back $1.93 in change? That's tough!
What makes it so rez is that you have to bring back all the food through all kinds of obstacles like the Hamburglar and the Apple Pie-thon by paying them money. You have to have enough to get back with the right change. If you don't, you lose. If you do, the Net prints out coupons good for real hamburgers and fries and shakes for when you go to a real McDonalds. Isn't that great?!
I like McDonalds french fries a lot so I am now very good at adding, subtracting, multiplication and division. When I win, I share them with my droogs so i'm pretty popular. But be careful when you play Burger Venture because they try to trick you with the national sales tax. I am getting real good at figuring out %. Math is fun.
My teacher says that if I keep winning at BurgerVenture, I get to play a new Sega EduNetGame called SmartBombs! that will let me shoot rockets and stuff to blow up cities and planets while learning about angles, signs, cosigns and tanjents. He says this will help me learn phisiks as well as more math. But he says he doesn't know what kind of coupons I will get if I get good at SmartBombs! That bothers me.
U.S. History with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy is also arez--hi-rez. It's fun to learn about the declaration of independence when Mickey is Thomas Jefferson and writes with a goose point pen. But it was wierd because teacher says that next week the DisneyNets are being replaced by Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner because time and Warner wants to sponsor our school much more than Disney does.
He says that Bugs Bunny is a lot smarter and funnier than Mickey Mouse and that we will really like Loony Tunes History but I don't know. I already see Loony Tunes every Saterday on my PC. I also really like Disney Wurld and since we no longer get Mickey History the teacher says I won't get the free Disney Wurld tickets if I ace the class. That bothers me.
The highest-rez class has got to be media arts and technology. Morphing Mozart into VR Madonna while re-syncing the synthesizers is just so hot. Doing gospel rap is also rez altho its harder to sync. What's so great about this class is that we can smear the bits any way we want so we do. This class is so great that nobody even thinks of crashing the Net while we're in it.
Sony sponsors this class since Apple went out of business and they give all kinds of coupons for camcorders, CDs, interactive Cds and personal digital assistants if we come up with vidz and coustix they like. Teacher says it's much better than the deal Universal/Seagrams has with Matsushita. All the kids like this class best because it's so much easier to shoot and edit vidz than it is to sit and type words or do math.
I learn the most in this class because I am actually making something. Words are for speaking not writing but the teachers all say that writing is a very key skill for us to learn. I think they think that only because that's how they learned when they were growing up.
We're different. For us, it makes more sense to just disc a vid and do a rez voice-over if there is something to say. They don't understand that.
But since we have to write stuff to pass, this is what I am writing. But don't you think it would be more fun to see one of my vidz or one of my games? They are how I really like to communicate with people. The great thing about growing up will be not having to write anymore. Anyway, I hope you like my story.
P.S. I am sorry for all the spelling mistakes but my teacher said that we will get a sponsor for spellcheck software next term. That bothers me.
The above appeared in the Los Angeles Times of May 11, 1995. (c) 1995
Posted with permission of Michael Schrage