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The Digital Divide: A Gap in Educational Standards
Not many people can imagine going through school without a pen or pencil. These are essential tools to receiving an education. In today’s wired world, a computer is also a vital tool in education. While everyone can afford a pencil, not everyone can afford a computer. This puts some students at a severe disadvantage when it comes to receiving a good education. No one should have to receive a second class education simply because they come from a low income family. This is essentially what the digital divide does. This is also why the digital divide must be narrowed, to ensure that everyone is capable of receiving the same education.
The Digital Divide at Home
Computers are used in numerous ways by students. They are used for research, data organization, and most commonly word processing. Of course, these tasks can be accomplished without the use of a computer. However, it is much quicker and much easier with the aid of a computer. Imagine how long it would take to write up numerous drafts of an essay without the use of a computer, hand writing page after page. Spreadsheets and databases make the organization of data several times faster than trying to do the same work by hand. This is what many students from low income backgrounds have to do. According to “Falling Through the Net”, a research project published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, only 19.2 percent of households with a total income of less than $15,000 per year have access to a computer at home. Compare this to the fact that households having family incomes over $75,000 own computers 86.3 percent of the time. This equals quite a few more hours each year organizing data and composing papers for students from low income backgrounds. Research is also done much quicker with a computer. The internet has given students a world full of information at their fingertips. This means no more long hours sitting in a library, searching for books, and photocopying pages. This comes out to large amounts of time saved, for those with internet access at least. When considering, though, that only 25 percent of households with an income under $25,000 were online in 2001 while 80 percent of households with incomes over $80,000 were online, it seems more like time wasted for those without access than time saved for those with (Warschauer 289).
