Many pixels have been spilled over the declining literacy of students. According a Pew-funded study:
• More than 75 percent of students at 2-year colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges do not score at the proficient level of literacy. This means that they lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks, such as comparing credit card offers with different interest rates or summarizing the arguments of newspaper editorials.
• Students in 2- and 4-year colleges have the greatest difficulty with quantitative literacy: approximately 30 percent of students in 2-year institutions and nearly 20 percent of students in 4-year institutions have only Basic quantitative literacy. Basic skills are those necessary to compare ticket prices or calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad from a menu.
• Twenty percent of U.S. college students completing 4-year degrees – and 30 percent of students earning 2-year degrees – have only basic quantitative literacy skills, meaning they are unable to estimate if their car has enough gasoline to get to the next gas station or calculate the total cost of ordering office supplies.
But failings in literacy are not limited to students. It turns out that basic literacy has a direct correlation to computer literacy. After all, we’ve all seen examples where someone’s inability to follow on screen instructions resulted in bad things happening. Not to mention that sometimes those instructions are incomprehensible to being with. Which brings us to the continuing saga of Julie Amero, the substitute teacher awaiting sentencing following her conviction for exposing students to porn.
The Courant is reporting that 28 Computer Science professors have signed a letter requesting that an independent investigation take place. Why has it come to this?
Our judicial system is not geared towards computer literacy. Although people may work on computers daily, the expertise or literacy of the operation of a computer is not something that is required before someone starts tapping on the keyboard. Despite nearly two decades of a shift into the Information economy, the laws that govern computer use and data are woefully inadequate to non existent.
Something as simple as the theft of a laptop is beyond the capabilities of law enforcement. Our case law is based on the concept of physical possession. Much of what transpires in criminal activity does not rely on possession but replication. The laws and literacy of the law enforcement branch are in new territory. What is the value of a stolen laptop? The cost of the laptop? The depreciated value? The data on it? The software applications on it?
In the Amero case, the testimony of the computer expert for the defense was not allowed to testify due to a procedural technicality. Yet the case was allowed to proceed. The prosecutor and the judge allowed the case to continue despite their lack of computer literacy.
They did not questions why, in 2004, a computer was in a classroom, connected to the Internet without any filters or protective software that would have prevented even the most ardent consumer of pornography from successfully accessing it. Instead they allowed the blame to fall to the individual in possession of the operation of that computer. Had either the prosecutor, the police department or the judge have any computer literacy, they would have known that computers are vulnerable to many kinds of manipulation without interference from any human operator. But these questions were never considered.
As long as the legislative, judicial and law enforcement branches of government fail to develop computer literacy, more miscarriages of justice will happen.
Source: Hartford Courant, Computer profs urge independent investigator in teacher porn case, March 6, 2007 , Associated Press
