NEW EDUCATIONAL PATHWAY VIA NINTENDO 

"I think the school is an extremely harmful institution". "I think the schools do more harm than Nintendo". That's not me talking, although it sounds like something I might say. They are words from Seymour A. Papert, considered by some as the world's leading expert on using computers in education. He is the Lego Professor of Learning Research at MIT's renowned Media Laboratory.

What he is saying will be universally accepted in years to come.

Why does only one out of every 500 British Columbia students currently complete an education under our present system? Everyone else drops out along the way. Drop-out figures are almost unbelievable: out of 476,000 students, 38 percent drop out before they even enter high school; another 78 percent (of the remaining balance) drop out before entering college, and yet another 75 percent (of the remaining balance) drop out before receiving a university degree and 95 percent of those drop out before completing a PhD. That means that only one-fifth of one percent finish the whole race and get their parent's money's worth! That's not good enough. Why do students leave school? Mostly due to boredom.

Yet Nintendo can hold a kid's interest for six hours. Maybe we are doing something wrong. Papert believes the key question is "What makes some people become so passionately interested in something?"

For the past five years another person has been asking similar questions. He's not a professor, but a very successful businessman. Jack Taub, founder of the world's first information utility, The Source, sold for megabucks to Readers' Digest about six years ago. He is now founder and Chairman of the International Education and Information Utility (yes, just as in water and electrical utilities). He says his creation will make a child, when given the option of going to a theme park or delving into his magical computer world of knowledge, chose the computer. I recently spent some time in New York City with him and will write this story in detail in a future column.

The U.S. Air Force is training pilots and mechanics for sophisticated jet fighters via video games, and is apparently turning out what they want.

Professor Papert invented the Logo computer programming language and has recently accepted a research grant from Nintendo. He told the Toronto Star, that he "has made no promises to Nintendo, although he does not rule out the possibility of developing educational software for its game machines." He adds that schools have failed to stay upto-date in adapting new technologies to the classroom. His new goal: to make such classrooms subjects as writing and history as alluring to children as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Super Mario. If you think it all has to do with money, you're wrong. Canada spends twice as much to educate kids as Japan. Notice the obvious better result by spending less? The 1990 U.S. State Education Performance Chart shows graduation rates still dropping and college entrance exams still dropping, although spending on education is still increasing -- 21 percent after inflation last year. From $2,726 per student in 1982 to $4,243 in 1988. U.S. Secretary of Education Lauro F. Cavazos says "we have to enhance the role of parents as decision-makers."

Even as I write this column another report comes in electronically from Orland French, education reporter for the Toronto Globe & Mail. He reports that even the Toronto Board of Education has finally realized that something is up. They are now "quizzing students to see why they have turned their backs on traditional classrooms". One group of students questioned, who probably wouldn't be in any school if they hadn't been attracted to SEED (Shared Experience, Exploration and Discovery), a radically different alternative school located in a downtown Toronto office building weren't hesitant about giving their opinions: "(school) Buildings ..... implies that students are animals and can't be trusted to respect public property" and "Student Council is really just the dance committee" and has no power. Others felt like many do today in some offices. There, you are always going to meetings, in schools they say it's the same, "always going to assemblies".

In Canada we spend even more, about $6,000 a year now for high school students. When the collapse of the present educational institutions comes it will come faster than the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. Remember you read it here first.

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