[Vision2020] Our Schools, Cut Off From the Web

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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June 16, 2013
Our Schools, Cut Off From the Web By LUIS A. UBIÑAS

ON June 6, at a middle school in Mooresville, N.C., President Obama set a
goal<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/06/remarks-president-mooresville-middle-school-mooresville-nc>of
high-speed Internet in nearly every public school in America in five
years. It was a bold and needed pronouncement — except that in 1996
President Clinton said virtually the same thing,
calling<http://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/ntiahome/101096clinton.htm>for
libraries and classrooms to be “hooked up to the Information
Superhighway by the year 2000.”

Many people reading this article are probably doing so on a smartphone,
tablet or computer. They might not know that half of Americans don’t own a
smartphone<http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Smartphone-Update-2012/Findings.aspx>,
one-third lack a broadband
connection<http://www.fcc.gov/reports/eighth-broadband-progress-report>and
one-fifth don’t
use the Web at all<http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Home-Broadband-2010.aspx?r=1>.


Since 2007, when I was
named<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/us/14foundation.html>president
of the Ford Foundation, we’ve given $44.5 million to dozens of
organizations — like Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and
Society<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/>,
the Mozilla Foundation <http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/> and the Media
and Democracy Coalition <http://www.media-democracy.net/> — to make the
Internet more accessible, affordable and mindful of privacy.

But as I prepare to step
down<http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/from-the-president>in
September, I must acknowledge that there has been little real progress
on this issue. Like any effort to develop our national infrastructure,
success demands more than the dedication of the nonprofit sector alone.

The factors that will drive our national future — educational achievement,
a healthy population, broad political participation and economic
opportunity for all — depend in significant ways on how we structure and
manage our spreading digital frontier. About 19 million Americans still
lack access <http://www.fcc.gov/reports/eighth-broadband-progress-report>to
high-speed broadband; many more can’t afford it.

Virtually all of America’s schools are connected to the Internet today. But
that success is a lot like trumpeting, a century ago, that virtually every
town in the country was reachable by road. Then, as now, the question is
quality. Children who go to school in poor neighborhoods are connected to
the Web at speeds so slow as to render most educational Web sites unusable.
The exploding world of free online courses from great academies is closed
to those who lack a digital pathway.

In 1996, when Mr. Clinton predicted that the Internet would revolutionize
education, the future seemed full of possibility. The
Telecommunications Act<http://transition.fcc.gov/telecom.html>that
year established E-Rate, which subsidizes Internet connections for
schools and libraries. The program, capped at $2.25 billion a year, is
inadequate — many schools are connected but lack classroom connections,
essential hardware and funds for maintenance. Only 63 percent of 150,000
eligible schools were participating as of 2009; some fear bureaucratic
hassle or can’t afford the required matching funds. Eighty percent of
schools financed by E-Rate
report<http://transition.fcc.gov/010511_Eratereport.pdf>that their
broadband connections fall short of their needs.

Since the mid-1990s, a generation of American children has passed through
our schools with substandard access to the online world. This is how an
information underclass begins to take root — a disturbing contribution to
our era of inequality, when jobs and economic opportunity flow to those
with the best-honed digital skills.

Mr. Obama was right to call attention to this problem. A good first step in
addressing it would be to overhaul E-Rate to make sure it gets the Web into
every classroom and library, not just a school, either through cable or
Wi-Fi, and with sufficient financing for upkeep. Second, a subset of
teachers and librarians need to be trained as champions of digital
education. Without such advocates, the pedagogical impact of broadband
won’t be fully realized. Third, any conversation on national infrastructure
must put broadband as a priority alongside aviation, bridges, energy,
highways, ports, rail and water.

Our future depends on the ability of every American to participate fully in
our digital economy and democracy. As Franklin D. Roosevelt
said<http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15860>,
“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our
youth for the future.”

Luis A. Ubiñas<http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/leadership/luis-ubinas>is
president of the Ford Foundation.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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