Once upon a time educating the young was the primary objective of the public school system. At least that is why I signed on and became a teacher. My degree indicated that I had been duly educated to be an English Teacher, a teacher of language. I served in this capacity only one year when things changed for me and I was approached and then hired to be a Special Education teacher. Of course I had to go back to school and be educated some more, and I was told in the beginning of this illustrious career that there was that possibility to be confused with the subject I taught by some of my colleagues, not to mention my administrator.

One of the pivoting events of my early career was the debut of the COMPUTER as a teaching tool in the High School where I taught. To quote from the movie GIGI – Ah yes, I remember it well.

That first computer looked a lot like a small television. The school had several computers. One of them was installed in the Counselor’s Office, and eight or ten more were housed in the library. Each computer sported a cubicle like a defense mechanism. It was a wooden boundary designed to keep each student in front of a computer separated from the next student. At a faculty meeting we were addressed by the librarian and encouraged to send our students to the library to be instructed in the use of a computer. No one told me that this invitation excluded special education students. It wasn’t long before the first student returned from that adventure, telling me that the librarian had told him that he wasn’t smart enough to learn anything about the computer.

Of course that type of dialogue between student and librarian elicited a hostile response from me. By now I understood what it meant to be a special Ed student in a small country school. The librarian and I had a brief exchange of words before I moved the battle to the office of the superintendent. The administrator agreed that public education was accessible to all students and I was given a time period for my students to have access of the computers.

The librarian, closely associated with the principal, did find a way around that part of the bargain. My students returned to my class room once again and told me that the library was closed to students for that time span. Once again I took that famous march down the hall. The students were right. The library was closed. It appeared that a small group of members of the faculty, mostly coaches, the principal and the librarian were taking their lunch break in the library, not wanting to be disturbed by students.

When I threatened to take the issue to the Board of Education, the lunch break fun- and- games of the chosen few came to a complete stop, and I knew that I had enemies.

The counselor came to my defense and offered all of my students' ample opportunity to become more closely acquainted with the computer. A sympathetic superintendent also came to my assistance and made arrangements for one computer and carrel to be installed in my classroom.

There wasn’t much to that computer. It contained some math games, some word puzzles and a game of hangman. All of my students loved that little computer. Of course I eliminated the carrel when I realized that this added bit of privacy was not conducive to learning anything about math or English. It gave the students' added time playing hangman. Eventually I used that computer as a means to get homework and classroom assignments handed in. Completed assignments, properly executed, became the currency for computer time.

It wasn’t long before I was given all the computers and all the carrels. No one ever told me why. I believe it had something to do with computers becoming more user friendly, with a thing called WINDOWS, and with the clerical faculty receiving computers of their own. By now I knew that public education had little to do with teaching and learning. It had everything to do with accessing public funds. But I still remember that little brown box and the keyboard and the carrel that meant so much to my students and at the same time became an eloquent Icon for all the things that could possibly go wrong in public education.