Should Tablets Be Used In Schools Argumentative Essay

📌Category: Education, School, Science, Technology
📌Words: 943
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 12 June 2021

Visualize entering your daughter or son’s school, walking by ten classrooms, and all but one has each student looking at a tablet. There was no talking in the classrooms, just the slight tap of fingernails hitting the screen. The single classroom that was different from the others was room number 126; it had a discussion going on and most of the students were participating. In room 126, there was not a tablet, computer, or phone in sight, and on the students' desks were biology textbooks. All of the students were being well educated by their teacher and could explain the scientific topic they were learning.

What if all schools only use tablets, without a single class still using textbooks and group discussions? Would you want your child learning in an environment where it was silent, all in the same classroom, but not collaborating or helping each other learn? Many wouldn’t. Bringing tablets into schools to replace textbooks would be like the nine classrooms that were utterly different from room 126. Without a doubt, tablets should not replace textbooks in school.

First of all, tablets and technology are advancing too quickly for the older generations to stay caught up. A piece of evidence that supports this is, “In a survey of current K-12 teachers by Deloitte, 41% of respondents said that lack of teacher-training in the use of educational technology was one of the biggest barriers to incorporating digital learning in the classroom” (Deloitte). This proves that many teachers don’t have enough technical background to be able to educate students through online systems. If tablets were used in school instead of textbooks how many teachers would struggle using them? Too many. Everyone has that one family member, perhaps a great-grandmother or a grandfather, that calls for help using technology, with questions like “how do I find the web”, “where is my email”, or “how do I connect the wifi” and so on. When you don't grow up around technology, it’s hard to adjust. Not all teachers are tech-savvy. All changes are hard, but the transfer to tablets in school after countless years without it would be detrimental. Would teachers end up retiring younger and younger, because they lack the skills needed to use the technology, or would they be required to take a technology class over the summer to keep up with the changes? The latter idea would be a hassle not only for the teachers but the technology representatives that would be teaching them, so we can assume that retiring younger as a teacher would become more common. 

As well, staring at and using a tablet screen for roughly eight hours five days a week is costly to your health; however, reading a textbook is not. One piece of evidence from the New York Daily News is “Handhelds contribute to Computer Vision Syndrome, which causes eyestrain, headaches, blurred vision, and dry eyes, according to the American Optometric Association '' (New York Daily News). Imagine almost every day coming home from school with an annoying “headache”. It would make trying to function after that almost impossible and incredibly miserable indeed. With a “headache”, you would be more apt to make rash decisions, get mad at a family member or friend, and not be able to finish your homework or house chores. “Eyestrain”, “dry eyes'', and “blurred vision”, are the many eye problems that come from looking at screens all day. Unless you wish to have horrible eyesight as you grow up, you need to protect your eyes, because you only get one pair. Would the alteration of tablets from textbooks be worth all the health issues that could come from them? Possibly, in the beginning, however not ten to fifteen years in the future, of operating with tablets in classrooms. 

Additionally, no one can deny that the cost of electronic devices has continued to rise; therefore it would be expensive to buy a tablet for every student that goes to school. Lee Wilson supports this idea, and stated, “Implementation costs for e-textbooks on iPad tablets are 552% higher than new print textbooks in an average high school” (Lee Wilson). The costs for tablets are 552% higher than textbooks, raising the expenses for schools increasingly. With buying new tablets there arises a question, who will pay for them? The first option would be the schools, but how would they reach the fundraising to purchase them? They shouldn’t make people pay more taxes to be able to buy them. The second would be the parents of the children going to school. Having the parents buy them is an easy solution for anyone who comes from a wealthy family. However, what about the people who don't have the money? Those single parents, unemployed parents, parents who can barely afford to pay the bills each month, parents who don’t have enough money to pay for an apartment; the low-income families who are already struggling. Schools already have textbooks, there is no need to go out and buy new tablets for the students.

On the opposing side, some may believe that shifting from textbooks to tablets would be beneficial. Tablets would allow students to better understand the information. If necessary students could look up the same information, explained differently, easily accessible on the internet. However, this will lead to many negative effects like cheating on assignments and tests. Students already cheat on their school work, can teachers afford to hand them yet an easier way to do it? No! Students can learn so much better using textbooks, so classrooms should not switch to tablets. 

Transferring from textbooks to tablets for students' education should not be encouraged. The alteration between the two is so large that many older adults would fall behind, and not be able to comprehend and teach through the technology that the students use with ease. Tablets would create an increasing amount of health problems, mostly in their eyesight. The cost for tablets and other electronic devices is much more expensive than textbooks. Don’t let your child learn only through a tablet; it will ruin them. Fight for your children to learn like the students in room 126!

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