Restrictive Environment From School

[Travis Hoffman]

Perhaps school districts should stop indiscriminately handing out freebie laptops to everyone and instead use their obviously plentiful $$$ to hire more and/or better teachers and expand the selection of *live* instruction the kids have to choose from?

I'd like to see any kid try to erase a teacher's "operating system". I think the resultant swift kick in the pants would do him/her some good. Oh wait, that kind of real discipline isn't permitted any more.

Sitting still and listening to your teachers seemed to work fine in the good ole' days (1995). You could not ever convince me that the majority of those laptops are being used for educational purposes the bulk of the time. I would hope each student in possession of a laptop were required to somehow *prove* that they were putting this item to good use to retain the right to use it.

So what to do with all those confiscated laptops? How about distributing them to local libraries, community centers, and colleges, where only those who possess a genuine desire to use the technology for practical and educational purposes will ever use them? Those who want to chat on AIM all day can wait until they get home. Poor widdle babies.

Pardon my aggressive and quite possibly off topic post, but this bugs me greatly. It's bad enough such educational and economic disparity exists in this country to the point where some schools have a laptop for every kid while others have one computer for every building (if they're lucky); but to hear of a few truly fortunate students either abusing or suggesting the abuse of this extreme privilege on top of it all.........GAH!!

Please respect those who have put so much faith in you all to use and take care of such expensive pieces of equipment. If you have a desire to install hardware/software for FIRST or other programs, then please don't circumvent the system. You may find your school's IT staff will kindly accomodate you. If they decline, accept it and pursue an alternate solution to your problem through other positive, respectful means.