JOANNE
PAYLING
Diary #23
On the Edge of the Digital Divide
It is spring in my part of northern California. Trees are beginning to bloom, and the winter rains have finally greened our hills.
On Saturday I was in a sunny, fog and smog-free San Francisco, standing on a cliff with a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean on my left and the majestic Golden Gate Bridge on my right. I was explaining to my companion why the north and south ends of the Golden Gate Bridge are not symmetrical.
On the northern, Marin County side, the bridge gracefully arcs into the rocks. On the southern, San Francisco side, there is an extra, smaller steel arch with a dusty brick building under it. This is Fort Point, built in the 1860's, and it is now a National Historic Site. Scheduled to be demolished in 1933 when the bridge was being built, local history buffs saved it, with one cost being an asymmetrical Golden Gate Bridge. Some perfectionists may find that extra, unplanned arch a bit disconcerting. I find it inspiring.
To think that this 20th century architectural marvel was delayed and re-designed to accommodate a fort that was obsolete before it was completed is delightful to me. The big guys acquiesced and the little Army fort sits there still, protected now by the behemoth bridge. What was once considered a useless pile of red bricks is now a ruby in the crown jewels of San Francisco, greeting all who enter the Bay from the Pacific.
Our students already grow obsolete
Our students are like Fort Point. They sit prominently on the edge of tomorrow, yet already grow obsolete. America's public school students are being readied for demolition by not being provided with the technology they will need to advance in the world around them. Some call this the Digital Divide.
More and more states and school districts are feeling the crunch of tightening budgets, and more and more decisions are being made that delete the possibility of computers and their technology in the classroom and the concomitant training needed to use them proficiently.
My school district is next door to Silicon Valley. Many of my students' parents work in the heart of the computer industry as software and hardware engineers and managers. Yet our district, wealthy as it is by many standards, does not have the funds to equip classrooms with up-to-date computers.
There is a technology classroom with 34 student computers, but they are outdated and slow. In addition, computer class is an elective. The majority of students at my school have home computers and use them regularly to instant-message friends or to play games. But no one is teaching them the skills necessary to become effective information searchers.
Unless the student chooses to take the technology class, they are not learning how to tap into the myriad ways to format and produce that information in cutting edge ways. A few students will excel in this Information Technology Age. But is that what we want for our students? That only a few will excel?
We need vocal school districts and even more vocal citizenry to save, not Fort Point this time, but our children. We need to convince the "big guys" that our students deserve to be trained for a digital future. Otherwise, I fear they will be demolished as so much dust, instead of being protected by an overarching steel-hard framework that prepares them for the 21st century.
Our students can be treated as not worth saving for the future, or they can be treated as the rubies, pearls, emeralds, and sapphires of the future, polished and burnished and ready to shine, given the opportunity.
