Where Are the Investigative Journalists?
I keep wondering when journalists are going to begin pressing in any serious way the obvious questions they should be asking about wired schools. If the recent article I read in the Boston Globe (May 11) is any sign, we’ve got a while longer to wait. Originating with the Baltimore Sun, the article was entitled, “High-tech Home-school Link Proves a Boon.” Looking through the piece for what counted as plusses and minuses, this is what I found: The first plus, presented with the greatest emphasis, had to do with the students’ ability to contact the teacher after hours. Julianna Cornelius, 9, was in the middle of homework one afternoon, assigned to measure shapes, when she encountered a problem that in most schools would take another day to resolve. “Beep” went the computer on her teacher’s desk: Dear Miss Boyer. I do not have a centimeter ruler. Can I do something else, like look up rain forest on the computer?” (Why was this nine-year-old being asked to measure shapes? It would have been
