SATELLITE DISHES AT AMERICAN SCHOOLS 

When Canada launched the world's first communications satellite into the sky decades ago we were a proud nation. But we have lost that lead. Our youth, hungry to learn about this new "bird in orbit" have been denied access to the avalanche of information easily available via such celestial voices. Why? Some 10,000 American schools have signed up for free dishes, TVs and VCRs. Meanwhile, it is rare to find one dish among a thousand Canadian schools. Why? On a globalizing earth we have become peasants on another planet.

Since 1989 Whittle Communications of Knoxville, Tennessee has been installing FREE equipment to bring satellite transmissions from outer space to American classrooms. They awarded a contract worth $150 million to Philips Consumer Electronics Co. to manufacture, install and service their 1.2 and 1.8 metre satellite antennas and the ancillary receive/control systems. Now they are setting up to offer a similar service to private and for-profit schools for both toddlers and teenagers. It looks like technology has by-passed the Canadian public school system. Why can't your kids find jobs? They are trained for the past. There is no unemployment here, just millions of people who aren't trained for the jobs available. Many Canadian kids may be living at home until they are 30.

The Whittle phenomenon has exploded across America "amid growing dissatisfaction with the U.S. educational system". According to a report from SATELLITE NEWS, President Bush has called for intensified efforts to improve education. This signals that "learning" is going private. We are moving rapidly from a teaching environment into a learning mode. Teachers must become "knowledge navigators", capable of directing students along relevant pathways to new age knowledge and capable of understanding its unique form of delivery. We can't operate at the speed of light while travelling in covered wagons.

Within three years another 120 satellite-delivered radio channels will be blanketing North America. These transmissions be captured by any dish -- the size of a business card. Pretty hard for the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecommunications Commission) "cultural police" to "locate and destroy" equipment that tiny. These channels will be interest specific, meaning whatever any individual or group wants to hear. Because each channel will cover one-third of the continent (three channels will blanket the continent), interest groups, or independent educational groups that may not be big in your community but are collectively, will be free to hear what they want, not what some national cultural organization thinks is best for the masses. The cost for any single channel will be so low that even a small national group will be able to own their own "station" and proselytize their views. This may redefine freedom. Whittle Communications took the reins from a listless system and is turning the educational establishment around. Their program Channel One is a daily 12-minute news, geography and information program designed to make the world relevant to teenagers. It is the only daily newscast produced exclusively for secondary school students. Channel One is beamed via satellite to participating schools every day of the school year. There is no cost to the school. Two of the daily 12-minutes of programing is advertising. If a school guarantees to broadcast at least nine out of 10 shows to the students, it gets free satellite dishes, free VCRs, free TVs and the free programming!

Starting with a six-school test program in March, 1989, Channel One expanded by the end of 1990 to 6,000 schools. They pulled all commercials on January 17, 1991 to devote extra time to Operation Desert Storm. Within 75 days there were 8,216 schools in 47 states being set-up to receive programs -- 615 in one week. Today more than 10,000 schools, 300,000 classrooms and 6.1 million students are finally getting education from the medium they have been growing up with.

In September, 1991, the State of Michigan and the Whittle Educational Network held a live video-teleconference to help 10,000 mathematics teachers prepare for a state wide exam -- the largest number of schools (515) ever to participate in such an endeavor.

Created by Christopher Whittle in 1970 Whittle Communications, now has 1,200 employees and does more than $200 million a year in business. They produce seven magazines, wall media, have 12 information centres, two book series and three television systems. Whittle is on the way up. Bringing what the market needs, not pushing the old mush down students' throats via an antiquated system decades past its prime. Time-Warner Inc., the media giant with deep pockets, is a 50 percent owner. No capital shortage here. Not available in Canada. Pity. And due to Canadian regulations, not Whittle's. I love their latest analogy. They point out that "When Edison invented electric illumination, he didn't tinker with candles to make them burn better. Instead, he created something brilliantly new: the light bulb". They are lighting the way along a new educational path. They will be opening up a new nation-wide school system, offering contract services for public and private schools, developing educational software, hardware and the infrastructure along with an ongoing educational-research laboratory, already underway. By 1996 they envisage 200 of their campuses with 150,000 age one to six students. Perhaps 1,000 schools and two million students around the turn of the century. They will spend $60 million to get this Edison Project going and $2.5 billion for the 100-200 campuses planned for 1996. They do not intend to compete for government grants!

They have recently acquired additional prestige and credibility by hiring away from prestigious Yale University their President Benno Schmidt, 50 to be the president and chief executive officer of The Edison Project. Schmidt said "The schools of America are in difficulty and need fundamental structural change, not tinkering around the edges."

Chester Finn, Vanderbilt University professor who is on the Edison Project design team comments "There are only two major institutions in America today where, if you walk into them, you would feel like you could be there a century ago. They are schools and churches."

The venture is launched as President Bush and Washington push for a voucher system that would allow students to use public dollars to attend private schools. The Edison Project does not depend on the adoption of that plan, say Whittle officials. Here endeth the first lesson.

More information: Benno Schmidt, President and CEO, The Edison Project, Whittle Schools & Laboratories, 505 Market Street, Knoxville, Tennessee 37902.

Whittle Communications, 333 Main Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902. Phone: 615/595-5000.

Whittle Educational Network, 706 Walnut St., Knoxville, TN 37902. Phone: 800/445-2619.

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