Fresh off the Internet, some New Year's food for thought:

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers," Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

"There is no reason why anybody would want a computer in their home," Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody," Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, 1981.

We laugh about these great people and how wrong their vision was but we mustn't forget that these same people went on to change their minds and provide the foundation for one of the most

profound changes in society in the entire 20th century, the Computer Revolution.

If they had faults, it is that their dreams were not big enough, bold enough or soaring enough.

The one constant that they demonstrate is that change always catches us unaware.

That's why the ultimate goal of education is not the relentless stuffing of facts into young brains, but the careful cultivation of minds and instruction in the process of critical thinking. I'm sure Bill Gates made a good portion of his technical college classes obsolete within a few years after he left Harvard. I saw in the newspaper just the other day that the powers-that-be are now considering revising Einstein's legendary E=Mc2 to reflect more current knowledge.

This doesn't mean that facts are unimportant. Oh, no, your children aren't getting off that easy. Facts are critical building blocks of logical and analytical thinking. And that is what we strive to teach.

But as we begin a new year, it's perhaps useful to remind ourselves of some things that often get in the way of that goal.

I'm talking about over-testing, about an undue reliance on what is essentially a snapshot of a particular student on a particular day (What? You say Johnny had the flu that day?) Despite what some federal and state officials say, educators know that over-testing hurts the educational process and fails to recognize the whole student.

I'm talking about making sure that the few don't disrupt the educational processes of the many. I'm talking about the need for fair and consistent discipline in our schools and in our classrooms as a bulwark to assure that the non-troublemakers get the education they want and their parents expect. Discipline in Farmingdale is mostly fine. But there are a few bad apples and parents expect us to weed them out. Parents need to get involved in the process and take responsibility for children who act out and to demand that those who do act out are not permitted to adversely affect the education of others. (Your right to express yourself stops at my nose.)

I'm talking about parents and teachers working together to instill the joy of learning, the joy of lifetime learning so that education and critical thinking can help the future Bill Gateses and Tom Watsons and Ken Olsons change their minds when the facts change --- yet retain a clear vision of which way they want to head. We have a lot to be proud about and we need to continue to build on our strengths.

As H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers Studio, said in 1927, "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

Happy New Year!