Blind Sided

Cheryl Atkinson, like all too many educrats across this nation, is hell bent on getting "computers in the schools" and has announced that 8200 students will be transitioning from "traditional" textbooks to netbooks, self-congratulating herself by saying "no longer will our students be saddled by heavy backpacks". As if that were not enough she could not hold back this edu-fart: "the fact is our children have an intellectual complexity  that demands we change our educational approach". Only in educational la-la land can profound ignorance and non-existent work ethic be considered "intellectual complexity".

It is mind-boggling that adults spew this nonsense and even more so that it works.

But this diatribe isn't about the proven waste of money and year over year growth of graft and mismanagement in public school IT departments and it isn't about the fact that computers in the classroom have no demonstrated benefit. This is about what may have a chance to put a stop to this nonsense.

If anything or anyone can, it will be the NFB--the National Federation of the Blind. If you check out their website you will notice (at the time of this writing) a prominent condemnation of Amazon for pushing their Kindle e-book readers to schools. You may think nothing of this, but consider that a philanthropist attempted to donate similar technology to an Athens area school and the school was compelled to reject the offer--they could not accept the legal risks of being sued by the NFB. If you don't believe it just point your browser to google and search "nfb sues".

It looks like DCSS and the taxpayers that fund it are about to get blind sided because they cannot see past the latest trend.