Letter to the editor

Old timers like to me like to go tripping down memory lane to apprise younger folks of how much better things used to be in "our day".While that might be true about a lot of issues, there are some glaring exceptions and 'education' is one of them. The availability of and the access to information via the internet is one prime example. A student of literature, say, was once required to spend hours in the library researching and reading, whereas now he simply clicks onto the internet, enters the subject and everything that is known about that person or subject appears on the screen. Reading Shakespeare used to be torture for me. How I would have preferred 'seeing' his plays enacted on a screen. Probably just as boring, but more palatable I think.

Information on just about anything you want to know is instantly available. There just isn't any excuse for a student to be ignorant about anything these days. Of course there is another side of the coin. Video games. Too many of our kids spend more time playing these games than accessing information for educational purposes. Would we oldsters have been any different if we had the technology? Probably not. One day in the not so distant future, the present generation will be doing their own 'tripping down memory lane'.

How they tell their story will depend upon how well they took advantage of a good thing when they had it.

George Morin
Auburn, Ga.