In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
So the interesting line for me, that many comments obviously didn’t read, is:
So there clearly is something up with computers in school. But this doesn’t exclude the possibility that the kids who are getting their brains fucked by addictive algorithms are then more likely to fuck about on school computers. This line:
Suggests it’s not “tech” but “distractions enabled by tech” which is having the effect, i.e. if school laptops and tablets were locked down you wouldn’t see as much of an effect.
One of my first forays into computer science was learning how to bypass the various school firewalls in grade school lol
Heh, yeah. When I was at school, security was an afterthought. You could run a .reg file and give yourself any privileges. Bypassing the filters involved going on babelfish and translating from Chinese into English.