The crisis in American education is well documented and frequently written about. There is no shortage of descriptions of the two-tiered educational process which continues to develop and characterize the US education system. A shrinking minority of students is trained to take its place within a shrinking hightech job base. For these students, Email and Cyberspace are realities that indicate the potential of electronic technology to uplift the educational level of at least the chosen few. But an increasing majority are not so fortunate. For them, growing class size and a decreasing level of expenditures per child characterize a school system that is increasingly unable to educate its pupils. Here, hi-tech applications are either absent or so inefficiently used as to be worthless. (See Bromley article on facing page).

Thus, the use of hi-tech within the education system is fully consistent with the structural inequality that characterizes the system as a whole. The use of technology is often recognized as a factor which favors the better off students. That is certainly true. Educational technology is just one more resource that is increasingly available to the better-off kids while the poorer kids go without. Thus, the historic situation in which education or lack thereof becomes a cause (excuse) for economic and social inequality is reinforced.

It will only be when the educational system as a whole is radically democratized and when the poorer school districts no longer are forced to go without, that the most useful applications of technology, as well as other resources, will be discovered.

Povery and Education

It is sometimes not appreciated that it really is possible to educate all our children. Once adequate resources are provided, the possibilities for uplifting the educational level of society are boundless. But they are real. Yet, the educational gap is widening. So are the per pupil expenditures among school districts. We all know of cases throughout the US of impoverished city public schools that spend substantially less per pupil and pay less per teacher than their suburban public school neighbors (to say nothing of the private elite institutions). For example, Baltimore City spends about 20% less per pupil than its more prosperous neighbors. And the highest predictor of student performance in standardized tests continues to be the poverty level. By the time kids finish high school, if they finish, the die is cast. More than 25% do not finish. In many so-called inner city school systems 50% or more do not finish. And at least 25% of those who do finish are not prepared for either higher education or employment. In the main, students' accomplishments are restricted by where they go to school. Self- fulfilling prophecies abound. Kids who are poorly taught do not learn. Kids who are not expected to do well, do not do well. Kids (fewer and fewer) who are judged to be bright "bright," act "bright." Kids with no future and nothing to do act like kids with no future and nothing to do etc., etc. With the exactness with which Adam Smith's "the invisible hand of God" regulates the free market system, the educational system helps the economic classes reproduce themselves from generation to generation in "proper" proportion to each other to supply the economy with properly trained, but not too trained, workers.

Disparity Between Possibility And Reality?

To account for the disparity between possibility and reality we look at the interconnection between economics and control of public policy. In the economic arena, the application of electronics to the production of goods and services eliminates the amount of labor needed for their production. Thus, it shrinks demand for educated (and uneducated) workers below the number of workers available. AT&T's announcement of the elimination of 15000 jobs raises its recent total to 100,000. It is a small part of a growing phenomenon. In 1993 there were more layoffs at service jobs than in manufacturing. Moreover, it is becoming clear that the way life-sustaining resources such as education (and health care and housing, for that matter) are allocated is according to the economic and social interests of the dominant elite. They will not pay to educate or otherwise adequately care for those whom they do not need. Thus, educational technology as well as other educational resources remain in the hands of only those with money to buy them. Hardly what we can call equality of opportunity.

It is not possible to predict the specifics of the path to adequate technology for public school students in the US. None-the-less, we should point out that the struggle for equal, quality education is rooted in the history of the US. (Recall Brown vs. The Board of Education). There is currently a growing movement of students, parents and teachers who are fighting for equal, quality education. There is already an organized effort to shape the NII in the public interest which is expressed in the program of CPSR. The movement is in primitive stages, but it's a beginning.

[Brand and Zeidman teach Math at Essex Community College in Baltimore, Maryland. Steiner hosts The Marc Steiner Show on WJHU in Baltimore.]

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