EPILOGUE
In Chapter 1, I started by recalling the ominous prophecy of James Bryant Conant in 1961. Although the scene in America's urban areas was then peaceful, he warned that the underlying lack of education was contributing to "social dynamite." His foresight, including his terminology, was eerily accurate.
In 1965 the cities began their explosions. Twenty years after Conant's prediction, the government echoed many of his concerns about inadequate learning in the document whose title, A Nation At Risk, expressed the magnitude of the concern. That publication generated more discussion than Conant's work, but still no substantive changes took place. As I write in 1995, over thirty years after the forewarning of Conant, and over ten years after the alarm of A Nation At Risk, the problems and their results remain: education in the inner cities is abysmal, riots continue periodically and crime terrorizes the nation.
The present disasters that stem from inadequate education are absolutely unnecessary! Computers could remake schools just as they have revolutionized other industries and institutions. The difference is that the whole fate of the nation rests on its schools. Nonetheless, despite the consequences of inferior learning that Conant foresaw so well, education dithers along in the same pattern it has used for centuries.
Objections to effective use of computers will be rampant as I have also tried to point out. To those who do object, I ask, "What are you going to do? What other effective ideas can you produce to solve this crisis?" Thus far, little has changed in education. It remains basically the same as when Conant wrote and when the National Commission on Education issued its forebodings. Arguably, the condition has worsened. I repeat, to all who wish to delay the effective use of computers in education: "What are you going to do? What other adequate solutions are available to solve this crisis unless you also join them with computerized education?"
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