Ed Henning

The increasing use of modern technology by our society demands significantly improved education for everybody, not just an elite.

The PC is in many ways the focus for this, particularly as PC technology drifts ever closer towards the living room.

Hardly a week passes without some major news item that brings all this home; symptoms of one kind or another of the problems created by the relentless driving down of standards.

I think Microsoft is completely wrong in its decision to close some of its major chat rooms, particularly on the pretext of protecting children.

Kids want interaction. They love a bit of secrecy and find it fun playing games and pretending to be somebody they are not. These things in themselves are nothing new, but the medium is.

Where do you want them doing these things? The PC is usually in the home and can therefore be monitored by the parents, assuming that they care and have some vague inkling of their responsibilities.

Activities on the PC can also be traced electronically, messages monitored, extreme ones interrupted and blocked - these things are all getting easier - and there is no actual physical contact with others.

Where do you want the kids to be playing? Out in some playground where you may be distracted from the ever watchful lookout for the somewhat unusual man in the dirty overcoat? Or worse, on some street corner where you can't see them?

The problem is not Microsoft's to fix, although there is a great deal a company like that can do to help, particularly along the lines of monitoring these chat rooms, searching for key phrases, and so forth. The problem is entirely one of parental control.

When my son was a teenager, unbeknown to him I used to monitor where he went online. I found a couple of sites that came close to being a bit 'laddish', and loads of sites for PC game cheating - funny priorities, but nothing worth raising a fuss about.

Now, some parents may not know how to do this but they should be able to get help (Microsoft, IBM, Dell, anybody interested?). And there's also the simple tactic of keeping a watchful eye and checking what's on screen. Show some interest at least!

It was recently reported that many kids are starting primary school these days almost unable to talk properly, and needing special help. The report concluded that their parents just dropped them in front of the TV instead of giving them early education and proper stimulation.

A few years later, will these parents monitor their young teenagers when they are surfing the new broadband digital entertainment centre with its 3D animated chat rooms? Of course not.

But this is not Microsoft's fault, nor the fault of the simple existence of its chat rooms. Sadly, there probably always will be a small percentage of people wanting to take advantage of young kids, regardless of the technology involved.

The only real protection lies with the parents, and I would make the case that a properly educated population would monitor its children appropriately, and would have a better understanding of the right ways to use all kinds of technology.

This awful trend of kids starting primary school barely able to communicate is clearly a direct result of the huge drop in education standards over the past 30 years.

We have already seen how universities are having to provide top-up courses to freshers, and this trend has permeated the whole system. The unfortunate victims of this trend are now having children of their own, and the cycle is just getting worse.

The problem regarding technology is that its advances usually bring greater power. The fact that I can create more written words, edited to my satisfaction, in a shorter time on this PC than it used to take using a typewriter and Tippex, is a clear benefit.

But more power also brings more danger, a greater need for care and, crucially, understanding. You don't drive a car until you have learned how to use it and something about how it works, and having passed your driving test you don't jump straight into a Formula One car at Silverstone and expect to survive.

I have tried to bring out the technological reasoning here, but there is of course a political (in other words, economic) point. In my view, education is the single most important investment a society can make.

It should be completely free to all, but the long-term results would be savings all round. A properly educated society would be a stronger democracy, would take care of its health better, would have lower unemployment, would be more law abiding, less violent, and so on.

Now, I can understand, albeit with great difficulty, some people not agreeing with that personal assessment, but not the technology needs.

If we are not prepared to invest properly in education to produce a more knowledgeable and skilful society, then we would probably be better off (and our children safer) by shunning the technology, and going back to working on the land and making everything by hand.

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