Soundbytes: See you later, educator

Clive Jenkins, former leader of white collar trade union then known as ASTMS, had a vision of the future. His members would have the means and the leisure to sit in their sunny gardens reading Tolstoy.

Twenty years on, there is a high probability of achieving this activity. The sun is also a safe bet, what with global warming and all. But whether members will have the inclination or even the ability, is open to doubt. A short time ago, a report came out placing Britain very low in the international literacy rankings ? down there with Poland and the US, apparently.

Tony Blair?s memorable, if uninspiring election slogan ?Education, education, education? seems more appropriate than ever. David Blunkett?s plans for compulsory homework need to be rushed through to avoid oversubscription to his summer schools for slackers.

Another report, however, published only a couple of weeks ago, places Britain among the highest achievers in computer literacy. According to the 1997 European Computer Literacy Report, commissioned by Olivetti, we have the best computer-to-student ratio in the world. One in three homes has a computer, a figure which puts us at the top alongside Belgium. Of households with children, about two-thirds now use a computer, and in almost 20 per cent of such households there are at least two computers.

There may be a lesson for resellers here in the contrast between poor reading skills and enthusiasm for PCs. Now must be the best time ever to progress with educational software. This sector has always been a poor relation ? possibly because so much of the output has been poor ? and it is high time it was upgraded. There are two main problems: school finances and the status of home computers. Schools have been barely able to buy books, let alone software.

The absence of a thriving market for educational software must have discouraged the software houses and Vars from investing. Besides, education has been in more or less constant flux for the past 30 years ? not a particularly promising prospect for exploratory technology. Where home computers are concerned, the waters were muddied from the very beginning.

Everyone knows perfectly well what home computers are used for ? games ? but many have found it politic to pretend otherwise. As a result, games machines have been heavily promoted to parents as if the systems were the Encyclopedia Britannica. With the emergence of the internet ? another of Mr Blair?s enthusiasms ? this process will intensify.

Olivetti?s survey finds, to no one?s great surprise, that games account for the bulk of the time kids spend on computers. A fifth pass a happy two hours or more every day on their computers, and a similar proportion switch on the computer rather than the television when they get home from school. Perhaps we should be grateful for that much. Neither TV nor game-playing is going to do much for literacy, though. Could there be an inverse relationship between the two?

There used to be a school of thought that measured literacy by the number of words in an individual?s vocabulary. Shakespeare apparently used more than 50,000 words; Racine made do with a thrifty and, helas, inevitably repetitive 10,000. But not even the most partisan Englishman would call Racine barely literate.

A definition of computer literacy is equally elusive. Ten or 15 years ago, you might have said a smattering of Basic, a slick way with macros and a working knowledge of Dos. It all sounds like Linear B now. Computer literacy in the age of the intuitive application seems to amount to not taking fright at the sight of a mouse. The Olivetti survey appears to equate it primarily with computer ownership. Granted, every primary school has at least one computer, and under-11s learn keyboard skills. Basic familiarisation is presumably no bad thing.

It is an undemanding kind of literacy, though, and the trends in technology aren?t going to make it any more exacting as time passes. Perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that it encourages a spirit of enquiry which can only be satisfied by genuine literacy.

Meanwhile, unless War and Peace is rehabilitated in a major television series or achieves Hollywood blockbuster status, I don?t see it featuring in many back gardens in the sunlit future. So here?s another vision of the future. A youth wearing a virtual reality headset sprawls on a sofa in front of a television ? the headset providing the sensation of sprawling on a sofa watching television. Aside from a cigar called Hamlet, happiness is an entirely alien concept.