In July 1952 the prowess of American technology was re-affirmed by the arrival in England of a great steamship, the USS United States, after an Atlantic crossing that cut 10 hours off the record then held, to America’s shame, by the British Queen Mary. The great fanfare led the editors at Punch Magazine to write: “After the loud and fantastic claims made in advance for the liner United States, it comes as something of a disappointment to find them all true.”

But browsing through reports of the ensuing talk about the future of transatlantic transportation I found no awareness that an event two months earlier had already made gaining 10 hours in crossing the Atlantic historically irrelevant. In May 1952 the first commercial flight of a passenger jet plane, the De Haviland Comet, flew from London to Johannesburg. Thinking about long distance transportation would never be the same.

I join Lewis Perelman in seeing this story as posing an important question for education reformers: are you trying to perfect the “educational steamship” or are you trying to make the “educational jet plane”? The question is a good tool for thinking about educational actions: are they more like the ship or the plane? For example I see a touch of the jet plane in my story (BDN, April 29) of how the student Michael pulled his level of learning from the pits of “special ed” to a level I would not hesitate to describe as “gifted and talented.” I see a similar touch of the jet plane in the story of a remarkable school district in Alaska.

The Chugach School District is in some respects like many Maine counties though much more so. I mention three of them. 1) The district is big in area and small in population: it covers 22,000 square miles (Maine covers 30,000) and has 224 (that’s two hundred and twenty four!) students. 2) Until recently virtually none of its students went on to further study after leaving school 3) It has recently adopted a new education model that includes providing most of its students with laptops.

Now for three respects in which Chugach might provide food for thought about Maine’s educational future. 1) A measurable triumph of the new education model is that three quarters of last years graduates went on to college and almost all went on to some kind of post-secondary education. This is especially interesting for Maine since a bad spot in our generally good education statistics is an exceptionally low rate of college enrolment. 2) But achieving this came through an educational model that goes beyond what we have done so far in Maine. Chugach has abolished “seat time” as a criterion for graduation or for assessment.

Chugach students are not segregated into grades. Each follows an individual educational plan, which can be adjusted so flexibly that some graduate at 14 and some at 21 without anyone having to suffer the ignominy (and inefficiency) of repeating a grade. Students graduate when they reach the required level of proficiency. Nobody is kept back to the pace of a class or forced to keep up with it provided that they are seen by teachers and parents to be working according to a well-conceived plan toward the same level of excellence.

(3) My final morsel of food for thought is an aspect of the story that could give courage to those in Maine who would go in the Chugach direction if they could. History is on their side. The ultimate consequence of the presence of computers will be to allow each individual to learn in a personal way … and this is inconsistent with having to spend so many hours a day on the seat of such and such a grade. I am sure that the age-segregation practiced in our schools will go the way of ethnic and gender segregations. But in the meantime fear reigns. When I speak to teachers and parents about taking even baby steps in the Chugach direction many say they would love to do so but are sure the state will never allow it. And then, when I speak to the Augustans I am told that they cannot move because the feds will never allow it. But parents, teachers and even politicians (present or next year’s) might take courage from what happened in Alaska.

There, too, the state had regulations. Chugach fought for a waiver and won. And as for the idea that this sort of thing goes contrary to President Bush’s education policies it is to be noted that no other than the president personally gave the Chugach School District the prestigious Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award for this year! Thus in the eyes of the president little brave Chugach beat out not only all the nation’s schools but all its corporations as well who are the usual recipients of this award for advancing quality in practice.

Seymour Papert is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Distinguished Computer Scientist at the University of Maine and a member of Maine Learning Technology Task Force. He may be contacted at papert@midmaine.com.