FORUM

Issues in Science and Technology, Fall 2005

Instead of retreating, the United States must reorganize its overseas bases to be consistent with the modern world, technologically and strategically. Not doing so harms its vested interests by underestimating the stabilizing role of U.S. forces and the negative impact, economically and politically, of removing them. Besides, leaving Europe, the Pacific, or the Middle East would create a vacuum that could be filled by a hostile power.

Also, although the United States does spend more on defense than its allies, it has the most to lose from major changes in the global status quo. Inadequate spending by allies should not be answered by the United States spending less, but by those allies spending more.

One of Peña's strongest arguments, the need for military transformation, is one of the reasons for recent increases in defense spending. Outfitting a military force for the future is not cheap. Additionally, his assertion that Iraq and the war on terror should not be the gauge for future force requirements is correct. However, his balancer-of-lastresort strategy would cut U.S. active forces from about 1.4 million to around 700,000. As noted above, the United States must maintain a global presence, and therefore such reductions would be unwise.

The military posture of the United States must be defined by strategic interests and not by funding levels. Although it may seem that it is time to bring the troops home, policymakers must consider that perhaps the lack of major threat to U.S. security is a testament to the criticality of its ongoing overseas mission.

JACK SPENCER

Heritage Foundation

Washington, DC

jack.spencer@heritage.org

Digital education

HENRY KELLY'S "GAMES, COOKIES, and the Future of Education" (Issues, Summer 2005) provides an excellent synthesis of challenges and opportunities posed by technology-based advances in personalized entertainment and services. An aspect of this situation deserves further discussion: Children who use new media extensively are coming to school with different and sophisticated learning strengths and styles.

Rapid advances in information technology have reshaped the learning styles of many students. For example, the Web, by its nature, rewards comparing multiple sources of information that are individually incomplete and collectively inconsistent. This induces learning based on seeking, sieving, and synthesizing, rather than on assimilating a single "validated" source of knowledge as from books, television, or a professor lecturing.

Also, digital media and interfaces encourage multitasking. Many teenagers now do their homework by simultaneously skimming the textbook, listening to a MP3 music player, receiving and sending email, using a Web browser, and conversing with classmates via instant messaging. Whether multitasking results in a superficial, easily distracted style of gaining information or a sophisticated form of synthesizing new insights depends on the ways in which it is used.

Another illustration is "Napsterism": the recombining of others' designs into individual, personally tailored configurations. Increasingly, students want educational products and services tailored to their individual needs rather than one-size-fits-all courses of fixed length, content, and pedagogy. Whether this individualization of educational products is effective or ineffective depends both on the insight with which learners assess their needs and desires and on the degree to which institutions provide quality customized services, rather than Frankenstein-like mixtures of learning modules.