Fraters Libertas

Laptops: The New Entitlement

From the AP:

The Stillwater Board of Education approved a plan to give every junior high student in the district a laptop computer to use at home and school, despite requests from dozens of angry parents to delay the decision.

Monday night's 4-2 vote allows the school district to continue negotiations with Apple Computer on the five-year, $2.85 million proposal. The laptops would go to about 2,270 students and 135 staff members at two junior high schools by next fall.

Good lord. Apparently, the school board, which normally meets on Thursdays, called a last-minute meeting on Monday to try to ram this through. And although they were met with serious objections, through it went.

Setting aside all of the unanswered questions about who will support these laptops, how much that will cost, why these snot-nosed brats need such technology, etc., what is scary is that this is the new entitlement. Once it happens in Stillwater, then Eden Prarie will have to get them to keep up, then Minnetonka, then Edina.

Pretty soon the Minneapolis schools start to say "Hey it's not fair that all the rich schools should get laptops when we don't have them" so they'll get them too. Then the out-state schools will ask the legislature for dough to cover the cost of their laptops and the thing is completely out of control.

Some right-thinking parents objected at the meeting:

Several parents told the board that junior high students aren't responsible enough to handle such an expensive machine. Many said their students go through a $100 graphing calculator each year because they break or get stolen.

Amy Graebner said during visits to college campuses, administrators recommended desktop computers rather than laptops for students because they tend to leave them at coffee shops and other places.

``These are college students,'' Graebner said. ``How can we expect these junior high students to handle it?''

Good question, that.

Another scary proposition is that school administrators and union hacks could use the network and the laptops to entirely bypass parents by communicating straight to the students--something that is currently be done by putting notes in kids' backpacks that parents sometimes find inadvertently.

Talk about a great vehicle for indoctrination.

So even if you don't have kids of your own, or your kids are in private school (where they belong) watch out for this new entitlement and claim on your wallet.