FCC Chairman Reed Hundt Speaks on Connecting
                    Classrooms To The Information Highway

      Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt, speaking at the Harvard
University Graduate School of Education, challenged the education community to provide support for
linking the nation's classrooms to the Information Highway.

      Hundt began his talk by summarizing the basic FCC approach as seeking to "that increase
economic growth and create jobs (and to) enhance access to markets for consumers, producers, and
new entrants."  After discussing how the principles of economic growth and access apply to the
Children's TV Act regulations, and violence on television, Hundt discussed the extension of our
interactive networks into the classroom.  Noting that President Clinton and Vice President Gore had
challenged this country to link every classroom to the Information Highway by the year 2000, Hundt
stated that, if "the Administration's challenge is met by everyone, education in this country will be
reinvented, forever and for better."

      Hundt noted that he had experienced the teacher's side of the education environment when he
took his first job:  teaching seventh grade social studies in an innercity school.  After describing the
problems he faced then, Hundt suggested that today's teacher faces the same problems.  "Studies
have repeatedly demonstrated that the larger the group, the worse the learning.  But the fundamental
problem is not the size of classrooms, but the difficulty in relying on one to many communication as
the core teaching device.  This difficulty, however, can be greatly eased by the connection of our
classrooms to the national information highway -- to the interactive broadband networks."

      Hundt pointed out that the extension of the network to the classrooms is the great event "that
will punctuate the static equilibrium of learning.  There are two reasons.  First, an interactive
network will create an explosion of two-way communication.  In the traditional classroom,
educational interaction has been limited to the one teacher addressing the single group of students: 
one to many discourse.  Yet over the network, communication will be from many to many.  Second,
the networks will allow students and teachers to escape the confines of the classroom and to join
new learning groups over the networks.  As Hundt stated in his speech, "Whether measured by
numerous increases in test scores, or the anecdotal stories of kids' increased enthusiasm for learning,
the power of interactivity to enhance education is extraordinary."

      Hundt closed by noting that the Communications Act of 1994, introduced by Senator
Hollings, provides a vehicle designed to help address the issue.  "When I testified about this bill last
week, I told the Senators the most important part of the bill might be the language that directs the
FCC to promulgate rules that will "enhance the availability of advanced telecommunications services
to all public elementary and secondary school classrooms . . . and libraries."  Hundt noted that
Congressman Markey, who has also authored a telecommunications reform bill, agrees that it is in
the public interest that schools be linked.

      Hundt challenged the audience to join together in public-private partnerships to address the
issues raised by this opportunity.  "We in government can help write rules but we need the wisdom
of you here, a combination of not just of educators, broadcaster, and cable operators -- but of utilities
companies, regulators, software provides and most importantly, parents, to make it work right.  This
is my challenge to you -- to form such a coalition and make it an effective voice for the children of
America."
                FIRST ANNUAL ACTION FOR CHILDREN'S TELEVISION
                        LECTURE ON MEDIA AND CHILDREN

                              February 28, 1994
                     Harvard Graduate School of Education


I have been at the Federal Communications Commission as its chairman and chief executive officer
for just three months.  Last Tuesday, we at the Commission gained a measure of public notice for
our unanimous vote to lower the prices of certain regulated cable television services by an additional
7 percent, pursuant to the Cable TV Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992.  That law
was sponsored by, among others, the able and visionary Congressman from Massachusetts, Ed
Markey.  

Later last week I read in the newspapers that our cable rate decision allegedly broke up the Bell
Atlantic-TCI merger, making me and my fellow Commissioners the biggest trustbusters since Teddy
Roosevelt.  

I appreciate the compliment, but I think it may have been undeserved.  

However, it is true that we at the FCC have a fair amount of responsibility for developments relating
to the greatest story in history of communications since the invention of the printing press:  the
National Information Highway.  For the record, that term was coined in the late 1970s by a graduate
of the Harvard Class of 1969:  a first-term Congressman named Albert Gore Jr. 

(Incidentally, I hope someone's counting my references to Cantabridgians:  I'm going for a record
here.  After 30 years of trying to get into Harvard, I can't count on returning.)

Tonight, I want to talk to you about three topics:  First, I want to discuss how we approach all
decisions at the FCC.  Second, I want to explain how that approach relates to the three most
important issues in our jurisdiction that bear on children.  Finally, I want to call, and indeed beg for,
your attention to a little-recognized fact.  At this very moment, the Administration, certain key
members of Congress and the FCC are discussing -- almost as if in an otherwise empty room -- a
momentous shift in the power and method of educating children in America today.

As to the first issue -- how we at the FCC approach our decisions; we at the Commission are doing
our job in the light of two guiding principles. 

First, in our decisions we aim to increase economic growth and create jobs, particularly by
encouraging competition wherever and whenever possible, or by regulating rates so as to replicate
the competitive model when that is necessary.  That is what we tried to do with respect to our recent
cable ruling, and I firmly believe that when our regulations are officially published and studied, they
will greatly promote investment and economic growth. 

Second, we will take actions that enhance access to markets for consumers, producers, and new
entrants.

Decisions to promote economic growth and access have increasing significance because we
increasingly live in an electronic age and work in an information economy.  Already American
business is largely transacted over what the Economist magazine recently called one of the seven
wonders of the modern world: a telephone network that provides active service to 95% of all
households and businesses. 

We have 55 phone lines for every 100 Americans.  In Brazil, there are 7 lines per 100 people; in
Africa, the number is 0.7.  

These statistics do not just measure our economic development; they are a major cause of it.

For our economy depends on the networks.  Approximately 60% of the workforce consists of
"knowledge workers" -- people who use the networks to communicate and learn in order to do their
job.  This number will go up.  And the communications and information sector will also grow: 
depending in part on the FCC's decisions, it could reach one trillion dollars, one-sixth of current
GDP, by 1997.

The influence of the networks is not just in our livelihoods; it is woven in the fabric of our lives.  

Daniel Boorstin wrote that "America grew in the search for community."  Our ubiquitous cable and
telephone networks, as well as over the air broadcast networks, are crucial to our ongoing search for
community.  

Without attention to issues affecting access; however, our already divided communities may shatter. 
If these networks do not reach into every community and bring us together, they could end up
dividing us further - leaving whole segments of our country without the skills and information
necessary to prosper in our post-industrial economy.  

The principles of economic growth and access have particular application, I submit, to the three most
important children's issues in our jurisdiction.  These are the following:

(1)  The Children's TV Act regulations. 
(2)  Violence on Television.
(3)  The extension of our interactive networks into the classroom.

I want to focus tonight primarily on the third of these, not because the others are in any respect
unimportant but because of the critical timing of actions you can take to influence what we do in
Washington.  However, let me discuss initially the other two issues.

First, in response to the Children's Television Act of 1990, the FCC promulgated regulations in April
1991 requiring TV stations to broadcast programming responsive to the educational and informational
needs of children 16 and under.  No quantitative guidelines were set. 

About a year ago, the FCC began an inquiry as to whether the rules should be modified.  It is about
time to bring that inquiry to a close and we intend to do so in the near future.  The issues include
the definition of "educational and informational" programming and the wisdom of quantitative
standards.  In addition, I am particularly interested in the question of the economics of children's
programming.  What is likely to encourage marketplace economics to generate high quality
children's programming?

This leads to a second children's issue:  the impact of TV violence on children.  At a convention of
independent TV station owners and managers and programmers last month, I cited Dr. Leonard Eron,
Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, who said that when it comes to determining
whether violence on TV contributes to making children more violent "the scientific debate is over." 
Numerous studies over more than thirty years have proved a causal connection between TV violence
and real-life violence.

I suggested to the broadcasters that the violence issue challenges television in much the same way
that the concerns about auto safety challenged the car companies in the 1960s.  There was then for
the car companies and there is now for television a fork in the road:  one way is the path of denial
and confrontation.  The other way is the route to opportunity and renewal.

Yogi Berra explained what to do in this situation:  "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." 
And I suppose that there inevitably will be in a diverse industry some who want to go one way, and
some who want to go the other.

But, as I said, I think that the better way is clear.  Non-violent programming can be for broadcasters
what safety now is for the car companies:  an opportunity to win again the trust of the public.  It can
be a chance to redefine the product so that it embodies the values of our country.  Just as Chrysler
invented a whole new family car, broadcasters can invent a new kind of family programming.

If programmers, cable operators, and broadcast TV licensees were to eschew violence in TV
programming, they could invent a whole new kind of pro-children television.  This new product
would reforge their relationship with their audience.  And it would further the implementation of the
Children's TV Act.  For although it is not inevitable that nonviolent programming would be
educational and informative, certainly the new product that I called upon the industry to create will
include programs that meet the words and the spirit of the Act.

Creating this new product, industry will provide children across this country with access to
information and learning that too often today is unavailable.  At the same time they will gain access
to new business opportunities that will generate further economic growth.

My third, and time urgent, children's topic, concerns the country's classrooms.  In Los Angeles, on
January 11 of this year, the Vice President challenged every telecommunications company, school
board, teacher, librarian, and citizen of this country to "connect and provide access to the National
Information Infrastructure for every classroom, every library, and every hospital and clinic" in the
country by the year 2000. 

In his State of the Union speech two weeks later, the President said: "the Vice President is right --
we must also work with the private sector to connect every classroom, every clinic, every library,
every hospital in America into a national information superhighway by the year 2000."  He went on:
"Think of it -- instant access to information will increase productivity, will help to educate our
children."

That was the first time telecommunications was mentioned in a State of the Union speech. It was
mentioned as the path to a new kind of education.  This national information infrastructure of which
the President and the Vice President have spoken will rely heavily upon our telephone and cable
networks, as they exist and as they will become.  Already telephone lines easily have sufficient
capacity for some video applications and many voice, data, and computer linkups.  

Meanwhile, cable operators are replacing coaxial cable with fiber optics cable, so as greatly to
expand channel capacity at low cost.  They are motivated to add channels to increase subscription
revenue.  (And, I might add, our recent regulations will make this incentive stronger than had been
the case.)  With the increase in fiber deployment, cable operators will be able to transmit all
imaginable quantities of data and full motion video.  In short, when the networks are built, any child
can have access through a computer, TV set or telecomputer to any teacher and any group of
children with access to the new network.  Any child can at all times be in the virtual classroom that
is right for his or her development or interests.  

Whether cable combines with the switched telephone network, or whether cable companies install
their own switches while telephone companies expand their bandwidth, are questions that private
industry, academics, the FCC, and others in government will address in coming months and years. 
However, it is inevitable that switched, broadband, interactive networks will be built across the
country.  The President, the Vice President, and I hope all of you, believe that these networks should
reach all of the classrooms of all of our schools as soon as possible.

Already Bell Atlantic, PacBell and Ameritech have said, with some modest reservations that I think
can be overcome, that they will connect all the schools in their regions to the developing broadband
networks.  A major cable company, TCI, made the same commitment.  These commitments will
extend the networks to more than 1/3 of American schools.

If -- or dare I say when? -- the Administration's challenge is met by everyone, education in this
country will be reinvented, forever and for better.

Because of the extension of the networks to the classrooms, education is about to experience an
evolution and transformation that accords with the theory that Stephen Jay Gould in his book of
essays "The Panda's Thumb" called "punctuated equilibrium."  According to this doctrine, a static
ecosystem does not so much evolve gradually, but rather occasionally experiences jolts of change
that cause entirely new species to emerge suddenly from the great pool of genes and to become
dominant.  

The current equilibrium in education has long consisted of a closed environment with a single
teacher facing the churning inattention of the classroom of kids, with chiefly the voice and the book
as the modalities of communication. 

Like everyone my age, I learned in this environment.  My perennial classrooms at the Walnut Hill
Elementary School in Falls Church, Virginia, each with the single female teacher and three dozen
dazed children, constituted an environment not much different from that in which education was
meted out to my father and his father before him in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

I can't report on educational conditions farther back than that, since Horace Mann's dream of public
education never reached my nineteenth century potato farming forebears in Schleswig-Holstein. 

I discovered the teacher's side of this static environment in 1969 when, with a Yale diploma in one
hand and a copy of Jonathan Kozol's "Death at An Early Age" in the other, I took my first job: 
teaching seventh grade social studies in an inner-city school.

I had five classes of 35 kids each.  Before the first class on the first day I was issued 35 textbooks. 
I distributed the books to the class.  We covered a few pages.  The bone-shattering bell rang.  The
kids raced to squeeze through the door en masse simultaneously.  After more than half had escaped,
I remembered that I had no other books, but 140 more kids to teach.  I desperately shouted for
everyone to return their books.  I retrieved approximately 11.  These did not survive past lunch.  The
rest of the year I taught with purple stained fingers and distributed for "material" sheaves of wrinkled
mimeograph paper.  I made up each lesson from whole cloth.  Our "social studies" was supposed to
be about global climate.  I hope our environmental Vice President will forgive me -- it turned into
African History and, by spring, five parallel performances of Macbeth. 

Fortunately for the curriculum committee, after one more year in teaching I elected to go to law
school.

I tell this story as a prelude to suggesting that 23 years after I left teaching, the ecosystem (if you
will) of the classroom is not nearly as changed from that of the junior high school I so inadequately
served as it should be or could be.  

Of course it is true that in the better schools there are many more than 35 books for 175 children,
and most of our 2.5 million teachers are far more skilled now than I was then. 

Indeed, it is the case that slightly more than half of all classrooms have computers, whereas when I
was teaching the PC hadn't even been invented.  And about one third of classrooms have cable
television, thanks in very significant part to the admirable Cable in the Classroom program that
programmers and cable system operators have initiated.

We need 100% penetration to classrooms in those respects, and it is hardly good news that there are
almost no classrooms with more than one or two computers.  Indeed, it is distressing that out of an
average $6,400 spent per pupil per year, only $35 goes to technology.  This is a sad misallocation of
scant resources in light of studies showing that using interactive computer-based instruction is the
most cost-effective way to increase educational achievement.

However, the special concern I want to share with you tonight is that our classrooms still in large
part are enclosures in which a single teacher trying to communicate with a large group.  And studies
have repeatedly demonstrated that the larger the group, the worse the learning.  But the fundamental
problem is not the size of the classes, but the limitations of relying on one to many communication
as the core of teaching. 

I do not want us to tear down the walls around our classrooms.  I want us to pierce them by
connection of what we all now copy the Vice President by calling the information highway. 
Teachers are ready:  a recent NEA study showed that most teachers appreciate the benefits of these
advanced technologies and feel that, when given the tools, they have been more effective teachers
because of technology.  School districts, in places like Issaquah, WA, have already leveraged the
investment of money by using students and parents to set up and run their interactive networks.

There are in this country only about 100,000 schools and 20,000 libraries.  Within each school there
are on average about 20 classrooms.  (No one seems to know precisely how many).  It is readily
possible for us to connect the interactive networks to the two million classrooms in the country's
schools.

But today, we are far from that goal.

Only about one-eighth of all classrooms have a telephone line.  Only 4% have a modem to connect a
computer to other computers, to the great electronic storehouses of knowledge that are proliferating
everywhere, to President Clinton and Vice President Gore on Internet, to -- most importantly -- other
kids and other teachers in other classrooms.
The extension of the networks to the classrooms -- first the current phone networks and eventually
the great broadband networks of the near future -- is the great event that in Gould's phrase, will
punctuate, the static equilibrium of learning and cause profound change in education.  

There are two reasons.  First, an interactive network will create an explosion of learning by two-way
communication.  The one teacher addressing the single group of students is one to many discourse. 
Yet over the network, communication will be from many to many.  When all the students participate,
the teacher knows learning is happening, and a community of knowledge is being built.  Just as the
great books, whether Newberry Award or Booker Prize winners, create a community of readers, so
the great network will build communities of knowledge and learning among all teachers and all kids.

Second, the networks will allow students and teachers to escape the confines of the classroom and to
join new learning groups over the networks.  In the current definition of schooling children leave the
classroom by occasionally moving to a different classroom, or by making the much-maligned field
trip.  Alternatively, they can escape by reading or, if they are lucky, looking at a computer.  

When connected over networks, students can discover and participate in collective learning
experiences that transcend the traditional classroom environment.  These experiences will be diverse
and rich.  Over networks students may learn languages not spoken by any teacher in the student's
school.  Over networks, students may communicate not just to the pen pals of my youth, but, through
E-Mail, in real time to explorers in the Antarctic, as Vice President Gore did from a school in
Silicon Valley in January.  Over networks students may visit the vast electronic libraries that
populate our new cyberspace.  In the event of the networks, we can be assured that the illimitable
soul of our teachers, as Emerson put it, will find boundless solutions over networks to the problems
of education students with physical or learning disabilities. 

Many in this country and, I am sure, in this room, share this vision.  Indeed, Business Week focused
on this last week with a cover story on "The Learning Revolution."  As the story pointed out,
education experts see interactive multimedia software as a key technology in revamping American
education.  Whether measured by numerous increases in test scores, or the anecdotal stories of kids'
increased enthusiasm for learning, the power of interactivity to enhance education is extraordinary.

The article left no doubt that if the networks connect to the classroom, we will see an explosion of
outstanding educational materials to serve our children.  Savvy investors are investing millions in
software to excite and to educate our children.  

And on the non-profit side, Walter Annenberg recently made an astounding gift of over $500 million
for the support of education.  That gift came with a challenge to reform education and increase
electronic access.  Without such access, this gift would be too much like giving a child a book in a
darkened room -- linking the network to the classroom can be the light.

As Peggy Charren has always emphasized in her work on children's television, it is far better to
focus on getting quality children's programming on the air than to focus only on getting bad
programming off.  Is there any doubt, then, that the best way to promote quality educational software
is to create a market from just for the children rich enough to have personal computers at home, but
for tens of millions who attend our schools everyday?

Perhaps the most visionary is George Lucas, of Star Wars fame.  His Lucas Educational Foundation
is leading the way into the interactive educational age.  He has dedicated his Academy Award
winning talents creating products which have been used by thousands of schools.  When I talked to
him this afternoon he described to me numerous ways in which his foundation is using technology to
communicate the great ideas of our time.

Now, with the help of everyone from George Lucas to Business Week to this entire audience and
beyond, I assume that like Captain Picard on Star Trek:  The Next Generation, you are willing to
simply "make it so."  In that event, how are we going to get these networks into the classroom?

Congressman Markey has already surveyed the 20 largest telephone and cable companies to
determine their views on linking America's classrooms to the information superhighway.  A majority
do not oppose linking the classrooms essentially for free, but they are concerned with details.

There are many questions.  Should cable companies and telephone companies race each other into
the classrooms? 

Who does the internal wiring?  Would asbestos be disturbed in some schools, electric conduits
disrupted in others?

Should we set the standards for carrying capacity and interoperabilty?

Who will pay for transmission costs after the networks are installed? If a student calls long distance,
who pays?

There are questions relating to how this will work in the classroom:  What applications will be
created?  Who will control the content?  How will students and teachers be trained?  What will
change in the relationship between student and teachers?

These are good questions, but when I hear them, I inwardly smile. For these are not questions about
the grand unified theory of physics, or the balancing of the budget.  These questions are the kind that
can be readily solved and reasonably quickly.  They are, in fact, questions that can be solved by you
in this audience.

There is already a vehicle designed for you to help address these questions.  It is S.1822, a bill
entitled the Communications Act of 1994, introduced by Senator Hollings, along with more than a
dozen other Senators.  When I testified about this bill last week, I told the Senators the most
important part of the bill might be the language that directs the FCC to promulgate rules that will
"enhance the availability of advanced telecommunications services to all public elementary and
secondary school classrooms . . . and libraries."

Congressman Markey is the author of another telecommunications reform bill, H.R. 3636. This noble
bill should be amended also to grant the FCC the authority to monitor and, where necessary, to
compel the construction of the information highway into every classroom.  I believe Congressman
Markey agrees that is in the public interest to make this change.  

We have a glorious opportunity in this Congress to do a very right thing, but I have not heard from a
single educator or academic in support of the goal that the President outlined, that Senator Hollings
aims to achieve and that Congressman Markey may well support.  Certain telephone companies and
cable companies have been helpful, but isn't the vision of the interactive educational enterprise
compelling to Harvard?  Harvard itself is going to be wired for interactivity within a few years,
according to an announcement a couple of weeks ago.  But all the schools and classrooms in the
country should be included. 

So how do we make this happen?  It is most likely to happen if the people in this room join
together, by forging public-private partnership to address the many issues raised by this opportunity.

We in government can help write rules but we need the wisdom of you here, a combination of not
just of educators, broadcaster, and cable operators -- but of utilities companies, regulators, software
providers and most importantly, parents, to make it work right.  This is my challenge to you -- to
form such a coalition and make it an effective voice for the children of America.  Just as Peggy
Charren fought, and is still fighting, to create quality children's programming on television, so you
must together expand that fight by leading an effort for quality education technology in the
classroom.

We cannot let it be the case that if you don't get into Harvard you're not on the network; if you
don't go to a very fine school, you're destined to be electronically illiterate:  no one here would
accept that policy.  So won't everyone here let me know, and let others know, just how they will
help pass the legislation I have talked about, and just how they want the vision of interactive
education to come to pass.  

Back in the 1920's, E.M. Forster offered the famous dictum "only connect".  By this he advised
those of the lost generation awash with the cynicism created by the horror of the First World War, to
focus not on the tragedies of life but on the joy of connecting with individual human beings.

When one looks at a number of statistics about the state of our schools, and the children in them,
one could easily choose the path of despair.  And there are many problems that linking the classroom
won't solve.  

But while Forster couldn't have foreseen it, his advice to "only connect" is an appropriate and utterly
literal paradigm for the generation coming up in the 1990s. 

You in this group, at any rate, can make it so, if you wish.

Thank you very much for inviting me.



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