From: bernie@binghamton.edu
Date sent: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 17:20:38 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Two Short Items

(1) A LA Times article, dateline Cambridge, Mass., and entitled AMERICA IS LISTENING TO E. D. HIRSCH (subtitled CONTROVERSIAL EDUCATOR EMERGES AS GURU OF REFORM) contains this astounding statement by Marc Tucker: "I think the world is coming closer to E. D. Hirsch. He is driving his point home at a time when the US has standards on its agenda." Despite the doublespeak, could it be that Hirsch may yet save the day?

(2) This past weekend's WEEKEND carried a story on COMPUTERS IN CLASS: A WASTE OF $50 BILLION? A Long Beach English teacher says, "As a learning tool, I think they're overrated. We've spent so much in our library on computers and comparatively little o n books." A renegade computer guru says, "Computers solve a problem that doesn't exist. The one thing they do well is bring more information into the classroom. But I've never heard teachers complain about a lack of information. The real problems...are class size, shrinking attention spans, a lack of discipline, and drugs and guns."....Instruction that relies heavily on computers teaches data collection, not critical thinking and substitutes "virtual" contact for real relationships with teachers and peers. Computers are hardly the first tech innovation that promised to reform education. In '22 Edison predicted that motion pictures would one days supplant textbooks. In the 50's, television was heralded as the great teacher of the future. Instead it has often been education's enemy.