There's Backwards and there's . . .

BurkeWords

Monday, December 1, 1997

I've seen several special news reports recently about kids and the Internet and the unseen dangers lurking within. Then another segment comes on and they're talking about wiring the nation's classrooms up to the Internet and the World Wide Web -- usually brought to you by a person who thinks that the Internet and the World Wide Web are one and the same.

The Big Question: Why?

What is so important on the Internet that school children need to be hooked up to it?

Knowledge and information? You can find a dozen sites that will prove that the Holocaust was a hoax, that Flight 800 was shot down by a missile, friendly or not, that JFK is playing pinochle with Elvis or that any given person or fictional character is the anti-Christ.

Yes, there's lots of information on the Internet, but it's far from a reference library. Anyone can publish anything. This page is proof of that.

What's more, I've seen more and more ads and commercials by companies, corporations and conglomerates that are trying to take over the Web as a place of business. Fine, let them try. Most of them will be doomed to failure until they figure out what they're doing. In the meantime, will we be subjecting schoolkids to bombardments of advertisements from whomever is sponsoring the installation of all these machines?

And let me state the two biggest reasons to keep classrooms off the 'Net. Call it Burke's Postulate, a theory I formed a couple of years ago, that still appears to hold true. It goes as follows:

Every major advancement in the computer industry has been achieved primarily to allow users to look at dirty pictures and play games.

That's it. Look at the computer industry at any time. What's always going on. And what are two things that school kids don't need while in the classroom. (Hey, they can play games all they want -- after school.)

As technology has improved, the graphics have gotten better. As a result, we see clearer, not detailed pictures of exploding space fighters and naked cheerleaders (who might be exploding in their own way). Even now, what are the top money makers on the Web, practically the only sights to make money on their own? The thriving industry is porn. And with so many ISPs going to flat rates, what services are charging by the hour: Internet gaming services.

Opponents of my position may tell you that Porn sights can be filtered out. I'll believe it when I see it, but one thing you may not see is this page. At one point, the Bill Clinton Joke-of-the-Day Page, as well as all my other pages, were blocked by one of those baby-sitting services out there. For what reason? Because among the 2000+ home pages at io.com are a couple devoted to showing dirty pictures. To prevent your children from seeing those naked ladies, the entire io.com domain was blocked. That means that you couldn't find my pages because they were blocked out as inappropriate.

Even if they had blocked the specific sites, a couple of these sites have had to move off io.com for the simple reason that they were free. And once a free adult web site address is posted on Usenet, thousands of hits will be logged within hours, straining the resources of the ISP where the page reside. So the page relocates. And then the new site has to be blocked -- hey, cyber-au-pair, are you keeping up?

Getting back to the main point: Wiring schoolkids for the Internet is a waste of time and money. Whatever the goal is, it can be achieved by buying desktop computers and reference materials on CD-ROM (or whatever the next big format is). The Web is full of commercial sites, game sites, porn sites, trivial sites, useless sites, misinformational sites, and some genuine information. I'm sure our average third-grader can sort it all out properly, especially in this age where 2 + 2 can equal 5 if you really feel that it should equal five.

Overall, the Internet is a great time waster, like playing cards on a dreary Saturday afternoon while waiting for the rain to let up. You can carry on interesting conversations, talk about your favorite hobby, post a message in a public forum, read the latest gossip, and, perhaps, learn a thing or two.

You can already do all that in classrooms without computers, but it used to be that if you did that when you where supposed to be learning English or science, you'd get whacked with a ruler. Not it's called progress.

Normally at this point, I'd add "[End of rant]", but I think this rant is only beginning...

Attorney General Janet Reno has said that she would not reach a final decision on whether or not to seek an independent counsel to investigate the President's and V.P.'s fund-raising antics without FBI Director Louis Freeh signing off on it.

Freeh has finally announced that he believes that there should be an investigation of the President. Reno is expected to ignore his opinion when she makes her decision. Not that this surprises anyone.

I imagine that the President is already celebrating.

The President used his weekly radio address to ask Congress to extend funding for his pet Americorps project. For those of you who don't know what that is, Americorps was founded in order to pay people to volunteer. Where I came from, that was usually called a job.

The President needs five more years of funds because, apparantly, all his volunteers have stopped volunteering once the paychecks stopped flowing in. Had the program been a smashing success, people would still be volunteering without the monetary incentive.

There's another conviction in the Clinton administration. This time, Ronald H. Blackey, former chief of staff to former Agriculuture Secretary Mike Espy (gee, whatever happened to him?). Blackey was convicted of lying to federal investigators.

Not that this is any reflection on President Clinton and the cleanest cabinet in the history of Presidential Cabinets that would avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Whether or not there was a controlling legal authority.

And, just to let you know, this prosecution was brought by an Independent Counsel, and the Justice Dept. fought for two years to keep it from coming to trial.

If the next New York Senate election were held tomorrow, incumbent Al D'Amato would probably not win. His numbers aren't very strong for someone seeking re-election. So Al's trying to nice for the next 11 months to smooth things over with his constituents, right?

Hell, no. Instead, Al's taking on the Teachers Unions. And, which must be pointed out yet again as it did with Bob Dole's campaign, Al has a problem with the unions, not with the Teachers. Al loves the teachers. In fact, he'd like to see them get merit increases for jobs well done. But he also wants to cut the red tape and the crap when it comes to ejecting the worst of the lot. Naturally, the unions are not happy with that. They have to protect their own first, and to hell with the kids.

Frankly, there's always been one question that I've wanted United Federation of Teachers President Sandra Feldman to answer for me: If the repeated mantra we hear every year is that New York City doesn't pay it's teachers a comparable pay scale to the surrounding communties and, therefore, cannot attract and retain high-quality educators, are you, therefore, admitting, Ms. Feldman, that what we've got in NYC public schools are the bottom of the barrel? Okay, maybe they're somewhere in the middle, but they're obviously not the cream of the crop because we can't attract them.

So what are we going to do with all the lousy teachers that are currently in the system when we start attracting the top of the list candidates? We need a way to get rid of underperformers. As well as a way to reward the achievers.

You nephew went to see A Christmas Carol recently at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. This musical sings of compassion and charity and condemns greed. It's the antithesis of the usual commericialism of the season.

On the way out, he stopped in the lobby and spent three bucks on a plastic cup.

My daughter's class put on a Thanksgiving play for their families. It was based on a story told by the Iroquois and Six Nations tribes where "children are taught to greet each day by giving thanks to all living things." The children, dressed as the "living thing" that they represented (including the Sun and the Wind), each had a thankful line to say.

Essentially, a bunch of five-year-olds blew away that restriction of prayer in school. Or does that only count for the more popular religions? At least, they didn't play Pilgrims giving thanks to the Lord. Now that could have gotten the teacher bounced out of school.

Bill Feeney ( bfeeney@floodlight-findings.com) dropped off a list of things that our President should be thankful for this year. Bill has authored several Jokes of the Day as well as having several columns linked to that page in the past. You can check out his stuff at http://floodlight-findings.com. 10. Thankful that he burned the missing episodes of the Clinton White House tapes. 9. Thankful that the Democrats are too brain dead to realize that he's looted their party to get reelected and has left them bankrupt. 8. Thankful that most Republicans are so brain dead that he can get away with anything. 7. Thankful that Hillary hasn't shredded the primary evidence in Paula Jones' suit against him. 6. Thankful that his Chinese government friends are playing such good hosts to Charlie Trie and other possible witnesses against him that their testimony won't be available until the next millennium. 5. Thankful that his administration has so many scandals going at once that the people loose interest. 4. Thankful that Janet Reno is such an independent Attorney General that she does exactly what he wants her to do. 3. Thankful that the FBI and IRS files in his possession help persuade the mainstream media to do their best to ignore, downplay, or excuse his many scandals. 2. Thankful that Owl Gore has now been spotted with illegal Chinese money, making it less likely that any Democrats would join any presidential impeachment attempt. 1. Thankful that no one has found out that his real reason for entering politics was JFK's advice to him: "Go into politics. The Oval Office and the nuclear button are the best babe magnets around."