> We already saw an extreme example of misallocated resources in Peru. But even in a ``wealthy'' country one has to be concerned about this problem. Many educators in North America share the feeling of betrayal of the teacher who said, They can give us the axe, but they can spend thousands on computers. We have to fire our music coordinator, we have to fire our music teachers, we have shitty libraries. (Lynn, a Canadian schoolteacher, quoted in [14, p. 41])

I’ve seen this happen in the relatively wealthy schools my kids are in. They spend many thousands on smartboards and iPads, and they’ve gotten rid of the “non-essential” arts and music teachers. Parents are personally funding some arts educators on a part time basis a couple of days a week. I think it’s an egregious misuse of funds, wasteful and ultimately damaging to the kids.

What’s worse, the tech is not being used effectively. The teachers don’t have enough training to incorporate the smartboards and iPads, and they don’t have the budget for tech training because they spent it on the iPads. Kids play games on them that they have access to at home, but they’re not being taught about the technology or being taught to use it to do things they can’t do on paper.

I don’t mind computers in the classroom, as long as the arts are funded and the teachers are paid enough. What I’d really love to see more of is using computers to integrate math and arts together... digital arts with an emphasis on both rigorous math and rigorous art. Give the mathy students some aesthetics training, and make sure the art students are capable with computation.