MA High School Forces All Students To Buy MacBooks

An anonymous reader sends in this excerpt from the Salem News: "A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer to prepare kids for a high-tech future. But there's a catch. The money for the $900 Apple MacBooks will come out of parents' pockets. 'You're kidding me,' parent Jenn Parisella said when she found out she'd have to buy her sophomore daughter, Sky, a new computer. 'She has a laptop. Why would I buy her another laptop?' Sky has a Dell. Come September 2011, every student will need an Apple. They'll bring it to class and use it for homework. Superintendent James Hayes sees the technology as an essential move to prepare kids for the future. The School Committee approved the move last year, and Hayes said he's getting the news out now so families can prepare. 'We have one platform,' Hayes said. 'And that's going to be the Mac.'"

Comments

Re:Don't let reality get in the way of your anger

[commodore64_love]

So just like the real world. :-)

The person below me made the point about parents paying for these MacBooks via taxes. Yes. They also pay taxes when they don't send their kids to school at all (i.e. homeschool). That's the unfairness of a monopoly in a nutshell. It's the government equivalent of having to send $1000 to Microsoft every year, even if you never use MS operating systems.

Re:Don't let reality get in the way of your anger

[Red Flayer]

Yes. They also pay taxes when they don't send their kids to school at all (i.e. homeschool). Or for Amtrak even if you've never set foot on a train. That's the unfairness of a monopoly in a nutshell. It's the government equivalent of having to send $1000 to Microsoft every year, even if you never use MS operating systems.

Waah waah waah. Do us a favor and move to Rwanda where you won't have to worry about that.

Even if you homeschool your kids, you still benefit from the public school system. Amtrak? Puh-lease. Subsidization of road travel makes subsidization of Amtrak look like a speck of dust in the cosmos.

So if the parent decides this MacBook idea is stupid, he can just quit that school and go somewhere else. There's no negative consequences of that decision.

There are NO decisions that do not have negative consequences. If you choose to ignore them, it's further sign that you cannot see the forest for the trees.