Third Wave Economy

Alvin and Heidi Toffler (“New Jobs, Obsolete Workers,” Commentary, May 7) blame our political leadership for being stuck in the industrial past and for having no vision concerning jobs of the future. The Tofflers wisely call for new learning institutions “that no longer resemble the rust-belt factories of yesterday.”

These futurists were probably thinking of the 19th-Century high schools we have today: A teacher with a piece of chalk facing row upon row of bored students, all aching to turn on their headsets!

We need high-tech, yet humanistic, learning centers to educate our young people for the 21st Century. These modern, well-equipped complexes must provide the best in technology, sociology, psychology and all the other “ologies” that makes us an advanced society.

Let’s use some of the billions of “defense” dollars to pay for our educational security . . . to protect us against our real enemies: ignorance and obsolescence.

Powerful weapons can defend us from military defeat, but only excellent schools can save us from a much closer enemy: social destruction.

JOAN LEIB, Los Angeles