>el SchoolNet canadiense tuvieron que ser administrados por el Ministerio
>Federal de la Industria porque no hay Ministro Federal de la Educacion
>Canadiense.
Compa Sam,
You are right on the "ministry" of education. Actually there are no
ministries in Canada as such, but departments and agencies (a bit like the
USA).
However, the main point is not this, even as Canada has several federal
agencies which would fit far better the supposed scope of the program
(HRSDC, NRCC, IDRC, even CIDA), but the fact is that the program is
under Industry Canada for other reasons, as extensively demonstrated
by Gutstein in his book "e-Con". At the time Schoolnet was apparently
just a national project, but now it is being extended to Africa and other
regions, Microsoft and all. Here is an excerpt of one of Gutstein's
articles (http://www.sfu.ca/mediapr/sfnews/2000/Feb24/comment.html) written
about 4 years ago:
"Industry Canada's SchoolNet program, launched in 1993 to connect every
school in Canada, is a showcase for the Chretien government's Connecting
Canadians strategy. Industrial development is the name of this game, since
Industry Canada has neither mandate nor jurisdiction to support education."
"SchoolNet went through two phases. The first raised suspicions that the
program, under the guise of providing access, was really about
developing markets for the so-called learning and training industry. The
second phase, which extends high-speed Internet connectivity to 250,000
classrooms, confirms these suspicions. In this current phase, SchoolNet
acts like a broker, allowing the learnware sector to market its products
and services at cut-rate prices to schools still reeling from budget cuts."
"And while SchoolNet races ahead to wire the classrooms of the nation,
there is scant evidence that computers help children learn. Says the
executive director of the U.S. National Association of Elementary School
Principals, "If computers make a difference, it has yet to show up in
achievement."
"Here in B.C., the government has spent millions of dollars putting
computers into schools, but has done no studies to gauge their effect on
education. Art and music programs do raise achievement, but industry, and
therefore government, seems to have little interest in these. SchoolNet,
LibraryNet, Telelearning and CANARIE are leading us away from free and
universal access, toward a two-tiered future in which there will be two
types of information resources: low quality for free, and everything else
for a fee. Information once freely available to all citizens will no longer
remain so.
"If the government's Connecting Canadians strategy succeeds, democracy will
be the loser."
[ ]s fraternos
--c.a.
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