DATELINE–Headlines

“If they can do it,” the President remarked, “then we can do it, too.”

The subject is the computerized classroom, the technological tutelage now deemed necessary to enter the world of the 21st century with a fighting chance. But this visionary torch is no invitation to the huddled, pre-PC masses. If anything, the Silicon Studies program smacks of fatalistic resignation – an exclusionary ultimatum tantamount to a “monkey see, monkey do – or monkey die” maxim.

The naked apes have to get a grip on this Techno situation. If we, as a race, are unable to reverse engineer a refrigerator, what sense is there in memorizing the taxonomy of file types? Let’s stick with what we don’t know. Take refrigeration, for example.

The Western world was carved out of the spice trade. From nothingness surged the everything we now call home, modern, history. But spices in the 14th and 15th century were hardly flavah-enhancers; spices preserved food, without which our ancestors would have died of starvation during the winters – and the summers. Refrigeration not only made microwave dinners possible, it paved the road to the modern city. Urbanism, highway federalism, shipping and handling, the global village.

But what housewife or househusband can repair a refrigerator? What earthquake survivor can rebuild a broken radio? What stranded motorist can jumpstart their computer-controlled luxury vehicle?

Forty years ago, public education included “shop” and “civics", “typewriting” and “cooking", grammar and history and Superman was a superhero. Five years from now, will “shop” be replaced by “troubleshooting” and “civics” with “netiquette"? Is MacGyver really a superhero or is he just a well-educated fellow? In a co-ed educational environment where girls can be gearheads and boys can be cuisine queens, wouldn’t it be wiser to insure our present level of technological know-how than banking on such circuitous and vaccuous “knowledge” as Windows-literacy or the Science of Spreadsheets?

Computers are hip, computers are hot, computers are now. But computers are still waiting for a killer app (look at that stock market, ladies and gentlemen; study it well). The automobile had the highway, the highway had the automobile. Your kitchen has your stomach, your stomach has your kitchen. If your computer has you, it has you and nothing less.

We must not shackle our precocious young with the technophobia of the Baby Boomers. A 7 year-old can figure out the desktop faster than she can learn the timestable. By all means (and any means necessary) make computers accessible to the working class majority in America, but don’t call that high-tech education. Remember, that’s spelled e-q-u-i-p-m-e-n-t, not e-n-l-i-g-h-t-e-n-m-e-n-t.

STD’s, armed violence, teen-age pregnancy, psychic hotlines, phone sex, layoff’s, plant closings, downsizing, the Gulf War. Human-to-human contact is steadily slipping out of our society. Let’s not mend our neighbors’ walls with a compound of cheap gadgetry and empty promises.