The idea that putting laptop computers in the hands of all of these immature students will somehow improve their education is nonsense. I know a good portion of these junior high students can not do basic multiplication facts without looking them up on a chart. I’ve seen it.

The seventh-graders in Maine today would not compare favorably to fourth-graders of the 1950s in basic skills. The governor’s program is more of the same pseudo-educratic nonsense that has put the “three Rs” way back in line behind sports, sex education and social engineering schemes of all types.

Nobody is against technology. This is not a Luddite argument. It is about whether we want to create educated thinkers who can help our nation to repair the de-industrialization being foisted upon us, or nonthinking worker bees who can push buttons on a computer keyboard, but have no idea what it takes to build or program them. Giving the Internet to every child at their desk would be another discipline nightmare for our harassed, powerless teachers to deal with.

The truth is we no longer want teachers. We want well-paid babysitters who merely monitor canned programming from Washington, D.C., which will train our students to be compliant droids. The Brave New World is at our doorstep, and Maine is the guinea pig, as usual.

If you doubt it, get a hold of the language of the School-to-work Act which is very similar to Mussolini’s programs of the 1920s and ’30s, and Red China’s “training” programs of today. Liberal arts are out – hands-on corporate training is in.

That is the essence of King’s vision. It is a vision taken right from George Orwell and Aldous Huxley’s darkest nightmare, and it is coming soon to a public school near you.

Stephen J. Martin

North Amity