Some influential members of the Democratic Party want to give electronic reading devices to every student in the country.
Mario Tama/Getty Images Amazon’s Kindle 2.Amazon.com should like the name of their proposal: “A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools,” by the Democratic Leadership Council, a left-leaning think tank, was published on the group’s Web site Tuesday.
Its authors argue that government should furnish each student in the country with a digital reading device, which would allow textbooks to be cheaply distributed and updated, and allow teachers to tailor an interactive curriculum that effectively competes for the attention of their students in the digital age.
“We shouldn’t wait a decade or two to begin to achieve what is inevitable — an education system where each American schoolchild has an eTextbook, like Amazon’s Kindle, loaded with the most up-to-date and interactive teaching materials and texts available,” the paper argues. “The ‘Kindle in every backpack’ concept isn’t just an educational gimmick—it could improve education quality and save money.”
The authors of the paper have ties to the Obama administration and influence within the Democratic Party. Thomas Z. Freedman, the primary author, is a council fellow and a former senior adviser to President Clinton who served on the Obama-Biden transition team. Blair Levin, another Obama transition team member, also worked on the paper but left before it was published to join the Federal Communications Commission to work on broadband issues.
The paper proposes a year-long pilot program, during which some 400,000 students would receive reading devices. If judged a success, the program would be gradually scaled up to include the entire student population within four years. They estimate such a project would cost about $9 billion more than the amount spent to acquire print textbooks.
Such a commitment by government, they speculate, would increase competition among device makers and drive down the cost of hardware and electronic textbooks. Since e-textbooks are considerably cheaper than paper versions, they project $700 million in annual savings over traditional textbook purchases by the fifth year of the project.
Of course, such an upfront government outlay in these economic times seems unlikely. Mr. Freedman acknowledges that, but believes the federal government should act, particularly since e-books will inevitably migrate into students’ hands anyway.
“There are two crucial questions. Will this improve the educational experience for children, and is this budget neutral, does it cost money or save money?” he said. “There are positive indications in both of those categories that are worth investigating further.”
Comments are no longer being accepted.