While a bit too long in coming, recently the Shoreline School Board did make an honorable, and correct, decision to forego forced 24/7 laptops. Laptops kept on carts at school are available to be used by students when teachers decide classroom education needs warrants it. Remember, any family whose child wants one 24/7 is still free to obtain one during rollout. Laptop rollouts are meant to give freedom of choice to those who want one 24/7 while preserving the freedom of choice for those who don’t. Freedom of choice is not a freedom Americans take lightly or relinquish easily.
Despite biased opinion from the district, there is not one scintilla of hard evidence that writing, reading, math or science education is enhanced by forced 24/7 laptops over simply using laptops educationally on carts in class, the use of which I will always support. Those who believe manipulating or coercing a family or child, with clever anecdote, into carrying a laptop 24/7 as a purported and promised educational necessity, must remember that there are equally, mayhaps even more talented and educated individuals, who absolutely disagree and know it is an illegitimate concept for a large cohort of students.
Working in cutting edge research, I am fundamentally cognizant of the absolute necessity and wide utility of computers in the workplace. I also know of the equal necessity to write legibly on paper and communicate at lab meetings verbally. Forcing all families, by use of a specious or emotional argument, into a rash decision to reluctantly agree to required 24/7 laptops, when some have been already harmed by the program, is tantamount to educational malfeasance. Every family should have this fundamental, personal choice based on reason; free of persuasive salesmanship, unilaterally derived postulates or one-sided pronouncements.
Raymond Koelling
Lake Forest Park
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