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Reader question: Please explain this headline: Are Schools Getting Enough Bang for Their Technology Buck? My comments: Schools invest a lot of money in technology – introducing and updating teaching equipment among others – but perhaps are not getting enough in return. Technology enables teachers to distribute and collect homework for students via the internet, for example, but the students don’t seem to get better grades as a result. Or after they graduate, employers tend to find the younger generations wanting in basic skills and so forth. That’s what we may more or less infer from the above question, which wondering whether all the investment in technology is money well spent. And when you ask a question like that, you probably feel it’s not well spent. At any rate, “bang for the buck” is an American expression that literally translates to “value for money”. “Buck”, as you know, is slang for the American dollar whereas “bang” is the noise something makes when it explodes or when it strikes against something else. Bang, as in the Big Bang, for example. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe was born out of a big bang, i.e. a huge, gigantic, gargantuan, infinitely enormous explosion? A lot of noise, in other words. Also, bang as in going out with a bang not a whimper, which expresses the human desire to seek attention all the time – even when they are leaving a post, they have to do it with a lot of fanfare, making a lot of noise. They refuse to go quietly. Hubris, sure. | 
