For High school, I don't think they're appropriate because you can almost guarantee that 14-18 year olds won't focus on the lesson and just be messing around on Facebook. However, it drives me absolutely insane when college teachers ban laptops in classrooms. As most lectures don't come with power-points dictating everything we need to know for the test, it's tough to get all the information down with pen and paper. And if students do mess around in a college class, then hey, that's their own problem for wasting their money by not paying attention. If they aren't distracting people around them, then there should be no restrictions on allowing laptops in a college classroom.
There are computers in the schools here. To an extent anyway, not all day, for every task. They block all social media, the kids can't mess around and they're quite happy to do what is expected of them because it's a lot cooler to do school work that way than the usual way. I think computers in the classroom is an all around good idea. And you're right, college students shouldn't need to be monitored like that.. it would be a massive waste of money to mess around when you're supposed to be working.
Sure, in my country most universities have computer labs and every classroom has a computer for the teacher, but students are allowed as well. I feel that in superior education laptops are a normal thing these days.
