MISSOURI WATCH: EVEN SPELL CHECKERS SHOULD KNOW THE WORD S-C-A-M

There is no question about it, we are living is a marvelous age, filled with electronic wonders that would mystify even our parents and most certainly our grandparents. With the flick of a switch, we can access more information than Einstein ever knew about, and we can communicate, almost instantly, with far-away correspondents who can provide us with new and exciting information.

Indeed, we are so blessed that our political leaders are falling all over themselves to promise even greater marvels in the future. In his inaugural address the other day, Gov. Mel Carnahan, filled with the wonder of computers, promised to make every 12-year-old child in the state "literate" through state programs designed to equip every teenager with the vast possibilities of the Internet.

The computer age has become so pervasive in education circles that some have even forecast a day in which adults in the classroom will serve more as attendance clerks than instructors. Why, according to the most visionary among us, we may someday be able to educate our children without even having to send them to school or spend large sums to employ trained professionals. There is nothing that hasn't been promised in this computer age, and all we ordinary citizens need to do is pay the bills when they come due. That's the least we can do, isn't it?

Writing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the other day, Dr. J. Martin Rochester, a political science professor at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, had this to say about all the promises, both direct and implied, being made about education by today's computer visionaries: "Like a child with a new toy, we all have to be careful not to go berserk with the admittedly wondrous possibilities computers offer us." Amen, professor.

Before readers label me as nothing more than a fossil reactionary, let me explain that more than 25 years ago, I proposed a multi million dollar computer purchase for a state agency, believing that the promises by the company would greatly facilitate the department's work and its ability to treat suffering Missourians. It was 10 years after the purchase that we realized that most of the promises were bogus and that the pledged results simply would not materialize. Indeed, a quarter of a century after the purchase, the agency in question has still not achieved some of the original promises from the manufacturer.

In his op-ed piece, Dr. Rochester takes issue with all the education promises now being made by computer visionaries, saying, "The new technology is the basis for the biggest scam in the history of American education, now being perpetrated in K-12." It may not be the biggest scam, but in my view it certainly ranks right up there with new reading techniques and Ebonics.

I haven't taught political science as long as Dr. Rochester, but I have spent enough time in classrooms to know that my students in state government classes have little or no need for computers, except in instances where they need to delve into historical events or avail themselves of political philosophy much more brilliant than the insights offered by their teacher. Most of the students in the political science classes I teach are anxious to learn which provisions were included and which were excluded in Missouri's first Constitution. In addition, they need to know why that document contained some provisions and why others were omitted. And, thirdly, they need to why this is important in fashioning today's political culture in our state.

Even beyond this, students, whether in the first grade or writing a doctoral thesis, need to be taught the very process of thinking and arriving at conclusions that are both empirical and accurate. When I mention to a class composed of university juniors and seniors that they are going to learn how to think and utilize the full potential of their minds, their faces light up like Christmas trees. The Internet offers no such ornaments.

Maybe computers can teach everything that Dr. Rochester and I teach, but I doubt it. Computers can't answer the really important issues and questions raised in political science or most other academic disciplines. And I challenge the Internet to access how it feels to live under the threat of the Pendergast machine or explain the outcome of the Truman-Stark senatorial campaign in 1940. Put that in your modem and smoke it!

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.