"Parents who buy computers tend to place more value on education."

No, parents who buy computers tend to have more money. Stop propagating 20th-century stereotypes.

This author's way of thinking about the relationship between wealth and the value of education makes me sick to my stomach. I am a middle school teacher in a large, urban school district, and I am tired of upper-class literati claiming that poor families don't value education. How do you know that? Where in the world did you come up with a claim like this? Show me the data to support your claim or admit that you're bloviating based on cynical stereotypes you've absorbed.

When was the last time that a complex issue such as this one had an easy answer? Saying, "families with more money value education more" is like saying "politicians value the political process more than regular citizens."

Interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine, who teaches at a local university here. His semester assignment yielded appalling results, in his words. One student handed in her term paper in which she forgot to remove the hyperlinks. It wasn't enough to read the paper that plagiarism was evident, but I just had to laugh when her attempt to get away with it wasn't so subtle.

I saw a program on TV the other night where the task of teaching has a new obstacle: The information age. So many of the younger generation are reliant on the internet for instant answers. In one student's words, "I honestly haven't read a book in years. I read Romeo and Juliet (presumably a Cliff's Notes version) on-line in 20 minutes." The consequence of this, one teacher stated, is that students lack the ability to think critically and to absorb classroom material. They are used to being able to get instant answers to assignments by downloading information off the internet. She said that getting students attention and maintaining it for the classroom hour is a real challenge.

Is the proliferation of the internet a problem when it comes to education? Being that it is a useful tool, it seems evident that it has its negative affects as well. From a non-teaching perspective, it appears that this is a problem that can have a detrimental impact on education.

Having a computer at home in no way guarentees better education. Having concerned, active parents who encourage learning is the best resource and that is income independent.

It's not exactly income-independent. Not in a statistical sense, anyway.

The claim is the following: Wealthier people tend to be more educated than average. Parents with more education tend to be more concerned with the education of their children. As a result, wealthier parents are more concerned with their kids education. They are also (because they're wealthier) more likely to buy a home computer. As a result, any analysis that doesn't properly take into account this will confound the effect of a computer with any number of other effects that are relevant.

The value a parent places on education is not essentially linked to his or her income. In that sense, it is income independent. But in reality we often find correlations even when there is no causation. And that was the point of the criticisms of previous research.

that was the purpose of the computer itllustrated in the cover picture, to make computers avaliable "free" to the kid. of course somebody had to pay for it but it was cheap ~ 200 $ with amazing technology. eg it incorporated a hand crank electrical generator. you could purchase one and donate it . or a government gould buy them. the original forced intel to get off its big fat corporate ass and invent one too.

you are right about the stereotype of the fool that wrote the article. an upper class pseudo intellectual indeed, of the highest order.