Little Billy Gates Benefited From Not Having a PC

In a speech last month to the National Governors Assn., Bill Gates proclaimed that our high schools are “obsolete,” and he produced a list of solutions to bring them into the 21st century -- among them, offering kids a challenging college prep curriculum, ensuring that courses and projects relate to their lives and making sure adults are around, pushing these kids to succeed. Not the imaginative thinking one would expect from the man who built one of the world’s largest and most successful companies.

While Gates rightly focuses needed attention on minority and economically disadvantaged students, he’s completely missing the point when he spews platitudes about improving our educational system. Our children are failing across the board: minority students, poor students, middle- and upper-class students. A significant contributor to that failure is the very thing that has made Gates a rich man: the personal computer.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Luddite, out to ban technology. Writing this article was infinitely easier with the Internet at my fingertips, and I can’t imagine a world without e-mail. But watch teenagers and chances are if they’re doing homework, they’re also sitting in front of a computer, instant-messaging friends or playing a mind-numbing computer game.

In fact, a study of media habits of 8- to 18-year-olds released this month by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that homework has become “a magnet for multi-tasking, with many young people failing to devote the kind of single-minded attention for which their teachers might hope.” According to the study, 61% of the youngsters surveyed said they do something else, some or most of the time, while doing their homework. There’s nothing wrong with doing research online, but it makes kids lazy. Do research at the library? Why bother when you can access dozens of sources without moving from your desk? Copy notes on index cards? What’s wrong with cutting and pasting into a Microsoft Word document -- other than the fact that plagiarism has become a rampant problem on campuses? And, BTW, LOL, why write in full sentences when the language of instant-messaging will do?

Then there are those computer games. According to the Entertainment Software Assn., U.S. computer and video game software sales grew 4% in 2004 to $7.3 billion, more than doubling industry software sales since 1996. In 2004, more than 248 million computer and video games were sold, almost two games for every American household.

We’re raising a generation of computer and computer game addicts who are doomed to fail in school, not because the system is obsolete but simply because it’s a lot more fun, and a lot easier, to hang out on the computer than it is to read “A Tale of Two Cities.”

If Gates had been brought up in this kind of environment, what are the chances he’d have had the focus and creativity to build a company like Microsoft?

Of course, as a parent, it is my job to pull the plug on the computer. It’s something I do every day. But no matter what I do, my son and his friends would sooner play a computer game than pick up a book or study. So, Mr. Gates, instead of offering patently obvious solutions to our educational system, how about encouraging our kids to shut off the computer when they’re supposed to be doing their homework? It might cost you -- but I think you can afford it. I’m afraid our society can’t afford the price our kids are paying for this new lifestyle.