Heather Sutherland was excited to learn her public school system was using laptop computers to teach elementary students such as her daughter. Until, that is, she found out parents were expected to pay the nearly $1,500 cost.
“I said, ‘What? You must be joking,’ ” Sutherland says. “I think it’s unfair that the (school district) is requiring us to ‘pay to learn.’ “
Schools should be teaching that nothing of value is truly free. It appears that some parents don’t understand that. Either the parents buy their own laptops or the school makes everyone pay via taxes.
On the other hand, I certainly don’t like the idea that the school gets to pick the specific computer I have to buy. What if I already have three laptops, do I really need to buy a fourth?! And why pick an operating system used by only 10% of the population? If you’re going to go with an alternative OS you might as well go with a free one to save money.
Unless this school district is in a wealthy neighborhood, I predict the school board to change their minds or be shown the door at the next election.
Can you say Steve Jobs School Board President. Brilliant Marketing plan.
My daughter attends a private school (church-affiliated, but only coincidentally as far as we’re concerned) that requires a laptop in their secondary/middle school (6th through 8th). The have standardized on ibooks as well – but the laptop is already essentially in the tuition.
Of course, they could make the tuition look smaller by requiring parents to purchase them directly, but they decided to not to for very specific, and not conspiratorial, reasons:
— Bulk purchasing makes the price reasonable, and spares/ replacements more affordable
— They can (and do, very well) incorporate the laptops into their entire curriculum, becasue they only have to supply one version of each application, rather than scatter-shot support for various OS’s…
— Most importantly, from their perspective, it solves the question of “Why can’t I have ‘my’ application/game/whatever on ‘my’ laptop?”. It becomes a non-issue because it **isn’t** your laptop – it’s the laptop the school has issued/loaned you. If a question of an inappropriate (for whatever reason) application/game/song/video arises, it is quite simply resolved – the school owns the laptop, and can set conditions of its use.
Of course the question of “Why Apple” remains – and is probably more influenced by prejudices and/or politics and/or funding source…\
While I see this as unfair that the parents have to pay for the children’s laptops, I do see a point in the school requiring them to be Macs. While it is more cost effective to use Windows, I am sure the school does not want to go through the pain of securing small children’s computers. And the reason they don’t use Linux is that there is no school apps. that are reliable enough, or common enough to run on it (Mac is still has a large portion of schools in its market share).
For those who are living paycheck to paycheck $1500 can be a paycheck or more. If a laptop is truly a necessary and beneficial part of their education than everyone should pay through taxes, because prepared and educated students benefit us all. If it is more a novelty than a required tool, than the school board members are the real tools!
I bet she expects the tax payers to pay for it.
I finished school in 2003. In the seven years at school, I never learnt anything computer-based that was worth my time. Actually, I did. I learned a fairly neat little trick in Excel. But, of course, someone could have told me that in two minutes, rather than wasting seven years of my life telling me how to drag-and-drop time after time.
The last teacher I had for IT didn’t know what a PDF was or how to open a file from a floppy disk (in Windows). To get an A-level in IT, one needs only a precursory knowledge of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and IE. Somehow being able to do that equals being able to understand astrophysics or Shakespeare.
My old school is in a well-off middle class area in the suburbs of London. We had about 1,000 students and about 200-300 PCs (well above average). We had more than enough technology. We just had total idiots teaching it from a dumbed-down curriculum. It doesn’t matter whether you give someone on a brand-new iBook or a 286 stuck together with sticky-tape if the teacher has no expertise and the syllabus has been deliberately dumbed-down.
And, just in case you’re wondering, when they set me my “spreadsheets assignment”, I walked out.
Maybe they don’t want the students to have constant problems with viruses, spyware and the endless updates that come with owning a windows PC. At least they know the computers will always work. As far as the OS goes, mac works the same way as windows without all the fidling. mac will run a good browser, email, office and countless out programs that would be more then enough for school. Would this be a story if a windows pc was specified?
The thought occurs to me; would I have been further along in life if I’d had a Mac in school? Probably so; I left (not graduated!) in ’62. But then again, how about back in ’94, when I bought my first computer? But I was poor (then and now), and opted for the cheaper PC.
As a parent of three kids, I can tell you that having to spend $1500 is a drop in the bucket of the cost of raising kids. Yes, I would rather keep the $1500, but if that is what the school board decides, I certainly can understand why. (They probably can not afford a bunch of I.T. help desk folks to help with removing spyware and other crap, so forcing Macs makes sense.)
–Monty
As a college student in engineering, I find myself under similar situations in which the CAD software required is whatever company stuffed the university’s pockets with money and licenses. I’ve yet to see my school use a system that the industry actually wants me to be trained in.
As a working parent with three children This is the kind of idiotsy I have to put up with from our local school board. 1500 dollers in the flyover states is about three pay checks. This for a operating system that will not run most of the programs my children will see when they actually get a job. Apple has allways supported schools with free computors and money I guess this is the payoff.
I’ve actually seen this happen. At my school, parents were forced to buy iBooks at a significally higher price that on Apple’s website. Then the IT Department justfied the extra money with an included software packages.
Whatever, if it were me I would be flaming mad. I wonder why this is being done? There’s probably some fancy business reason to why the laptops are being distributed this way. $50 laptop anyone?
That would have been a great excuse to get my parents to buy me a Mac.
Although I’ve built my career on PCs, I’d defintely say it would be a story regardless of OS — if the fact remains the parents must make individual purchases. What are the school taxes going for anyway?
“what a sad philosophy. the fragrance of a gardenia is free. a sunset on the pacific is free.”
The property on which your gardenia sits was not free. To get to the sunset on the pacific is not free. Birkenstocks are definitely NOT free. Why are pseudo-hippie clothes SO expensive?!
“Would this be a story if a windows pc was specified?”
I agree that Macs have advantages, but I’ve never received spyware on my Windows PC ever. And my anti-virus program blocks those few viruses that I occasionally download. However, my father-in-law can manage to be filled with viruses and spyware every month even though he has the exact same set up (I built his computer). I’m not sure how.
That being said, I think the problem is not about the particular OS, it’s about being compelled to buy a particular computer for a particular price. If the school had said, “Buy any Apple laptop for your student and this software” I probably wouldn’t be as upset. What upsets me is that they made the choice for me. That pisses me off.
I wonder if the teachers are going to have to meet the same requirements as the students and shell out $1500 for a laptop.
Don’t laptops have a tendancy to “grow legs” in a school environment?
I forsee a lot of Ibooks on the black market soon.
They coulda waited for one of those $100 M.I.T. vaporware computers.
I have a problem with MAKING people buy a laptop for their children. It isn’t quite the same as writing paper or pens. I look at a laptop and regard it more like a resource like a text book. When I was at school you could either buy the text books yourself or use the library. Most people couldn’t afford to buy all the textbooks so you chose which ones you thought were useful and bought those. The rest you read in the library or borrowed a friends copy.
With laptops I assume that it should be the case that people who can afford to buy them should, and everyone else shares the school resources of computers. If they make them essential part of the cirriculum then the school needs to provide sufficient resources.
If people think that everyone can afford a laptop then you are living in a fantasy. They are expensive and lose value extremely quickly. Any laptop over three years old is basically a door stop.
Everyone has the right to education, and these kinds of impositions just put a wedge between the haves and have nots.
Is it any wonder our school kids now rank so low when ranked against other cultures?
“One more thing, there is a ton of free stuff that is of infinite worth”
OK, name one.
I can see why the school choose Apple. There isn’t a platform that can offer the following three benefits:
1. Ease of use
2. Stability
3. Lowest total cost of ownership.
People need to realize two things about our public education system.
A. You get what you pay for.
B Nothing in life is free.
““One more thing, there is a ton of free stuff that is of infinite worth”
OK, name one.
Comment by Steve Newlin — 1/4/2006 @ 7:36 pm”
OK, fucking.
“I can see why the school choose Apple. There isn’t a platform that can offer the following three benefits:
1. Ease of use
2. Stability
3. Lowest total cost of ownership.
1: This was true in the Windows 3.1 days, but really nowadays it seems that your average guy is lost on a Mac simply because people are pretty much born into a Windows environment. Sure, some things are much easier on a Mac, but really nothing is easy anymore considering the breadth of features expected from a computer now, and using a Mac is a learning experience, where as most kids have been clicking on a Start Button since the age of two.
2: No argument there.
3: Um…what? I just put together a PC for by brother and I’m amazed what can had for almost nothing. For less than the price of a Mac mini you can have a machine that is twice as fast if you go the Wintel route. Cost of ownership is something that varies widely with application, but for your average shmuck a Mac is like owning an Audi RS4: Highly advisable if one can afford it, but the POS Chevy is a much better deal.
I use a Mac, and don’t have any Windows machine whatsoever. I’m a huge fan of Apple stuff, and have been since the Mac SE, but I also believe something called reality. Macs are just expensive as hell. Period. A cheap Dell with mouse, keyboard, LCD, DVD-R/W, etc is $100 less than a bare bones, bottom end mac Mini with no input, or output devices at all. OSX updates, as Steve proudly pointed out a keynote, or two ago, are released at a much more rapid rate that Windows versions, and are more often required. Garageband forced me to update from Jaguar…I was pissed about that. Also, when you need a new Mac, you need a whole new machine, where as Wintel boxes can get buy with some new RAM, and a motherboard while still using the same HD, soundcard, etc.
““One more thing, there is a ton of free stuff that is of infinite worth”
OK, name one.
Comment by Steve Newlin — 1/4/2006 @ 7:36 pm”
OK, fucking.
Comment by SignOfZeta — 1/4/2006 @ 9:08 pm
So you met my sister…
I am writing this in OpenOffice and will paste it into my Firefox browser. Both of which cost me only the energy to download them.
***
$1500 for a laptop computer? Ya right, get real. What about the family that has three or even four kids in the district? And what happens when the computer gets stolen / broken / or disabled with a virus or Trojan horse. Is the district buying these wholesale and then retailing them to the parents?
The cost of raising a child may be much more then this. But I also don’t buy my daughter silly or redundant items that she will have no use for. Justify it and I will gladly buy it. Just don’t expect me to throw money away without a good reason. She already has a very good computer with a little keyboard and mouse that fit her six year old hands quite well. I won’t be building her a new one until she has outgrown this one.
A Mac is way overpriced and over powered for most school projects. I am relatively proficient with Windows and could help my child. But I know nothing about OSX.
To me it would make much more sense to lend every family, that doesn’t already have a computer, a desktop. The school could use desktops at the school and any home work that NEEDED to be taken electronically could be burned to a RW CD. Or the teacher could post the homework or assignments on-line and the student could download or verify it from home. They could also submit homework the same way. Hey, wait a minute, don’t several Universities already do it this way?
The Free School Guarantee & The Fullerton Laptop Program
The Fullerton School District’s “Laptops for Learning” program puts Apple iBook laptop computers into the hands of elementary and junior high-aged children at four Fullerton schools, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at a cost of almost $1,500 per child. Fullerton parents (and most recently the ACLU) have questioned whether or not the laptop program violates our children’s right a free public education as guaranteed under the California Constitution.
The controlling case with respect to school fees is the 1984 California Supreme Court case of Hartzell v. Connell. In Hartzell, the Santa Barbara High School District adopted a plan whereby students would be charged $25 for participation on each athletic team and $25 for participation in each other extracurricular activity (drama, voice, band and cheerleading). A lawsuit was filed, which claimed the District’s plan violated California’s free school and equal protection guarantees.
The Hartzell court discussed the history of the free school guarantee in California and its importance to a democratic form of government. They went on to state that “all educational activities – curricular or ‘extracurricular’ – offered to students by school districts fall within the free school guarantee . . . .”
It’s interesting that in attempting to defend charging $1,500 for a laptop computer, the FSD has repeatedly cited that per pupil funding in California is below that of other States. The Santa Barbara High School District also raised issues pertaining to budgetary constraints. However, the Hartzell court dismissed those arguments and indicated “financial hardship is no defense to a violation of the free school guarantee.” The court also stated that equally accessible “public education is not contingent upon the inevitably fluctuating financial health of local school districts. A solution to those financial difficulties must be found elsewhere . . . .”
As the FSD is mandated by law to comply with the free school guarantee as set forth in the California Constitution and the Hartzell case, the laptop program must be offered free of charge. Although the requirement to comply with the free school guarantee may create financial hardships for our public school district, or force them to make tough choices regarding what kinds of programs it can offer, the right to a free public education is too important a right and too precious to be trampled on.
If a public school district cannot afford a particular program, the solution is not to turn to parents to fund their child’s education, as those same parents have already paid for their child’s education through the payment of taxes. To request the parents to pay more would be tantamount to double taxation. The best forum for changes in school fee policies is at the State level (by contacting your State representatives and showing up on election day).
The FSD’s laptop program is not being funded by the District. Instead, the District has turned to parents and required that they pay almost $1,500 in order for their child to participate in the program. Is this a violation of California law? If it is, are you willing to sit idly by while the FSD violates your child’s rights? If you let them charge for a laptop, what next — textbooks? science materials? rent on your child’s desk?
My advice? Demand that the Fullerton School District abide by the law and not force you to pay-to-learn.
Heather Sutherland
Fullerton Parents for Good Public Education
http://www.FullertonParents.org