Fun_People Archive
26 Nov
Go Lemmings Go!

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 96 16:42:51 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: Go Lemmings Go!

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: "B. W. Fitzpatrick" <bwf@onshore.com>
Excerpted from: Edupage, 24 November 1996

HELLO?  IS THIS A COMPUTER?  DO I PLACE IT NEAR MY FACE?

Hudson Institute Fellow Mark Helprin thinks not.  "Terrified lest their
children be computer illiterate, lemming parents have pushed the schools
into a computer frenzy in which they spend years learning to use Windows
and WordPerfect.  This much like 'Sesame Street,' which, instead of waiting
until a child is five and teaching him to count in an afternoon, devotes
thousands of hours drumming it into him during his underdeveloped infancy.
But while numbers will remain the same, fifth-graders will, when they get
to graduate school, have no contact with Windows 95.  The 'teaching' of
computer in the schools may be likened to a business academy in the 1920s
founded for the purpose of teaching the telephone:  'When you hear the bell,
pick up the receiver, place it thusly near your face, and say 'Hello?'"
(Forbes ASAP 2 Dec 96 p15)

© 1996 Peter Langston