Still As Life

I was just having a read through a news article on the Sydney Morning Herald regarding Kevin Rudd's new education plans and am I the only one that finds "...the Government's plan to provide computers to every high school student..." a complete waste of my taxes? I knew about this before Labour were elected, yes, and this was one of the many things I counted against them.

I just went and had a look at the details on the official Australian Labour Party Website at an article from November 14th titled "Federal Labor's Education Revolution - A School Computer For Every Student In Years 9-12"

So reading through this, that's all well and good, but "A Rudd Labor Government will invest $1 billion over four years to turn every secondary school in Australia into a digital school." And, "The National Secondary School Computer Fund will allow secondary schools to apply for capital grants of up to $1 million to acquire new or upgrade information technology equipment."

That's a lot of taxpayer money, but here's what I don't understand about it, every student has access to computers anyway, why do they all need their own, and if they do, why shouldn't they have to work for it like every other person in the country? Sure, I have my own computer, I have my own laptop as well. Actually, if we want to get into specifics, I'll be completely upgrading my desktop in a few weeks time at which point I will have two quite powerful computers, along with my Macbook Pro, and my old laptop which is still decent, despite its generally dieing. And hey, you know what, I'm a university student that doesn't live at home. I have to pay all my own bills, rent, phone, internet, power, car, etc and aside from my HECS, I get no government assistance at all. I get no money from Centrelink, no rent assistance, no free computer gear, I have to work for it all and pay FULL taxes at the same time.

So here is the biggest thing, yes, my university has better computer facilities than most school's, but the fact is, the vast majority of school's already provide adequate computer access for students, along with internet access. As it was, at one of my schools, albeit a private school, they had almost as many computers as they did students, and it was a small school, I'm talking 50 students. My other school, a public school, had at least 5 computer labs that I know of, for all I know there could have been more as I kept finding them all over the place as well as the library which had a computer section with 40 or so computers in it. Additionally, they had laptops and projectors that were loaned out to students for use in classes if they needed them for whatever reason. As I said, this was at a PUBLIC school.

I am sure the grant would be great for schools to upgrade labs and so on, but in my experience, most schools already have systems in place for this sort of thing. The public school I mentioned had a 3 year rotation in the 3 main labs and library. One lab would be upgraded each year and any extra money in the budget meant one of the other smaller labs would be upgraded as well. Every 3rd year the library would be upgraded along with one of the labs.

So yes, the grant would no doubt be helpful in that way as it would allow a bigger budget, but for a lot of schools, my question is, is it really needed? And as far as buying students their own computers, I have to pay and always have had to pay for all of my own equipment and I don't see how it is fair at all that I should have to pay for other peoples gear. I personally think something like this should be restricted to the school only, even having enough computers for one per student located at the school is a waste of money. They aren't all going to be used all at once and I believe it will be a long time before they ever will be, if they ever will be. They can be used for most things yes, but for food tech, visual arts, music, drama, industrial arts, any of the creative and performing arts subjects cannot be completely reliant on computers, they can only partially be computer oriented and I'm sure there are more subjects as well that fit this bill.

The money would be better spent actually upgrading school facilities, such as air conditioning in more classes, and better lab equipment and so on.

Please note, this is just my perspective on it all and I am sure it will benefit someone somewhere, I just don't believe it is a worthwhile use of my and every other taxpayers money.

Labels: politics, rants