REED HUNDT CHAIRMAN FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION TELECON XV UNITED STATES DISTANCE LEARNING ASSOCIATION WASHINGTON, D.C. (AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY) OCTOBER 25, 1995 A REUNION OF COMMUNICATIONS POLICY AND CHILDREN: ONLY A NOTION AWAY Greetings. I want to thank Dr. Janet McMahill for that nice introduction. I'm sorry I can't be with you in person in Anaheim to attend this important conference cosponsored by Applied Business TeleCommunications and the United States Distance Learning Association. I'm stuck here in the entertainment capital of the world, Washington, D.C. In the eight years since the founding of the United States Distance Learning Association, the communications revolution has exploded on us. Now, who predicted that networks would spread across the country like kudzu vines? Who knew that every waking minute America would be bombarded with announcements of the arrival of the information age? One group that did see this future was Messrs. Portway, Holt, and Mills, the founders of USDLA. I can't claim to be that farsighted. Eight years ago I was working as a lawyer in my day job. And in the nights I was beating the bushes for Al Gore, Senator and Presidential Candidate. I will say this: Even then, he was talking about the information highway, about digital television, about the wonders of technology that could bring education from the great centers of learning to the schoolgirl in Carthage, Tennessee. All his predictions were right, except, he didn't tell me then I would end up with the best job in Washington you don't have to get elected to: Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has a twin mission: we are for private competition in communications and public benefits from communications. I didn't know eight years ago that I'd have the chance to push for these goals. But 25 years ago I personally learned something that has inspired your work. I learned that this country's education system is broken and needs fixing. It is my great good fortune now to try to give the repair tools to the parents, teachers, and educators of America. These are the tools of modern communications. These will rebuild our education system. These tools will recreate the American Dream for the students who are daily shortchanged in our schools. I'll never forget my first class on the first day of my short and ancient teaching career, a quarter of a century ago. I had 35 textbooks for the 35 students in the first class. I gave them out at the beginning, attempted to take attendance and maintain order, and then, before an appropriate learning environment was in fact achieved, the bell rang. Everyone ran for the door. And they took the books with them. I stopped the last dozen, and retrieved the books from them. And that left me with one book for each three kids in the second group of 35. And by the third class I had no books left. I spent the rest of the year handing out purple mimeographs of lesson plans I made up myself. I was teaching in a terrible school, and the kids in that school had no reason to believe in a bright future. Not when there were only 35 books for 175 students. I tried, but the sad truth is that I wasn't able to do much for my students. Ultimately, I did the teaching profession and my students a favor and went on to a less honorable, less important, and certainly less respectable profession: I went to law school. I learned much more from my students than they learned from me. Most of all, I learned about the depth of the gulf between the worlds of those who have real opportunity in this country and those who do not. It was then and it is still mighty and deep, and the bridges were few. I remember those years and those children -- and what they needed to ensure a better life. And now is my chance -- our chance -- to bridge that gulf. And that bridge should be what Al Gore more than 20 years ago first called the information highway. Let's build that bridge in schools for our kids. While the business sector is roaring into the 21st-century information age, 45 million American children go to school in a 19th-century world of chalk-and-blackboard technology. Only 12% of the classrooms have phone lines. Only 3% of classrooms have computer networks. For each of our children to have his or her fair chance to make the American Dream come true, each needs to be taught both with and about the latest technology. Now, the most practical reason is that opportunity to succeed in our competitive, information economy depends on technological literacy. At the end of the Second World War the average American needed only a fourth grade education to be in the 50th percentile in salary. In the 1990s, a twelfth grade education is necessary to reach the same level. A college graduate now earns more than twice as much as someone with less than 12 years of education. We now suffer from the greatest gap between high and low income earners in the history of our nation. And that gap in wages and education levels is all the more disturbing because it may get worse. The reason is that those Americans who make less money have less access to technology than those who make more. But, by the beginning of the next century, five years, 60% of the new jobs will require skills possessed by only 22% of the young people entering the labor market. Already more than half of high-wage jobs require the use of networked computers. As I said, at the FCC, we should make sure that our policies promote private competition and deliver public benefits. The most important single benefit that the communications revolution can deliver to each and every child and parent in this country is an advanced, cutting-edge, 21st-century education. And the way to do that is to provide modern communications technology to every teacher and every student in every classroom in every school in the country. Let's give teachers, kids and parents the tools, and let them reinvent and rebuild our creaky old education system. In the long run, the most single important feature of the telecommunications reform legislation that is now in conference committee between the House and the Senate is the Snowe-Rockefeller-Exon-Kerrey provision of the Telecommunications Reform bill. These visionary Senators deserve the country's deepest thanks. If this provision becomes law, it will permit the FCC to create financial incentives that will build networks into every classroom of the country. And networks between every school in a school district. It would be a sin to write a telecommunications reform bill that deletes that provision. Building the information highway to every classroom is what the Vice President called for in a famous speech in Los Angeles, not far from where you are now, in January 1994. It is what the President set as a national goal in his 1994 State of the Union speech. Last month in San Francisco, the President of the United States layed out his plans to make sure every classroom in our country is connected to the information superhighway by the next century. If government plays the role of catalyst, communities can come together to create centers of high-tech learning in every classroom in the country. As the President said, "Preparing our children for a lifetime of computer use is now just as essential as teaching them to read and write and do math . . . We must make technological literacy a standard." In California the President announced that by the end of this school year, every school in California, 12,000 of them, would have access to the Internet. By the end of the school year a fifth of California's classrooms will be connected for computers. All these initiatives are very gratifying for us at the FCC who initiated this pursuit almost two years ago. A couple of weeks ago, British Labour Party leader Tony Blair picked up the President's theme when he called for a Britain in which every school, hospital, and library is wired into the information superhighway, and every child would have a laptop computer. Let that be a wakeup call to all of us that international competition will heat up. Copying is a great compliment. We need to do more so there is more to copy. The country has before it glorious possibilities of partnership among schools, communities, and a broad range of great communications companies like Sun Microsystems, Apple, Xerox, Oracle, TCI, AT&T and others. But we all need the Snowe-Rockefeller-Exon-Kerrey provision to survive the conference committee. And on the House side we need the telcom reform bill to preserve what's in the House Bill that would have the FCC guarantee that advanced network services are accessible and usable by people with disabilities. There are 49 million Americans with disabilities. This includes almost 4 million school-age children. These children can have a much, much brighter future if we put communications technology in every classroom. We will want screenreaders for those who are visually disabled, E-mail for those who are hearing disabled, and provisions for studying from home for children who are physically disabled. I want to urge all of you to let your representatives in Congress know how important are these provisions of the telecommunications reform bill. Growing up in our country today is so much harder than it was when I was a kid. But if we at the FCC read the law, study the economics, and do the right thing, we can come up with simple rules for the communications revolution that will make every day a good day for children. I want to talk to you about what a good day would be like. When everyone in the house gets roused up at around 7:00 am, wouldn't it be a good day if there were a selection of interesting, educational TV shows for kids like my six- year-old Sara to watch? That's why we at the FCC should pass rules that require each network station and affiliate to show at least three hours of educational TV a week. Right now, not a single one of the historic big three networks -- NBC, CBS, and ABC -- routinely schedules educational TV for kids on weekdays. Not a single one of these networks has delivered to its affiliates as many as three hours of really educational TV in any one of the years since the Children's Television Act was passed in 1990. When I say educational I mean educational as measured by results and as judged by experts, not lawyers or lobbyists. I'd like to know the answer to this question -- Have any educational experts concluded that any of the historic Big Three networks delivered to its affiliates three hours of result-oriented educational shows that really taught kids in any season since the Act was passed? It is time for the five commissioners of the FCC to write and enforce simple rules that will give parents more and better choices of educational TV for their kids. To make room for educational TV shows, some say a network might have to shrink an afternoon talk show from an hour to a half-hour. Would anyone miss that exposure to the daily dose of deviance that is the routine fare of daytime TV? Back to my vision of a good day for kids: When our children go off to school, wouldn't it be a good day if in their classrooms they could enter the world of wonder that communications technology can bring them? We'd like our children in our neighborhood public school to be in classrooms that have computers on networks with Internet access, distance learning, electronic mail, and CD- roms. To get that, we need the Snowe-Rockefeller-Exon-Kerrey provision of the telecom reform bill. When our children come home in the afternoon, it would be a good day if there were choices on broadcast TV that are safe and enriching for families. With George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and Steve Bochco in this country, there is no doubt that if stations commit to carrying educational TV, the creative community will make terrific, fascinating, and even profitable shows that really teach children. Again, the FCC's five commissioners need to look past the crowd of industry lobbyists that choke our linoleum-lined halls and see the 59 million Americans who have asked us to pass rules that guarantee at least three hours of really educational TV from every broadcaster. They have spoken to us through written filings by important and respected organizations like the Parents and Teachers Association, the U.S. Catholic Conference, the Black Community Crusade for Children, the Children's Defense Fund, the Consumer Federation of America, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Education Association, and the American Psychiatric Association. These groups represent 59 million people. The FCC should stand for Friendly to Children and Community. The FCC should not ignore these organizations. Back to my good day. Then in the evenings, when the parents get home, wouldn't it be a good day if mother and father could call up on the TV or the PC the kid's homework? Or could get and send e-mails to the teacher? Or could chat on the PC with other parents about the soccer games, or the PTA auction, or who is going to be the room parent on Friday? All these ways of using the network can be key ways to participate in a child's education. And last but not least, when you turn on the TV in the evenings, you should be able to know in advance what shows are inappropriate for kids. You ought to be able to to this by seeing written notice in the TV guide, by software coding from networks, by means of the v-chip, you should be able to choose shows that you think are appropriate to watch, and you should be able to protect your kids from the inappropriate. Simple FCC rules could give you all the elements of a good day for kids. With your persuasive power added to our mix of views, we Commissioners can make this good day an everyday event in America. Some say that the building blocks of our country's historic commitment to kids and community are being shaken by our collective self-doubt. The American Dream is built on a promise of free, high quality public education -- both in red brick schools and over the airwaves. It is built on a promise to care for the needy, the sick and the old, the disadvantaged as well as the advantaged. Are we going to wake up and find out that our American dream is as empty as our conscience sometimes seems to be? What a nightmare that would be. The opportunities of the communications revolution are limitless. There should be no limits on who has those opportunities. And that is why the fight for children's educational TV on the public's airwaves is important in itself -- and also as a symbol for the most important goal of the communications revolution: opportunity for all. Thank you. -FCC-