I sympathize with any reader who is thinking: More about laptops? Isn’t there anything else he can talk about? As a matter of fact I had resolved to lay off this subject for a while when I received an email from Rep. Brian Duprey who, you will have noticed, was responsible for opening a new discussion about how much it would cost the state to get out of its contract with Apple. I feel obliged to respond since I had specifically challenged Duprey to formulate his objections so as to help put this debate on a deeper level than “Laptops are great … kids and teachers love them” vs. “they cost a lot of money.”

Fortunately for my sense of keeping resolutions I can assure myself that the column only appears to be about laptops. Indeed the essence of my response to Duprey is that two out of three concerns he expresses about laptops (the third is about health hazards which I am not qualified to discuss) raises a problem that goes far beyond this laptop initiative. He writes:

Let me first start by saying I love technology. I have 3 computers in my home and with 5 children, my children have the world at their fingertips (supervised of course). My 6-year-old (who is in the 3rd grade and excelling at everything she does) is a computer wiz and I attribute much of her success to date on the computer. With that said you would think I would be wrapping my arms around this program, well I am not and here is why.

I do support the laptop concept, it is the wireless internet access where I have the problem … .

Wireless internet access means that the laptops will always be connected to the internet. No supervision, just the freedom to explore and be explored. It will be a pedophiles playhouse. Imagine, thousands of 7th- and 8th-graders at their disposal. The Department of Education has told me that these computers will have filters and not to worry. But this is the same Department of Education that told me last year when I introduced a bill to mandate filters on all school and library computers that “filters were unreliable”. Which is it? My second concern is that if a teacher has 20 kids in a classroom and the children have their laptops in front of them, what are the odds that Sally and Johnny are sending instant messages to each other and not paying attention to the teacher. I say the odds are good.

Duprey seems to believe (as I do) that in the right learning environment computers can help 6-year-old kids excel at a third-grade level. He also seems to believe that schools do not provide the right kind of learning environment for this to happen – his own children are home-schooled. Here too I agree with him. So the problem is not about the computer but about the structure of school. So the solution must be sought by mobilizing the problem-solving resources of our state to find ways for schools to change so as to be able to make the most effective use of the new learning opportunities.

Some of the leading thinkers in the field will be talking about how to do this at the Laptops, Learners and Powerful Ideas conference at Orono this week. I’ll also discuss it in my next column. For the moment I’ll give you a hint. The key is trust. I trust teachers to know what is going on their classrooms enough to solve the Sally and Johnny problem. And if we can’t trust our kids, that’s a problem we have to solve – parents, teachers and everyone – on pain of even more serious consequences than those Duprey mentions. Denying kids the opportunity to learn is no substitute for building the trusting relationship and ethical foundation that are essential to healthy development of the individual and of the state.

Seymour Papert is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Distinguished Computer Scientist at the University of Maine and a member of the Maine Learning Technology Task Force. He may be contacted at Papert@midmaine.com.