Monday, July 02, 2007

Actually, It's a Hallucination

Nolan Bowie, who is an adjunct lecturer in public policy and a senior fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, has an op-ed in the Boston Globe this morning titled Education for the long term.

Bowie’s op-ed begins with an old Chinese proverb which does make sense.

"If your vision is for one year, plant rice; if your vision is for 10 years, plant trees; but if your vision is for 100 years, educate children."

But after that relating that proverb, Bowie’s op-ed descends into hallucinatory babble, as he stumbles down the mountain to relate to us his “vision."

My American vision is of a country with no digital divide, in which everyone has access to high-speed broadband service.

Further into his op-ed, Bowie provides a more detailed explanation of his vision.

I wish to share my vision of a possible future where the digital divide—a term that implies inequality of access to Internet connectivity, to relevant information, education, knowledge, and opportunity in digital formats and in digital networks—is eliminated in the United States by adapting a national ubiquitous high-speed broadband policy.

Imagine what American society would be like if there were no digital divides and all the people of the United States had ready access to really fast Internet connectivity, to relevant content, to essential online services, and to the capacity—through literacy, skills, and motivation—to use all of it effectively.

Yeah, just “imagine” how educated children would be if they all had “really fast Internet connectivity,” they might all magically become really smart, really fast.

Bowie’s vision for the federal government to reach into every individual’s pocket to develop a “really fast” national internet infrastructure, as a solution to the failed educational policies intitiated at the state and federal level, is merely a personal hallucination which he desires to inflict on the unsuspecting and ill-informed.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/02 at 06:30 AM
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