> No one asked

That's not true. My district told parents it would lighten backpacks. They eliminated lockers. Now kids have to carry backpacks full of textbooks, AND their iPads, AND be responsible for both electronic work and paper work.

Root cause: ebooks too expensive, schools were subject to the same racket as any student: rent-seeking publishers.

Why tech might be better. At best: Immediate direct feedback to a student when doing exercises that consolidate understanding. Video is a powerful tool, animated explanation, difficult demonstrations, historical footage are all available and you need get the delivery right once and it scales up to millions of students from there. Psych tricks along the gamification line can be useful in providing additional motivation.

MIT's probability course is amazing. So it can be done, for a given audience at least.

I have my doubts about a computer convincing someone who lacks confidence that they are easily smart enough to excel at this task or learning in general.

What do you use a screen for? YMMV. If they're ever going to work in a school some teachers are going to be doing amazing things to make that happen. How would they know what to do? Easy to see good teachers failing at that too.

Many of us (parents) asked, and there were a lot of handwavy answers. I suspect the real reason was that a lot of teachers and school administrators wanted iPads/MacBooks and didn't want to pay for them.

Then again, I'm a cynic.

Because technology