Differing access to resources outside of school has long been a major problem in education. Children who have access to books in the home tend to have higher learning outcomes than children who do not, for example. In our digital age, this problem is spreading. Children who do not have access to a computer or the Internet at home face increasing challenges in school, and will likely lag behind in learning the kinds of technological skills which the coming generation will need to function in the workplace in our increasingly digital age.
As more and more schools expect children to use the Internet outside of school to complete assignments, as well, these children are at an even greater, immediate danger of falling behind as they struggle to use the little time they may have on computers in school to complete work or have to journey to the homes of neighbors, friends, and relatives who have Internet access or to public libraries to complete assignments. This does not afford them an equal playing ground compared to their peers with easy access to a resource they are probably more familiar with using, anyway.
The cycle, of course, is also intrinsically linked to poverty. In this day and age of Internet usage being considered more and more a standard amenity, it is safe to assume that most of the children who do not have access to it in the home are in that position because of poverty. So the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the children least likely to have access to this valuable resource are also the children who would stand to benefit most from having it.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to how to bridge the digital divide. Paul C. Gorski, of Hamelin University, points out that “research indicates that, while teachers in schools with a high percentage of White students and a low percentage of students on free or reduced lunch programs are more likely to use these technologies to engage students in creative and critical thinking activities, teachers in schools with a high percentage of Students of Color and a high percentage of students on free or reduced lunch tend to use computers and the Internet for a skills and drills approach to learning.” This really only exacerbates the problem, as the better-off students are given the tools to synthesize the skills while the poorer are stuck with a 21st-century version of rote memorization. But unfortunately, schools and communities cannot, at least at this point, simply give everyone a computer and Internet access, although some programs, like Smart Horizons, seek to provide Internet access to the disadvantaged, and colleges and universities are increasingly including laptops or tablets in the cost of tuition to ensure that students all have the same equipment. These are steps in the right direction, but to truly solve the problem, we will have to confront the economic disparity in the country head-on and look at how the cycle of poverty continues to spiral downward even as technology increases, in no small part due to the digital divide.
Works Cited:
Gorski, Paul C. “Multicultural Education and the Digital Divide”. Critical Multicultural
Pavillion. September 2001. Web. Accessed on 2/15/2013.
Smart Horizons Lifetime Training Solutions. “Nationwide Training Program to Provide
Internet to the Disadvantaged”. Web. Accessed on 2/15/2013.
