Dear Editor,
Help!
The befuddled single parent came to ask advice on how her Nursery School daughter can learn ‘on-line’. She posed me a number of issues which, being ‘off-line’ myself, I could not resolve, recognising that commonsense did not necessarily reconcile every generation with the enveloping technological environment.
Nevertheless, however simplistically, she asked:
What is On-line?
What is it she would have to do?
What machine she would have to buy?
Her part-time job did not pay enough to buy anything more than the cell phone she used to keep in touch with family none of whom lived in the same isolated rural neighbourhood
She could not afford another cell phone for the little child. In any case the latter was too playful and would soon ‘spoil’ it.
On top of that she could not read the ‘little’ child’s lessons. Was the teacher going to come and help, and at what time, because she could not risk leaving the house ‘open’ with the ‘little child’ alone at home.
If so, she wanted to know how the ‘little child’ would progress in learning ‘online’.
I promised faithfully to find out.
Will someone please help the two of us, and presumably whomever else may be in such a predicament?
Possibly also, it is a problem for the teacher/s involved.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
