Digital Divide

Great texts from Elizabeth Marchal and Ozlemb Sensoy through Rethinking Schools  and great supplementary reading from Its complicated by Dana Boyd. From everything else that could add to the list to culture of power getting more power and privilege, we can also add Internet access and understanding how to use to tool. Reading the end of the chapter 7 from Boyd, I kept thinking about the comparison Finn made in the preface of his book about how the common people who denied to access the Bible, "the fear was the literacy would make the rabble aware of the injustice they suffered, and they would attempt to overthrow the ruling class violently and take his place". 

After reading what Finn shared, saying that the most influential class are the one reading about segregation and social justice, while working class are merely educated with outdate books. Adding the information from Rethinking Schools, while they are saying " too many schools reinforce racist messages and our systemic disregard for Black lives. From the Connecticut textbook that claimed slave owners treated enslaved people like “members of the family (...)”. I can't help to think about my own country, or places without any resource or information. How this "digital divide" goes beyond any of our understanding. 

"Developing wisdom requires active learning" (Boyd, D. pg. 197)

And for those who even have any access of computer and internet, don't have the access often and still the access is filtered and highly regulated. Try to spend a day without your smartphone? As my personal experience, took me forever to have a smartphone and my first thought when I finally had one was "I don't think I will ever have any doubts in my life". I realized how easy to have any information, anything that would cross my mind I couldn't instantly research, instead of having to wait to get home or school. The same happens now, although Boyd says that "by 2011, 95% of American teenagers had some form of access to internet, whether at home or school". The access is not the same, and even if it was slightly similar, we would come back to that conversation we heard on "Charlie doesn't remember", that even having Harvard offering full scholarship for lower class, still people wouldn't apply, or wouldn't have the access to know it is a realistic possibility. Even if the access would be similar, the information that is shared by the teachers in school to use that platform is different. It wouldn't be a critical thinking assignment. Even those teachers that are able to getting out of their boxes and challenge themselves and their students or critical think when researching, and understand the quality of the research, the quality of the media and how things happens.  

"Schools and governmental agencies began to argue that access alone mattered little if people did know how to use the tool in front of them" (pg. 193).

In my opinion, this is definitely one of the biggest problem that keeps U.S. so segregated. If there is information that could help to minimize the gap between classes, these informations will come through internet, through update information, through understanding how other people in the world are dealing with similar problems. I remember when I started my master and I was part of the research group in the Kinesiology department and we spent hours arguing what the problem we could find in different research articles. How could this information be good and trustful. I was very ignorant about that, my almost 6 years, in undergrad did not prepared me to be a researcher, and it blow my mind how little I knew. This is research articles, imagine how little working class students know about how trustful are the search they are doing. Or even WORSE, how they don't know what or where they can search, critical think and argue about what they are learning.