Although my family was very poor, I was lucky to grow up in a school district where there were a few computers here and there. I spent countless hours neglecti

Although my family was very poor, I was lucky to grow up in a school district where there were a few computers here and there. I spent countless hours neglecting boring schoolwork in order to get access to any kind of computer I could and I graduated from high school with poor grades in everything except math and physics. However I taught myself basic, pascal, fortran, cobol, ibm jcl, Z80 and 6502 assembler without ever owning a computer of my own. It doesn't surprise me at all that computers had the effect of distracting kids from academic goals because that's exactly what happened to me. I can't imagine the school teachers and administrators took into account the possibility of the computer voucher program when they designed their curriculums. However my nascent computer skills got me the jobs I needed to earn the money to be the first in my family to graduate from college.