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Jewish World Review / June 9, 1998 / 15 Sivan, 5758
Roger Simon
WASHINGTON -- To Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the plan was simple: Every school in
America would be wired to the Internet by the year 2000.
Aside from studies they cited showing how kids exposed to the Internet did better in
school as they grew older, the two also believed the Internet
"For the very first time in our history," Clinton said at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology commencement speech last week, "it is now possible for a child in the
most isolated inner-city neighborhood or rural community to have access to the same
world of knowledge at the same instant as the child in the most affluent suburb."
The problem, Clinton said, is that all children do not have equal access to computers or
the Internet.
"Affluent schools are almost three times as likely to have Internet access in the
classroom," he said, "white students more than twice as likely as black students to
have computers in their homes."
During the same speech, however, Clinton revealed his latest plan: No child in America
would be able to graduate from middle school and enter high school without first
becoming computer literate.
While 10 states already require this of students before they can graduate from high
school, Clinton said schoolchildren had to be taught how to use spreadsheets, search
engines and word processing software at a younger age.
"All students should feel as comfortable with a keyboard as a chalkboard, as
comfortable with a laptop as a textbook," Clinton said.
Clinton pledged $180 million over three years, beginning in 2000, to transform selected
teachers into "technology experts" in each middle school in the country.
Before this can happen, however, all the middle schools in the nation would have to be
wired for the Internet and, more importantly, be able to afford the phone connections.
But who's going to pay for it?
For several months, the Clinton administration has been enmeshed in a controversy
over what critics call the "Gore Tax."
Clinton and Gore say it's not a tax at all and should not be paid for by the public but by
the phone companies.
Under a plan called e-rate, for education rate, schools, libraries and health centers are
supposed to be given an up to 90 percent discount on phone rates for Internet
connections, with the greatest discounts going to schools with the greatest number of
poor children.
The cost was to be borne by the phone companies and offset by reductions in their
costs granted them by the FCC.
The major long-distance companies, including MCI and AT&T, have said, however, they
will pass on the cost of the e-rate plan, along with the cost of other programs, to their
customers.
Even though Congress approved the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that made the
e-rate plan possible, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have attacked the
Clinton administration for the extra costs to consumers, and former Republican
presidential candidate Steve Forbes has attacked the whole notion of the government
wiring schools.
"The government did not promise universally available TV sets," he said.
Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C., said, "Congress didn't intend for the Federal
Communications Commission to raise telephone rates on everyday Americans to fund
this program."
But at MIT, Clinton said he had no intention of shelving or even scaling back his plan.
"It's the most crucial initiative we've launched to help connect our schools, our libraries
and our rural health centers to the Internet," Clinton told the 2,400 graduates who sat
on folding chairs on MIT's grassy quadrangle.
Earlier, deputy White House press secretary Joe Lockhart had told reporters that the
long-distance companies "have not been completely straightforward" with consumers.
Lockhart said that the phone companies have gotten $2.4 billion in cost reductions from
the government in the last 11 months, and "now, some genius in marketing has decided
to make this an add-on to customers."
Schools, Lockhart said, have only signed up for about $2 billion in benefits so far.
Clinton said Americans "cannot afford not to have an e-rate" and added, "If we really
believe that we all belong in the Information Age, then, at this sunlit moment of
prosperity, we can't leave anyone behind in the
The Internet president?
had a "democratizing"
effect in that it provides exactly the same information to each person.
A ‘net account for every home? 
