[524] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: unkind remarks about K-12
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Mandelbaum)
Fri Apr 5 03:48:27 1991
To: bukys@cs.rochester.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 04 Apr 91 09:17:44 -0500.
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 91 11:30:10 -0500
From: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
Liudy, I hate to disagree so violently with you since I depend on you
for so many thing, but I think that you are dead wrong on this.
First of all let me state that networking is not a panacea for the ills
of K-12 education.It will not solve the problem of droputs. It will not
solve the problem of functional illiterates graduating from the hgih
schools. it will not solve the problem of pre-teen pregnancies in the inner
cities.Overselling networking is probably worse than not having it.
What can networking do. I'll give some empirical examples.
1.
NYSERNet is working with RIT and the BOCES for Steuben-Wyoming-Livinston
counties in using the network to facilitate the teaching of Advanced
Placemet courese by RIT faculty. It is hard to get good AP Calculus,
Physics etc teacheers in these counties. This is a program which has been
going on for many years and the ide of using networking to facilitate it
was started this past fall. Both RIT faculty have ant the students and
teachers in these counties have been very enthusiastic about the extent to
which using the network has helped the teaching process.
This was a pilot we hope to extend to other parts of New York State,
especialy the Southern Tier and Adirondack region.
As a result of providing connections to the Internet in these districts a
number of additional projects have sprung up. Most of the projects are in
suport of ongoing activities in the school district, which the network can
facilitate. Some are projects betwen schools in New York State and other
states , which the network is more making timely and more fun. I'll provide
more details if you are interested.
2.
NYSERNet is putting the science/technical high schools in New York on
line. In the case of Stuyvesant, the principal told me that 85% of the
student body is involved in some research project at a University by the
beginning of their senior year. Again Stuyvesabt's being on the Internet
facilitates the education of those students , just as its use in the
University world facilitates the education of university students.
3. The Board of Educatio of the City of New York runs a network called
NYCENet. This consists of a 386-based system running Xenix on which
about 2-4000 (yes between two and four THOUSAND!) students and teachers
have login privileges so they can look at the various databases the Board
of Ed mounts and do e-mail. We are working with the Board of Ed to upgrade
their facilities and have attached them to NYSERNet. We are in addition
attaching three of New York Cities school districts, 9,13 and 27 to
NYSERNet. In each case the network is being used as part of an ongoing
existing program to facilitate communication and to relieve the Board of
Ed. bottleneck. In some cases we are simply doing uucp dial-up connections
so that E-mail will really work. In some cases we are providing dial-up
SLIP/PPP connections to make accesing the libraries easier. (The New York
Public Library is on the network and the American Museum of Natural History
is coming on) In a few cases we are providing the schools, those that
already have ful blown local area nets and internal building wiring
distribution plants, with "standard: connections using leased lines.
4.
Networking has already arrived in K-12. In many cases it has helped. In
many cases too much teacher time has been spent on the technical
underpinnings of the network, rather than on the educational mission. We
are at least trying to provide network support in K-12 so that teachers who
have been using networks and want to use networks can spend time on
content,rather than on troubleshooting things which don't work and
investigation of which modems work beast with Apple II's. In addition by
letting students use the Internet while stil in High School or even
earlieer they do learn something about the dominant network modality of the
University/Cllegee community which many of them will enter.
The reality of K-12 in the US is that the problems are immense. However
even more that that I don't believe there is any simple cure or panacea for
the problem. i think at most we can make incremental inroads and effect at
least a portion of the school population at a time. I saw a statistic which
saud that we have 16000 school districts, over 60000 school buildings and
about 40 million k-12 students in the country. Suppose we set as a goal
helping 1% of them each year get a better education because of the ability
of a network infrastructure to eliminate geographical barriers.That means
helping 400,000 students a year. Is that a worthy goal. I think it is.
Is it the most cost-benefit efficient use of resources in K-12. I really
don't know.Unfortunately most really cost-beneficial approcahes to
education either seem to be politically impossible
or so costly that they are not implementable.
I was president of the school board at the K-8 school my children attend
for the two years and have4 been on the board for the last 10. The most
cost-effective thing we did in the last 10 years, during my tenure as
president was to increase the length of the school day by 45 minute. This
took 5 years of constant effort, blood sweat tears, a few lost frinedships
and much unpleasentness. It was too controversial! The only way we
eventually got approval of the proposal was by watering it down from 1h15m
to 45m. Thus broadly "cost-benefit" attractive proposal simply very often
have hidden costs. Networking seems to have little such hidden costs. As
long as we keep it in perspective and evaluate it for what it can be, one
more tool in an arsenal of suplementary education, extracurricular
activities, summer seminars etc. etc. than I think it is a good thing and
very cost-beneficial.I certainly don't think I am
"another techno-geek drug pusher standing on the street corner."
Of course if you are looking for some villains I'd be glad to furnish them.
In June 1990 The New York State Education Department released its plan
"long-Range Plan for Technology in Elementary and Secondary Education in
New York State" In this plan on page 11 in Table 1 you will the amount of
STATE FUNDING FOR TECHNOLOGY RELATED PROGRAMS AND RESOURCES 1987-1990
In 1989-90 it turns out that New York State spent a litttle bit over
$100,000,000 (100 HUNDRED MILLION !!!) in this category of which
about $4.6 million went to the State Ed's network TNT (Technology Network
Ties). Which of you have heard of TNT ?? Well most of us aren't in k-12
education so the fact that this is a somewhat obscure network is probably
Ok. However the past year I have met with dozens if not hundreds of
teachers, computer cordinators , principals and superintendents in New York
State. Their reaction to TNT is , "Oh, that is how we get our
attendence records to Albany." "Oh its so difficult to use. (TNT, for the
uniniated consists of about a dozen IBM 4381's running PROFS under CMS
and hooked together prinarily by 9.6 lines over the state.
It was initially formed as an administrative network hoking the State's
BOCES together and is trying to
sell itself, lately, as a user-friendly student/teacher network.
Thus the State is already spending big-bucks in this area without a lot to
show for it. NYSERNet's total Internet-related budget is about 2 million
dollars/year. Of this less than half comes from subsidies, all of which are
funelled to end-user educational institutions. We will spend about $100000
in the k-12 area this year.I think we will help k-12 education at least as
much as TNT.
If , Liudy, you want to look at us as drug-pushers, than the drug we are
pushing is methadone. Its the State-Ed networks , primarily feeding the
administrative bureaucracy which are the analogues of the Medellin.
If we can ween even a few districts away from TNT we are actually,
political considerations aside, generating more money for education!!
____________________
Gee, in my school district (and, I'll bet, in yours), some students
manage to graduate from 12th grade functionally illiterate.
Now, obviously, money is not the only problem here, but where do you
think more money should be spent -- on teaching fundamental skills, or
buying expensive playthings with no discernable educational purpose?
(I have as yet seen no rationale for this K-12 drumbeating.)
>From where I sit, it looks like the networking marketers simply see
another untapped market, particularly prone to advertising along the
lines of keeping up with the {Jones, Japans, Computers, 21st Century}.
And it certainly helps that this new market has authority to tax.
(So much for "privatization".)
It's funny, for years I've heard (and agreed with) a model of network
expansion called "The Drug Pusher Model", wherein everyone agrees that
networks are good, many departments don't know how good until they hav
e
it, so it's good to subsidize growth in the early stages, in order to
get as many users as possible "hooked".
It is a valid model, insofar as I think that networking is going to
help people within, say, my University, get their jobs done better.
However, all this K-12 activity looks pretty bad to me. I don't think
it will improve K-12 education, I think it will hurt it by diverting
resources from more important things. I'm sorry to see the efforts of
so many people I respect going into an activity with so much potential
for social damage.
If someone can send me a rationale for these K-12 experiments, I will
consider it with an open mind. As it stands, it just looks like
another techno-geek drug pusher standing on the street corner.
Liudvikas Bukys
<bukys@cs.rochester.edu>
