For Oct 10 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 700 words

Miller is online

Congressman George Miller visited my classroom on Tuesday, thanks to my wife. He came because he heard we had a new computer class unlike anything forming at other schools. He came because my wife is thoughtful, persistent, and enterprising.

Awhile back, she and Jane West, who got the congressman to visit Mary Farmar school on the same day, went to a chili cook-off fund raiser in Vallejo for George and the Democratic Party. Susan chatted with Kathy Hoffman, George's aide, about what the congressman was up to this year seeing as he's running unopposed. Kathy said he was busy working, viewing communities, keeping his name in the press. Susan mentioned my new computer class and asked if he'd be interested in visiting. He was.

Classroom technology has his interest. He likes computers and the Internet and wants to see them in the hands of children.

Susan told me that evening that a congressman would be visiting my class in two weeks. I was flattered and impressed. By the next evening she told me she had called three newspapers to send reporters and photographers. I was impressed. The next evening she said she'd contacted KRON and the other local television stations to send over camera crews. I was pressed.

Where would everybody stand?

Anyhow, it went off all right. He came in cordially, smiling, with an entourage that included my wife, Kathy Hoffman, Dr. O'Conner, Lisa Hirsh, Principal Kenley, Judy Reavis from Hermes, and a team of reporters. We shook, and he immediately began working the room. He moved a lot, and talked to students one-on-one, leaning over their desks, asking them questions. The crowd disappeared. It was just Congressman Miller and one student at a time.

Once everyone settled in, he sat back on my desk and talked in general about government, technology, and education. He said he opposes Internet censoring, believing it to be more restrictive than the censorship placed on other forms of free press and speech. He said computers were saving tax payers a fortune in paper. Now they can email those daily generated 90-page congressional transcripts that nobody reads to hundreds of people without even the cost of a stamp.

He paused and looked over Eason Selvan's notepad to see how much he'd written. Eason was my Paw school news reporter covering the event. George smiled and said, "Where's your tape recorder?"

When asked where technology funding rated among the other educational demands in California, next to class size reduction, expanded facilities, and the expanding work force, he said he didn't place them in a hierarchy. He said he had a vision for an entirely restructured educational system that could solve several problems at once. He wasn't happy with the 150-year-old traditional school. He asked, rhetorically, what other business would still be thriving today if it didn't change the way it operated for 150 years?

Jeremy Michael, one of my funnier students, blurted out one word: "Government."

That was good for a laugh, but then Congressman Miller reminded Jeremy of the greatly expanded role technology now plays in politics. He listed a variety of changes brought about by electronic networking and bookkeeping. He said he doubted if he could even hire a new employee who didn't have computer skills.

When asked if he had a personal interest in computers, George said he did, but that he had one regret in life. He'd never learned to type. When computers became a necessity, he scurried to catch up and get online at work. He now has his own website, and it is LOADED with news and hot links (www.house.gov/georgemiller).

I just read on it about the late Ruben Rivers, the first African American to earn the Medal of Honor from WWII. This because of legislation authored by Congressman Miller and recently signed into law by President Clinton.

The congressman wasn't too impressed with our long line of up-and-humming 286-series amber-screen computers that sit just beneath a map of Dante's Inferno, but agreed that we have to start somewhere. He wondered aloud how other schools survive without a class like ours.

When he left and the reporters left, my wife stayed behind. She'd brought me a burrito and a soda.