1. The largest on-going market for communications hardware and software is education. It is also the most necessary with respect to the support of humanity.
2. Tax-based public education is the vital center of that support. It should employ the economies and the amenities that inhere in our communications environment. This means, distance learning. It means alternative programs K through 12. 1
3. The scale needed for distance learning requires that this environment stand on RISC architecture or a proprietary one, such as Sun or NeXT. RISC is probably the best choice, for reasons implied in what follows.
4. The operating system choices for RISC architecture are [flavors of] UNIX, Workplace OS, OS2, Windows NT or a proprietary one.
5. Microsoft Corp. has no interest in education. Their representatives say so in public. Their offerings show it. Their interest is in entertainment. 2 In addition, their policy is for Microsoft-centricity rather than cross-platform flexibility (market friendliness). The interests of Microsoft are incongruent with those of education. Therefore, Windows NT is not a desirable operating system for education because it would not be supported for that purpose.
6. The operating systems which are supported for education in our communications environment are: UNIX, Workplace OS, OS2 and to some extent NeXT and some proprietary ones.
7. The corporate supporters of UNIX, Workplace OS and OS2 are decades-old supporters of education. IBM, for example, maintains enormous international on-line education support libraries right here at the University of Washington.

Proposal

1. Encourage SPI and school district planners for distance learning to focus on RISC architecture and one or more operating system that is supported for education.
2. Convene industry, legal, parent and education folks to model a generic system.

June 1994
David R. Graham
Maywood Homeschool Leadership Team

Footnotes

1- It means WACs and RCWs and their interpretation which permit and indeed encourage this. And it means a reformulation of study, supervision and accounting procedures to take advantage of electronic flexibility and nuance. Return

2- They aim to identify entertainment (theirs) with education. But this is self-serving bravado that both reason and common sense can ignore. Return