Who Could Possibly Oppose Laptop Education?

So asks the Argus Leader:

Two well-deserving educational initiatives likely will land on the legislative agenda for the 2009 session.

Supporters of Classroom Connections, which aims to equip every high school student with a laptop, and making university campuses wireless hope to convince legislators to find the money to fund the programs. (snip)

Everyone knows that funding requests will exceed expected revenue. So hard choices will need to be made, and our elected officials are charged with making those choices in a way that most benefits South Dakota's residents.

To be sure, both programs are good ones and deserve serious consideration. After all, who honestly could argue, given the realities of a 21st0century world, against equipping our students and campuses with the technology that's no longer considered a luxury but rather a necessity?

Perhaps the Argus has failed to read the state's own report on laptop education.  From a Bob Mercer article that I can no longer find online, but appeared in the American News on Sept 24, 2008:

Legislators found plenty to question on Tuesday about the academic value of laptop computers in South Dakota high schools, including whether the emphasis on laptops might be coming at the expense of reading skills. The percentages of grade 11 students who tested proficient or advanced on standardized tests in reading fell at 19 of the 39 schools that received laptops the past two years through the Rounds administration's Classroom Connections program. In math, 16 of the 39 lost ground. (snip)

Pogany told the legislators there is very little data nationally showing that laptop computers help students post better test scores. He said the research on that topic is "inconclusive" and the Classroom Connections program wasn't intended to help students improve in reading and math. (snip)

Melmer acknowledged that he doesn't know why grade 11 reading scores are generally lower than in grades three through eight. He said principals tell him that the high school students don't take seriously the standardized test, known as the Dakota STEP, because the results don't affect their grades or their eligibility for college or scholarships.

At the same time, the school districts in the laptop program are buying fewer textbooks and are relying increasingly on the CD or on-line versions of books for students to use on their laptops. Melmer said high school students have more things to do with their free time, whether watching TV or playing computer games, than reading books. While colleges expect students to spend a lot of time reading, high schools don't, he said.

So there is no evidence that this expensive program help our students where they hurt the most, reading and math.  These results in South Dakota track with the results everywhere else: laptop education has no effect on student learning, and if anything it detracts from it.

Former Secretary of Education Rick Melmer's statements tell us why.  Parents don't ask their students to read, and neither do the high schools. Indeed, the high schools provide them with a tool, the laptop, and software to actually discourage them from sitting down with a book.  What is sad is that, apparently, our state education leaders don't seem to care, and in fact positively encourage this development. I draw from my own American News editorial on this subject to point out how pernicious this is:

Web sites are designed for the consumer, not the learner. They are graphic-heavy in an attempt to get the Web surfer to stop briefly and gawk before he clicks through to something else.

Graphic-heavy software and Web sites do little to raise the vocabulary of young people. The complexity of the written word and the plot intricacy of novels, even pulp novels, build vocabulary while encouraging contemplation and complexity of thinking.

But computers, video games and television, Bauerlein writes, condition the mind “against quiet, concerted study, against imagination unaided by visuals, against linear, sequential analysis of texts, against an idle afternoon with a detective story and nothing else.”

It is no accident that the National Association of Manufacturers lists low reading and writing skills as the No. 2 deficiency of employees.

While technology might make learning “fun,” it discourages students from approaching learning as a discipline. As on the sports field, book learning requires certain habits that can only be mastered by a certain amount of toil. Once basic habits are acquired, the advanced skills come more easily.

This, dear Argus Leader, is why some of us have honest problems with laptop education.  The last problem our students have is that they are insufficiently engaged with technology.  Their problem is, Argus Leader and Governor Rounds and Board of Regents, THAT THEY CAN'T FRIGGIN' READ!!!!!!!!!