Ensuring Equality of Educational Opportunity in the Digital Age

The Brown vs. Board of Education addressed equality of educational opportunity for all students regardless of race. The case specifically speaks of closing the gap between children who do have access to computers and children who do not have access to computers. I couldn’t agree with this more. I think it is important to recognize that all children deserve to have the same opportunities. If we do not provide the same opportunities to all children we are not doing our jobs as teachers.

Additionally, the article speaks of tangible and less tangible factors that influence students working with computers. Some of the more tangible factors reside in the socio economic status of the students attending school, as well as high enrollment of minority students. Given that there is no immediate existing solution to this problem, the article offers some wonderful ideas to help reduce the divide. Such as soliciting businesses for donations of computer technology, and/or help students access computer technology that is in the surrounding public libraries. I thnk that these ideas would be great to temporarily remedy the problem. However, we must remember to not look at it as a way to fix the problem, because the ultimate goal is to give equal access to computers and internet to every child.

Some of the less tangible factors include the way a student was being regarded as a member of an inferior race when required to attend an equal but segregated school. Furthermore, the emphasis in some inner city schools to use computer technology to learn basic computer skills, where as more affluent school use computer technology to develop higher order critical thinking skills. We must remember that no matter what school or socio-economic background a child is from, it is important to give each child the same education. I believe that by teaching different curriculums with different requirements sets the children up to view one another even more differently than they already do. This also may show a child attending a more affluent school that they are somehow “better” than the children attending an inner city school.

This article really brings to light that we as future teachers need to be educated in computer technology thoroughly so that we may provide every child with a bundle of computer knowledge. It also sheds light that we as adults need to show the future world leaders that no matter who they are or where they come from that they are brilliant beings and will not be limited to educational access because they cannot afford it.