Tools literacy skills such as learning how to use basic software applications like Word or PowerPoint are foundational. By contrast, academic oriented skills such as coding and design thinking are transformational. In the chapters that follow we fully consider the limits of vocational technical education and the implication for learning and future opportunity.
Additionally, we spent tens of hours observing the activities in the after-school spaces that were devoted to the digital media arts, including, for example, video and film production, social media, graphic design, and game development. The students involved in these activities devoted substantial amounts of time and energy to pursuing creative activities, social relations, and learning experiences that often exceeded what was available during the school day to grow their skills and aspirations as digital media content creators.
Like their counterparts in many schools, Freeway teachers and administrators believed that the mere use of technology in the classroom was a source of achievement. We dispute this view in our analysis but also maintain that Freeway was the most important node in the digital media ecology of students from lower-income households for two main reasons. First, Freeway was the most reliable source for them to access computers, the Internet, and the software applications that supported sustained engagement in production-centered digital media practices. Similar to national trends, home broadband Internet adoption was irregular and intermittent for many in our study.44 Second, some of the classes and after-school settings offered access to the kinds of social milieus and creative spaces that support deeper engagement in the production of digital media content.45 While access to technology—hardware and software—is commonly recognized as important to enabling robust participation in the digital world, access to vibrant social spaces, knowledge-rich peer networks, and supportive communities is often overlooked.
We entered this study excited about the opportunity to see up close the use of technology in a school populated by teens from black, Latino, immigrant, and lower-income households. Freeway had just launched a game development track that aspired to enhance the STEM literacies of students and prepare them for entry into a knowledge-driven economy. The technology applications course intended to expose students to media production, digital storytelling, and elements of design. Finally, we were intrigued to learn about the digital media club, an extracurricular activity that created a space and a community for the school’s most passionate digital media makers. These were all indicators of a school that appeared to embrace new learning futures that included technology-rich courses, STEM education, and extracurricular activities that spark the development of what are often characterized as twenty-first-century skills and new media literacies.46
But as our time in the school grew so did the questions that we felt obligated to ask. What is the role of education in a knowledge-driven economy? What kinds of curricular resources should schools cultivate to provide rich digital media and learning opportunities? What kinds of skills—social, cognitive, technological—should schools be cultivating among their students? Moreover, why do school officials put more faith in the acquisition of technology than in the development of rich curriculum and instruction?
We engaged these questions through long, deep, and up close observation. The world that we became intimate with at Freeway—the world of formal schooling and learning—is remarkably complex. As we contend in the following pages, studying Freeway provided us with a detailed glimpse of one of the most pivotal challenges our country faces—preparing the nation’s most diverse student population in history for a rapidly evolving society and economy. The teachers, administrators, students, and parents that we discuss in the book opened up their world to us. They gave us access to their classrooms, extracurricular activities, home life, and more. In addition, they participated in candid, in-depth conversations about many issues. Without their generosity this book would not be possible.
As researchers we are obligated to document and analyze what we observed as fairly and rigorously as we possibly can. This means being critical of people we came to know and respect. If you have ever spent time in a U.S. public school, you know that it consists mainly of noble people striving to do the good work of education. In a time of growing economic uncertainty and societal change, the work of education may be tougher than ever. Schools are trying valiantly to remain relevant even as they appear to be losing ground in the face of historical changes and mounting pressure. It is an epic struggle and one that produces stunning disparities in the quality of education that black, Latino, and lower-income students receive.
We discuss these and other outcomes not to be critical of the school and teachers that invited us in but rather to be as forthcoming as we can about the challenges our nation faces. Only through persistent documentation and analysis can we design schools that are capable of building better futures. For all of the shortcomings that we observed at Freeway, one thing was strikingly clear: the school was the last, best chance for many of the students in our study to find their unique pathway to opportunity.
Freeway was the only place students could reliably pursue both formal and informal learning opportunities that were connected to their interest in digital media. Also, Freeway was the only place students could access the hardware and software that enabled them to join in robust forms of digital media learning and participatory cultures. Freeway, moreover, was a crucial source of community, offering access to peers, teachers, mentors, and a cluster of media makers that helped students transform the school into a place that, at times, was relevant and inspiring. In short, Freeway was a source of human capital, techno-capital, and social capital for many students.
The teachers that we met at Freeway struggled to design and implement a curriculum that supported deep learning. Some even taught courses that they were not qualified to teach. Still, teachers like the ones that you meet in the book—Mr. Warren and Mr. Lopez—gave students more than we could ever credit them for in this book. In addition to sharing their knowledge with students, they shared their time and their social ties. Mr. Warren and Mr. Lopez stayed late after school to share their classrooms and the technology they supervised, allowing students to take laptops, software, and digital cameras home to work on a variety of creative projects such as films, games, music, and graphic art. In the face of diminishing resources, the teachers empowered several of the students and their extraordinary struggle to make school matter.
Ethnographic accounts of schools provide a glimpse into the practices, experiences, and social relations that are fluid and messy but also vital to understanding schools as complex social systems. In theory, schools are places where students go for academic-oriented learning. In addition, schools are supposed to prepare students for the transition to young adulthood, including work or postsecondary education. Still, it is common knowledge that some schools are better resourced to prepare their students for life’s transitions than others. Not surprisingly, the economic and population shifts that remade the student body at Freeway severely challenged the school’s ability to build and sustain high-quality instructional environments and viable future-oriented pathways.
The chapters draw from our extensive fieldwork to share our insights regarding the challenges that schools face in preparing students for the world of tomorrow. Even as technology has spread to more schools, disparities in academic achievement, economic opportunity, and social mobility persist. This suggests two things: first, that a technology-driven solution to the education crisis is a solution that is certain to fail; and second, that a substantive remake of education requires engagement with broader social and economic forces. In short, the challenges that schools like Freeway face are far more severe than any technology or in-school-only solution can adequately resolve.
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How Black and Latino Youth Are Remaking the Digital Divide
S. Craig Watkins
One of the factors that attracted our team to Freeway was the abundance of technology in the school. From the mobile devices that students owned to some relatively technology-rich classrooms, Freeway was living proof that the United States has entered a new era in the spread of media and Internet technologies. The often resilient and creative media practices of black and Latino teens are not only dramatically remaking the digital divide but also disrupting decades-old assumptions about race, technology, and participation in the digital world. As you will learn in this and several other chapters in this volume, the students