852
O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment
equipment in the above respect is symptomatic of its failure even to attempt to distinguish the . . . textbook loan program, which the plurality upholds, from the . . . instructional materials and equipment loan program, which the majority finds unconstitutional"). The irrationality of this distinction is patent. As one Member of our Court has noted, it has meant that "a State may lend to parochial school children geography textbooks that contain maps of the United States, but the State may not lend maps of the United States for use in geography class." Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 110 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (footnotes omitted).
Indeed, technology's advance since the Allen, Meek, and Wolman decisions has only made the distinction between textbooks and instructional materials and equipment more suspect. In this case, for example, we are asked to draw a constitutional line between lending textbooks and lending computers. Because computers constitute instructional equipment, adherence to Meek and Wolman would require the exclusion of computers from any government school aid program that includes religious schools. Yet, computers are now as necessary as were schoolbooks 30 years ago, and they play a somewhat similar role in the educational process. That Allen, Meek, and Wolman would permit the constitutionality of a school aid program to turn on whether the aid took the form of a computer rather than a book further reveals the inconsistency inherent in their logic.
Respondents insist that there is a reasoned basis under the Establishment Clause for the distinction between textbooks and instructional materials and equipment. They claim that the presumption that religious schools will use instructional materials and equipment to inculcate religion is sound because such materials and equipment, unlike textbooks, are reasonably divertible to religious uses. For example, no matter what secular criteria the government employs in selecting a film projector to lend to a religious school, school officials can always divert that projector to re-
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