Back to school with a bag of books?

School is back and we have another of the perennial education debates. This one is about school books. The government has abolished the school book grant for most schools and parents are again complaining (and rightly so) about the cost of books and the changing of curricula so books cannot be passed on. Most homes in Ireland have a computer of some kind. Most children have a Gameboy or something similar in addition to a mobile phone and an MP3 player. Is it not well past the time when schools moved into the 21st century and books were produced in digital form so that they could be stored on a digital device? Could home work not be done on a computer and emailed to the teacher? One of the biggest educational software companies in the world, Riverdeep (http://web.riverdeep.net/), is based in Dublin. Commission them to design a digital education system.

When we had the funds we should have invested in our education system instead of big motorways that are mostly empty. Broadband is (are) the motorways of the future and most children are more than comfortable using digital technology. So it is there we should be investing. It is not too late to start and evidence has shown that investing in education more than repays itself. Lets soon see the day when instead of a school bag pupils will go to school with a notebook and a folder of CDRoms. While I think of it why go to school? Go to your room boot up, log on and start learning!