Cynthia Selfe

Selfe's central claim is that composition teachers have to pay attention to technology. Literacy and technology are linked, so if teachers don't pay attention, they are responsible for illiteracy among students. However, Selfe claims that there is a cultural and economic divide and that even though a national program for technological literacy could provide people with equal access to better education (and therefore upward mobility and economic prosperity), computers still tend to get distributed unevenly among people of ethnic minorities and a lower socio-economic standing and people of ethnic majorities and a higher socio-economic standing.

Sentences that support:
1. It is a fact, for instance, that schools primarily serving students of color
and poor students continue to have less access to computers, and access to
less sophisticated computer equipment than do schools primarily serving
more affluent and white students.

2. I believe composition studies faculty have a much larger and more
complicated obligation to fulfill-that of trying to understand and make
sense of, to pay attention to, how technology is now inextricably linked to
literacy and literacy education in this country.

3. In other words, the poorer you are and the less educated you are in this
country-both of which conditions are correlated with race-the less
likely you are to have access to computers and to high-paying, high-tech jobs
in the American workplace.

4. Computer-using teachers instruct students in how to use technology-but, all too often, they neglect to teach students how to pay critical attention to the issues generated by technology use.

5. Composition teachers, language arts teachers, and other literacy specialists need to recognize that the relevance of technology in the English studies disciplines is not simply a matter of helping students work effectively with communication software and hardware, but, rather, also a
matter of helping them to understand and to be able to assess-to pay attention to-the social, economic, and pedagogical implications of new communication technologies and technological initiatives that affect their lives.

The above sentences show some examples of what can happen when computers aren't equally distributed among schools. Also in the above sentences, it is a teacher's responsibility to not only teach children how to use computers, but to make sure they understand the effects of this technology. If children are technologically illiterate, they may not be able to get jobs.

Sentence I want more info on:
But, all too often, they neglect to teach students how to pay critical attention to the issues generated by technology use. -- Why do some teachers neglect to teach students this?


Question for class:
If the government proposes a national program to make computers equally accessible in schools, why do you think they are only going to rich/white areas?