Related link: https://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/cobb/0205/10laptop.html
You would think that as a typical Mac zealot, I’d be happy
There, on the front page of my newspaper this morning, a picture of an iBook, accompanying a story that my school district plans to buy $70 million worth of iBooks over the next few years for middle schoolers, in a plan similar to the famous one launched in Maine a few years ago.
Don’t get me wrong - it’s another quality win for Apple. And, if you’re going to do this, the more secure, reliable and easier-to-use Macs are going to keep maintenance costs down.
And obviously, I’m not partial to that ridiculous argument that “kids should be taught what they’re going to use in the real world.” These are middle schoolers, ten years away from their college graduations and the “real world”. Retroactively apply that logic to 1995 and you might be teaching kids DOS, WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics. How many of those even exist today?
The problem is, I really don’t like the idea of computers in schools at all.
I re-read the article a few times and while there are details about the gradual roll-out of the computers, parental deposits and liability, and the software to be included… I cannot find anything indicating what the point of this venture is. Is it to teach programming? (don’t laugh - that’s what computers were for in my early 80’s high school… you actually got in trouble for using them for word processing) Is it to teach basic computer skills? Are there going to be e-texts available so the kids don’t have to lug 40 pounds worth of textbooks around?
I think for $70 million, there at least ought to be a specific, attainable goal for this program.
I came around to this line of thinking years ago, when I read of high schools that were closing down their band programs so they could afford the support costs on their computer labs. That’s a damned outrage.
“The kinds of things the students will be using out in the work force today, they’ll be using in our schools,” says a Deputy Superintendant. Maybe that’s so, but you know what else they’ll be using? Words. Sentences. Abstract thoughts and critical arguments. Math. Philosophy. Science. A functioning sense of right and wrong. An awareness of history and the lessons learned from it.
All of which we will now have $70 million less for. But we’ll have iTunes.
You see, there are a few other things you need to know about this case in particular, as opposed to other big-time educational computer buyers like Maine and Michigan. Those places haven’t ranked dead freaking last on the SAT year after year like Georgia has. Oh wait! We were 49th last year! Yay us. Gainsayers will claim that it’s an unfair comparison, because in some states, only the college-bound take the SAT, while all Georgia students take it, meaning that their lousy students don’t show up in the numbers and ours do. Great, maybe that’ll almost get us out of the bottom quartile? Maybe, maybe not.
The fact is, our schools stink, and many people here with the money to do so put their children in private schools. Granted that’s true everywhere (I grew up outside Detroit and went to a private school), but here the whole “send your kids to private school if you can” idea is not a personal choice so much as it is a commonly accepted cultural norm.
And one other thing you should know about us. If the term “Cobb County” seems familiar, it should. This is the same school board that tried to put anti-evolution stickers in science textbooks that read:
This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
It’s so wrong in so many ways it’s funny - I don’t know whether to hope for similar warnings about theories like gravity, supply-and-demand, and Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem, or to hope every religion with a creation myth to get to pitch it as science (”OK, kids, book report on Dianetics due Friday, and don’t forget your turn in your Astrological charts”). Or maybe the idea of state schools preaching critical thinking is even funnier (”Be critical just about this, but otherwise, buy lots of products, don’t cause trouble for the state, and shut the hell up.”)
Oh, and as Steve Jobs always says, one more thing…
Right next to the story on the iBooks was a story there’s a fraud investigation underway involving the Atlanta Public Schools and its use of E-Rate technology grants. This is a federally funded program that’s supposed to support educational technology, paid for with a telephone surcharge. The Atlanta Journal Constitution series found that the Atlanta Public Schools wildly overpaid for an over-elaborate network, much of which it doesn’t need, and went on such a spending spree that they are now warehousing stacks and stacks of network gear that they don’t need and can’t find a use for, and which grows more out-of-date every day. $73 million involved in this scandal so far…
So, if I thought this were a fertile garden of the mind in full bloom down here, maybe iBooks would be the ideal tool to foster collaboration, expression, and learning. Since it’s not, I can’t help but see this as a very flashy way of spending my money for little or no gain. Thanks, but no thanks.
Computers in schools… good or bad? Let’s have it!
