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

What are they going to do?

[dward90]

Suppose I were the parent of an underprivileged child. Suppose I live paycheck-to-paycheck, and don't have room in my budget for this. What the hell is the school going to do when I refuse to adhere to this absurdity? Fail my child? This wreaks of something illegal.

Re:What are they going to do?

[dward90]

The fact that they make it slightly less of a challenge doesn't make it acceptable. They directly sponsor the most expensive vendor in the market and encourage parents to spend unreasonable amounts of money on unnecessary equipment. What are they going to do when high school students lose, destroy, and otherwise render unusable $900 equipment that they do not own? They're going to charge parents. Their only goal is to externalize costs, not help students.

Sounds more like parents will

[Anonymous Coward]

A new program at Beverly High will equip every student with a new laptop computer

Odd, from reading the summary, it sounds more like the parents will do that, while the 'program' will just require it.

My two cents

[Antony-Kyre]

Is it really necessarily to require every student to have a laptop in order to learn? Are they saying it's nearly impossible to correctly teach students without this technology?

And sure, while technology makes things easier to do, it almost feels like they're blaming the lack of technology for not being able to properly teach the students. But, that's my opinion.

Re:My two cents

[Grishnakh]

I think it's crap. Today's kids can't read or write worth a damn. They'd be better off just eliminating computers from classrooms altogether, and concentrating on teaching the basics. I never needed a computer, or anything besides a calculator, for high school or any of the basic college classes (obviously, computer programming classes were a different matter).

Linux Netbooks

[ZeroSerenity]

Probably a far better idea to get them all netbooks. They're cheaper and they will draw less irk from parents. Besides, what can a Mac do that Linux can't when it comes to schoolwork? And I'm not going to even mention using Windows and how much a joy that could be.

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

[morphotomy]

High schools have a strange sense of "voluntary."

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

[masmullin]

Sorry teacher. I'm not rich enough to do my homework.

Re:Before anyone gets in a huff...

[mjperson]

I assume you've never sent a kid to school. They constantly come home with lists of required purchases. Tossing a laptop onto the list is a larger scale, but no different in spirit than requiring: 5 spiral bound notebooks, 2 sewn binding composition books, a hand-held pencil sharpener, 10 number 2 pencils, etc...

Re:WTF

[TheRaven64]

Damn right. I'm glad that my school was forward-thinking enough to teach me Windows 3.11 and Microsoft Works and Word 2. All that other time that they spent teaching me the concepts underlying the systems was completely wasted, because when I got out into the real world I found that everyone used Window 3.11 and Word 2.