LEND ME YOUR EAR: TECHNOLOGY MEANT TO BE A SERVANT AND NOT A MASTER

Some time ago, a phrasemaker nominated "change" as the buzzword of the season. Seldom has so ordinary a word achieved buzzdom, but everyone the country over is crying for change in everything from government and family values to education.

Changes in education have been on our nation's agenda for decades, and never more so than now. Virtually every candidate for public office is promising changes for the better in the way our schools function, though no one seems to have a plan for effecting changes. More money for more technology is the usual cry, but how to make the best use of either, only the Lord knows and no one claims to have heard from Him on this issue. Are you listening, Pat Robertson?

One thing I'm sure of is that TCI Cablevision is going too far in declaring that the only way to educate the youth of America is by cable. Granted that television adds immeasurably to our knowledge, too much TV is at least partly responsible for the ignorance of the fundamentals among high school and college graduates. I fumed when I found a folder inside a statement from the cable company decrying 19th century methods of teaching. Children's minds need to be excited, the company explains, not bored to death by dull subject matter taught by uninspiring teachers.

Neither subject matter nor teachers of any era need be dull or uninspiring, and our youngsters are exposed to too much excitement as it is. Violence on TV, in the movies, and on the city streets, for example. Up to now, picture shows and demonstrations have gone a long way toward depriving our children of basic education. What they don't need more of in the classrooms is "edutainment," as one highly visible rapper fondly puts it. But even the permissive NEA teachers union is calling for an end to classroom TV ads that have our young people drooling over everything from fancier sports cars to more tempting candy bars.

This is not to downplay the use of television and other technology as aids to learning. But witness the deplorable plummeting of test scores inside their advent. Witness the lack of qualifications for employment among graduates after graduation. One young man interviewed on TV said he was so lost when he got out of school that he "took a week off to sort his head out, then started a rock band."

Mercifully, there is a limit to the need for rock and rap bands in this great land of opportunity, and I am not alone in feeling we have long since exceeded that limit. As for the rest of the "arts", I can only agree with those who maintain that ignorance and vulgarity have all but supplanted wisdom and good taste in American culture. John Leonard, savvy movie critic on Charles Kuralt's Sunday Morning, has offered this metaphorical gem on the subject: "What pop art looks like today is an S&L scandal." For my part, I keep wondering why a toilet-seat collection is considered art, and worthy of a showing on TV.

On April 2, we were privileged to watch a Library of Congress tour on PBS. A plaque in the library impressed me to the point of inspiring the title for this column: TECHNOLOGY IS NOT A MASTER, IT'S A SERVANT...a servant, that is, of man's wisdom and creativity.

Let me add that technology requires master teachers to make use of the tools. Most of the speakers we have heard on TCI Cable need lessons in elementary-school grammar, to say nothing of vocabulary. pronunciation, and expression. To summarize, change in the right direction will begin only when educators realize that real schooling starts with dedication to primary-school basics; not with playschool activities engendered by commercial technology.