home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Xref: sparky misc.education:4269 sci.astro:11933 sci.bio:4115 sci.chem:4546 sci.math:14860 sci.physics:18780
- Path: sparky!uunet!dove!gilligan
- From: gilligan@bldrdoc.gov (Jonathan M. Gilligan)
- Newsgroups: misc.education,sci.astro,sci.bio,sci.chem,sci.math,sci.physics
- Subject: Re: What can we have for an educational system?
- Message-ID: <6873@dove.nist.gov>
- Date: 12 Nov 92 20:52:20 GMT
- References: <ARA.92Nov11034458@camelot.ai.mit.edu> <1992Nov11.133807@saavik.IntelliCorp.COM> <1992Nov12.162137.24580@news.unige.ch>
- Sender: news@dove.nist.gov
- Followup-To: misc.education
- Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Lines: 49
-
- In article <1992Nov12.162137.24580@news.unige.ch> swann@divsun.unige.ch (SWANN Philip) writes:
- >I read the other day that the president of Yale has quit his job to
- >go into business with a guy who specializes in cable tv for kids (i.e
- >makes millions splicing cartoons with ads for junk food). This pair
- >of reformers plan to open a chain of private schools based on high tech
- >mutimedia delivery of instructional modules (doubtless sponsored by
- >junk food companies).
-
- Just for accuracy, Chris Whittle started off in business delivering
- media (I forget whether it was radio or magazines) to captive
- audiences in doctors' waiting rooms and similar places. He sold
- advertising at high prices because he could guarantee a specific
- audience. Then he branched into satellite-TV with a company he called
- Channel One. This comany supplies schools with free satellite
- receivers and A/V equipment if the school would agree to show all the
- students a half-hour news show broadcast by Channel One, which has
- fifteen minutes of news and fifteen of advertising.
-
- A study commissioned by Channel One found no evidence that watching
- the show had any beneficial effect on students (neither did it report
- any deleterious effects, but I don't think they were looking for any).
-
- Whittle and Benno C. Schmidt, the ex-president of Yale (whose legacy
- to Yale is the demolition of several academic departments, such as
- Linguistics, and the recommendation that many others, including
- Physics, cut their size by ten percent), are working for the so-called
- project Edison, which pretty much fits the description given above.
-
- The promise is that about 20 percent of the students would be poor
- kids on scholarship, but it remains to be seen how that works in
- practice. The idea, as I've seen it put forth, is that one in five
- schools would be in a poor neigborhood and would have the poor kids.
- We'll see if this version of separate-but-equal provides true equality.
-
- Also worth mentioning is that Lamar Alexander, the education
- president's education czar, is a business partner of Chris Whittle's
- and that project Edison depends on the passage of a school-voucher
- program to become viable. Any appearance of a conflict of interest
- is a figment of the reader's imagination, of course.
-
- Speaking of junk food, about a year and a half ago, a public high
- school here in Boulder gave its cafeteria concession to McDonalds, so
- the kids can eat healthful Big Macs and fries for lunch without
- leaving the school. Hail private enterprise!
-
- ---Jon
- --
-
- Disclaimer --- The government probably disagrees with my opinions.
-