The Digital Divide

Caution- profanity is in the following video (but the worst is bleeped out)



Oh Dennis Green, thank you for your entertaining rant.  I'll write a post sometime about anger, but this post is totally different.  I'm talking about the Digital Divide.  As I was growing up, technology was slowly becoming a mainstay in the classroom.  Somewhat like a snowball, it started small with a few pieces of equipment and now there are schools where every student has their own device.  That is progress, for sure.  But like most things in life, some people are being left out.

Like most social issues, the Digital Divide is complex and doesn't follow a set of rules.  It's not as simple as we make it out to be, but at the same time, it is.  The Divide is the haves versus the have nots. It's the Kardashian's against the Clampett's.  It's the Bears versus the Cardinals.  Dennis Green, in all his rage, makes a valid point- "They are who we thought they were!"  Intelligent people can write insightful articles on how there has been a "shift" in the digital divide, but I see right through it.  I read about it, and my classmates in my grad school class even talked about it (see here), but it's nothing new.  The beginnings of the Digital Divide were between socioeconomic groups.  Those with money had access to technology while those without money did not.  Experts are now trying to say that low socioeconomic groups have access, but they use it differently.  They have cell phones but they only use it for entertainment purposes.  So I say, "They are who we thought they were!"  Low socioeconomic students are still at a disadvantage when it comes to technology access.

Dennis Green says that his team let the Bears "off the hook", implying that their 23-3 lead with 1:47 to go in the third quarter was enough to beat the Bears, but the Cardinals faltered.  We have been throwing money at schools with low income students for years but have seen little change in the cycle of low socioeconomic students only obtaining low-end jobs.  We are like the Cardinals/Bears game right now.  Even though we throw money at it (the Cardinals had a new stadium, new quarterback, and the highest-paid running back of all time) but were still behind the Bears and their pedigree of winning.

The good news is that the Cardinals made it to the Super Bowl a few years later, once they had a change of leadership.  Perhaps a change in leadership is what we need?

The bad news is the Cardinals lost that Super Bowl (XLIII) to the Steelers, the franchise with the most Super Bowl wins.

The Digital Divide is what I thought it was- the haves versus the have-nots.