Recently I received a letter from the public school system saying that every fifth and sixth grader will need to purchase a laptop computer to use in class to be able to keep up with the "rigorous" workload planned for the school year. The letter then went on to describe that a certain operating system must be used, a certain amount of memory,and that each student should have their own wireless internet connection. The laptop would cost about $1300.

I am not against using computers in school. In fact when my daughter first started this year I asked what type of computer programs they would be using to insure compatibility with home systems. I figured as she learned I could monitor and help with occassionally checking files to she what she was up to, before she loaded the contents onto a 3.5 inch diskette or a CD or some other form of transfer media.

Not good enough. The students aren't allowed to do the work at home and then transfer the files. They must have their own system set up as prescribed.

Now I seem to remember a day when the school system was concerned with some students not having access to calculators (when they cost around $100). Seems they're not worried anymore.

I look in computer shopper and the same system is offered for about $400, and I wonder, Who's getting paid the commission for the sale of all these computers?

When I ask my daughter if she has any homework the answer is always "No". She has Science once a week and Math three times a week. I remember doing Power Point, Excell, and Word with Windows 3.1 on a hundred mhz CPU. What does she need all this computing power for and why won't they let me see her work? My system is excellent and tranfer media is cheap so why does she have to purchase a specified "inferior" system that costs more than it should and isn't being used for anything verifiable?