3 Million U.S. Students Don't have Home Internet

Michael Melia and Jeff Amy, “3 Million U.S. Students Don’t Have Home Internet,” Deseret News [Associated Press], June 11, 2019, p A3. 

     School districts, local governments and others have tried to help.  Districts installed wireless internet on buses and loaned out hot spots.  Many communities compiled lists of wi-fi-enabled restaurant and other businesses where children are welcome to linger and do schoolwork.  Others repurposed unused television frequencies to provide connectivity, a strategy that the Hartford [CT] Public Library plans to try next year in the north, end.      Some students study in the parking lots of schools, libraries or restaurants— wherever they can find a signal.…     In rural northern Mississippi, reliable home internet is not available for some at any price.      On many afternoons, Sharon Stidham corrals her four boys into the school library at East Webster High School, where her husband is assistant principal, so they can use the internet for schoolwork.  A cellphone tower is visible through the trees from their home on a hilltop near Maben, but the internet signal does not reach their house, even after they built a special antenna on top of a nearby family cabin.

COMMENT

         In this story the library is both a helpful internet hot-spot and a nuisance because it isn’t open long enough hours. The public library and school library are theoretically places where kids can use the internet, but in practice students are sitting out in the parking lot. Why haven’t any adults noticed this?  Couldn’t they open the buildings for internet-enabled study halls?  How come the assistant principal whose own children have no internet at home has never had a talk with teachers who casually tell students to learn math from YouTube videos?  The article reports that 1/3 of houses in their town have no computer and 1/2 have no internet.  It seems easy enough for teachers to poll their students to find out how many have home computers or home internet. 

     Frustratingly, the article quotes a teacher who refuses to hand out assignments on paper because, “I really need you to get familiar with the technology because it’s not going away.”  The cruel irony is, some students can’t “get familiar” with it unless they have time to do online work at school. Due to the digital divide, pushing internet use outside of school hours just becomes  a harsh and damaging lesson in social inequality. It’s not clear whether students with home internet get better grades because they learn things online (doubtful, considering how distracting it is to be online), or whether the “convenience” of requiring online  homework just creates an extra barrier that causes students to do worse without it just because it’s so hard to turn things in. 

     

    Regardless, it’s clear from this story that the digital divide is in part an artifact created by digital haves who refuse to accommodate the reality of digital have-nots. In fact, the most common computer that people have is a smartphone, which is close to useless for typing term papers. Teachers and librarians should try using the systems they are imposing on their students and patrons. They might find out that it’s not such an educational necessity after all to force students into battle with buggy, frustrating, poorly designed software just to turn in a multiple-choice worksheet.  If unrealistic expectations are undermining education for 16% - 18% of students, it seems like educators should put a lot more thought into whether their requirements for online homework are educational or arbitrary.