Costs (Score 2, Interesting)

"My school has started requiring students to own and use laptops in all of their classes, under the pretext of saving paper."

I think everyone is assuming that the schools is doing this based on environmental factors (and maybe that is how it is being presented,) but I doubt that is actually the case. More likely they are looking at this from a cost savings standpoint for the school. If they can create a requirement in which the students /parents must pay for a laptop to be used in the classroom, they can limit the amount of paper materials that teachers are required to distribute. Teachers can then distribute most of their classroom materials and handouts electronically and eliminate a lot printing and copying. Copying costs and printing cost are a huge expense for the schools, and if this cost can be reduced by moving to electronic documents, then it would make financial sense for the school to do so.