It is a safe guess that in the best public schools at least 80 percent of students have their own access to the internet through their laptop or smart phone. It is unlikely that even 20 percent of students in the worst public schools have such access. The 80/20 Rule is an expression of the power law, and here makes clear one of today’s education’s heels on the necks of non-elite kids.
Great pertinent news today is the new $99 price for a smart phone by Apple, last year’s iPhone. We have strained and groaned too long at leaving no child behind a standard line of mediocrity. We can now afford (at just $99 per child) to give them all a tool to pursue each’s own curiosity and inherent ability. How can we afford not to do that? Sure, there is more than the cost of the smartphone itself. You have to add about $1000 per year per student for a wireless plan so the internet can be browsed on the smartphone. The cost of public education is roughly $10,000 per year, so smartphone cost is around ten percent of that. It seems certain that smartphone costs will go down and that using the devices instead of printed textbooks will save a great deal of money.
Thinking about students in public schools as populating a bell curve masks the elitism. It makes the kids without the access to 21st century knowledge riches within the internet seem to be okay. We have assumed too long from the bell curve that they are in that safe middle somewhere. We feel good about trying to move some of them up the steep side of the bell curve. Yet I would bet my G3 that 80/20 individual internet access mirrors 80/20 school achievement.
It gets easier and cheaper to fix the inequity revealed by the power law: To provide every teacher and student with a mobile device to browse the internet. We have strained and groaned too long at leaving no child behind a standard line of mediocrity. We can now afford (at just $99 per child) to give them all a tool to pursue each’s own curiosity and inherent ability. How can we afford not to do that?
