Back to the Future
AP U.S. History was my first class of the day, and I was late as usual that spring morning—getting a driver’s license and escaping the bus had allowed me to indulge my tendency to procrastinate. As I ran up the steps to the second floor of my Virginia high school, the rarely used black bag I’d lugged in from the student parking lot slid off my shoulder, catching on my elbow. Making it to the classroom, I saw the note on the door: FIRST PERIOD MEETING DOWNSTAIRS. So I trudged back the way I came, repositioning the bag on my shoulder as I walked down the hall.
In a windowless classroom not far from the gym, a camera crew was setting up its gear as my classmates set up theirs. Opening carrying cases identical to mine as I scurried inside, they pulled out small, snow-white laptops, which they placed on their desks and opened in preparation for the lesson.
School-issued laptops are now common in many places. Along with scores of individual districts, the state of Maine started providing its 37,000 middle school students laptops in 2002, and earlier this year, Pennsylvania’s governor announced plans to begin doing the same in that state’s high schools. But this wasn’t the case in 1985, when I was a high school junior who took part in an experiment that...
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