Thoughts on moving beyond 20th century and Class Struggle

As I combine readings on bringing classrooms into the 21st century and Class Matters, it occurs to me that the missing piece is providing urban and lower income schools with the technologically advanced classrooms that suburban students and teachers enjoy. If Rip van Winkle were to return a decade from now, would he find two very different scenarios? One being an urban classroom, which looks very familiar to him and the other, a suburban classroom, which boasts so many multiple genre activities that Rip is lost in his understanding of the classroom activities. It is not sufficient to simply say that urban kids don't all have Internet and computers at home, so we must work the old fashioned way. (Yes I have heard this very statement). It is imperative that we, as a society, outfit urban classrooms with the latest in technology so that students who can't gain access at home are prepared for the wider world and all it's opportunities. It is not good enough to have carts of laptops with half the laptops in disrepair. A decade ago, teachers found grants to be easily obtained for technology updates. In a tightening economy, grants are harder to find so it becomes a moral imperative for education lobbyists to campaign for wealthy corporations and individuals to outfit low income classrooms with smart boards and laptops or iPads. If the money being spent on testing materials and core curriculum aligned text books were spent on updating classrooms, that would give low income kids a better advantage in life. It would be a more honest and altruistic investment in these young lives.