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Have you been reading Eliot Spitzer's delightful new Slate column? In his latest outing, Spitzer disses Obama's stimulus plan and says we shouldn't be upgrading roads and schools, but instead spending on a new electronic health records system, smart energy meters, and other high tech innovations. (He doesn't mention one of our fave spending priorities here at TAPPED - mass transit.) I guess it seems pretty clear to me that we should be doing all these things. But I disagree with Spitzer that robots are a more promising education reform strategy than clean, safe, modern school buildings. You know, where students will actually want to spend time and teachers will actually want to work. He writes:
Provide funding for robotics teams at every school. If you ever want to see intellectual competition in the arena that matters today—technological wizardry—visit the robotics competitions that now exist in some schools. Make these competitions as universal as football. Make it cool to design the next cutting-edge video game or iPod."Technological wizardry" is well and good, but at many schools, kids would just like some new books, functioning heating and air conditioning systems, and qualified teachers. A stimulus plan should address our needs before it tackles our fantasies. Not that I'd really expect Eliot Spitzer to keep his fantasies in perspective...--Dana Goldstein
