Called to the Principal’s Office

After working with the architects, we built the computer center and classes started bringing their students there and lots of students came in during free periods to write papers or do email. We tried hard to keep games off the computers.

The school required every student to have a “work job” to contribute to the community good. Some helped sweep classrooms, or helped in the kitchen or the dishroom, or any number of other manual tasks. I was able to create several computer lab technician positions that students could apply for. I quickly had a cadre of five or six very dedicated and knowledgeable helpers. 

By early 1990 the lab had been running fine and traffic was heavy. One day I got a note that I was to come to a meeting in the Headmaster’s office.

When I arrived to his office, there were five or six middle-aged gentlemen already seated. They explained that they were a group of concerned parents. By their names I knew the students of a couple, and I knew that at least some of them were very highly placed in the region’s insurance companies. Hartford is the home to many of the nation’s largest insurance companies like Aetna, Travelers and The Hartford and some of these men were vice-presidents. 

One of them rose. Clearly he was going to be the spokesman. He said that they were encouraged to see the school working to integrate technology but that they had concerns with choices. He said that given what we were doing, their children would likely be unemployable at real companies when they graduated.

He began to elaborate. We were teaching the new Mac-only Word program, and the business standard was WordPerfect. We taught Excel and the standard was Lotus 1-2-3. We had students playing with the new Mac-only Photoshop and the standard was Microsoft Paint. Our labs were full of Macs with a graphic interface and a mouse and not a single professional in the real insurance industry did that. The students needed to learn to edit DOS config files and the campus should be using Novell Netware, not AppleTalk.

There was a pregnant pause. The Headmaster made no attempt to intervene. I took a deep breath.

I said that I knew some of their children, and had taught some. Some were sophomores and juniors. I said that meant that they would not be in the workforce for 6 or 7 years. Given the pace of change, I said, by that time probably none of the specific applications we were discussing would be there. I said that the main goal was that students used computers, they were not afraid of them, that they learned to word process and communicate over email. I said that I had no crystal ball but that I bet that Microsoft might be developing a Windows based operating system in the near future and that all computers would eventually have a WYSIWYG interface and use a mouse. They gasped with disgust.

I told them that if they wanted, they could buy two or three PCs and we would put them in the labs for students that wanted to use them instead of a Mac. That gave them a bit of victory but put the onus on them to provide them. I politely exited. I have no idea the conversation that ensued with the Head. 

The PCs arrived a couple of weeks later, and one of my student lab assistants was a DOS fanatic and he now took charge to make them operational. He constantly talked about how the Macs were a fad and a joke.

The reality was that few students ever used them, and the PC hackers that liked them came in and hide games on them. They constantly were non-functional or wouldn’t print. Eventually they were just pushed in a corner to give room to a couple of new Macs that were purchased —by the parent association!