March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Computer idea a `smashing’ proposal

By now you’ve probably heard about Gov. Angus King’s proposal to equip all seventh-graders with their very own laptop computers. It’s made for provocative headlines, especially the part about the $50 million cost of handing machines to 15,000 or so youngsters a year as they enter the seventh grade.

The plan, which King humbly hailed as the nation’s most far-reaching school computer initiative, would allow Maine “to lead the country in closing the digital divide” between families who have computers and those who don’t. And it comes with Internet access to boot.

Like our Governor Gizmo, I prefer to think of myself as a progressive sort. Computer equity all the way, I say. But as I pondered King’s idea, I couldn’t get past an annoying little glitch. It had nothing to do with the complaint of legislators and educators who think we should first fix up our aging schools so that leaky roofs don’t ruin the computers we already have.

No, my problem was a lot closer to home. Instead of imagining a future of “digitally literate” children, I kept hearing the sound of L.L. Bean bookbags with costly laptops inside crashing onto schoolyards and kitchen floors. I heard the sizzle of keyboards marinating in Mountain Dew, and desperate parents shrieking, “What do you mean you left your laptop at Burger King?”

I knew I wasn’t the only one with reservations about giving $500 computers to typically irresponsible 12-year-olds who can’t even remember where they put their sneakers and orthodontic retainers. So I asked a few parents and teachers for their reactions.

“OK, let me see if I got this right,” said one incredulous mother. “My kid gets to keep a $500 laptop computer and take it anywhere she likes. Boy, I’d give that expensive gadget about two weeks, tops.”

Another parent, once she finished laughing, said it’s obvious that King hasn’t had a seventh-grader in his family for a while. Her son, she said, used to leave his bookbag in mysterious locales at least once a month.

“I can’t imagine who advised him on this,” said Laura Fahey, who teaches at Bangor’s Fifth Street Middle School. Knowing seventh-graders as she does, Fahey said laptops would inevitably join the other expensive items routinely left in school lost-and-found boxes — if they didn’t wind up smashed on the ground. “Keeping track of a laptop is too much responsibility for most students of that age. But I’m sure King has the votes of every seventh-grader in Maine right now.”

Jennifer Cormier of Bangor said she’d rather not have to add laptops to the long list of misplaced or damaged goods around her house.

“My oldest couldn’t even keep track of his coat when he was in seventh grade,” she said. “A laptop? He’d have left it on the bus, at friends’ houses, and at any number of soccer fields in the area. Besides, our dog has already eaten eight TV remotes; he’d have that laptop out of the bag in a minute. No thanks.”

Our visionary governor, it must be said, is pragmatic enough to have factored laptop-abuse into his plan. Broken machines, he said, will simply be shipped to the state’s “built-in repair shop,” otherwise known as the Maine Correctional Center. Since I’d hate for King to mistake me for a pothole on Maine’s stretch of the information highway, I have a suggestion. On the Web I found lots of really cool laptops that would be ideal for seventh-graders. Built for the military and demolition workers, the pricey machines have names like “Husky”and “Endura” and “Hardbody.” Encased in magnesium or stainless steel, they can be dropped from several feet and even immersed in water.

I’ll be sure to e-mail King when I find one that’s Sprite-resistant.


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