11.0162 wiring the schools

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:43:21 +0100 (BST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 162.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 11:00:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Haradda@aol.com
Subject: Re: 11.0154 wiring the schools

I don't have a problem with Gates or anyone else wiring the schools. I think
that it is too little and way too late and way too expensive. The local
schools in my area are still using Apple II's and IBM 8088's in their
"computer literacy" classes. They will never catch up to the resources that
I provide my children in my home. And quite a few other families in my area
provide for their children. The schools don't even use the resources that
they have very well. I have been giving CDroms such as those put out by
Project Gutenberg for years to the public schools which my children attend.
I was told just recently that they don't want me to anymore at the Middle
School because they only have one computer with a CDrom player in the whole
library and the librarian uses that for cataloging. I offered to donate a
couple of 6x CDrom drives and have them installed to correct the situation.
I was turned down. (The library has 4 386 machines) The reason that I was
given was that they were trying to get the school board to give them better
equipment which they couldn't do it I kept donating equipment.

They killed the music programs in the elementary school a couple of years ago
and now it is starting to effect the Middle School and the High School music
programs. I expect that they will be cutting them soon.

I have been supplementing my children's music, art, math and recreational
education more and more each year. Which is as it should be. They are my
children and I want the best that I can do for them. The time is swiftly
coming where I can see that any benefits they can get from public education
will be very minor.

The cities are already in decline and have been so for all my lifetime. I
don't see anything that is going to stop it. If anything it is accelerating.
But there is more to life than than restaurants, bookstores and art movie
houses. I really like the Barnes and Noble bookstores (We don't have Borders
in my area). I don't find unionization to be a particular benefit to me.