Hundt Speaks at Ed School

The "national information highway" should play an integral role in the nation's future classrooms, the newly appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission said last nigh in a speech at the Graduate School of Education.

Speaking to a packed Longfellow Hall, Reed E. Hundt urged audience members to support proposed legislation that would provide Internet lines and computers for all of the nation's public school classrooms and libraries.

Once linked by the computer Internet, Hundt said, "Any child can be at any and all times in a virtual classroom that is just right for his or her interests."

Hundt said the FCC's future objectives for children are three fold.

The agency will fine-tune the Children's Television Act regulations, replace violent programming with quality children's programming, and extend computer networks to the public schools classrooms, he said.

Hundt said he believed television violence could be combatted simply by redefining national values and by encouraging broadcasters to invent a new type of "child safe" programming.

"Just as Chrysler invented a new type of family car, broadcasters can invent a whole new type of children's programming" he said.

While " child safe" programming may held to combat violence, Hundt said, information networks in school classrooms will help to combat inequality of educational resources.

"We can not let it be the case that if you don't get into Harvard you're not on the network," Hundt said.

If all school children are not trained in the increasingly complex technology of the modern information age, Hundt said, issues of information inequality many cause even greater rifts between social classes.

"A schoolroom without access in too much like giving child a book in a darkened room," Hundt said.

The nation is already unevently divided among skilled and unskilled workers, Hundt said, with skilled or "knowledge workers" making up 60 percent of the economy.

This inequity can be corrected through educational access for all public schools, he said.

"I do not want us to tear down the walls of our classroom. I want us to pierce them," Hundt said.

In his conclusion, Hundt said those interested in education and communication have the power to change things for the better.

Like captain Jean-Luc Picard of the TV show "Star Trek the Next Generation," Teacher and concerned citizens who support his inititives can help "make it so," he said.