Dear Next President of the United States, I understand that you have many problems that require your attention, but I was just wondering if you would hear me out. I am a 8th grader near Cleveland, Ohio. I want to talk to you about an issue concerning technology in schools. Recently, there have been many pushes for electronics in schools and even for tablets such as Ipads or Samsung Galaxy tablets to replace textbooks, but I think that this is very foolish. I want to share my reasons with you on why tablets should not replace textbooks in schools.

For one, when putting tablets into schools and removing textbooks the school is ultimately throwing away a perfectly good resource of learning. If you really think about it, textbooks do the exact same things as tablets and cost ⅓ of the price that tablets cost (procon.org). A student can write in their books and take notes. A student can’t take notes on a tablet. Also, faculty would have to be educated on how to use this new technology in their classrooms. This technology also requires for an expensive wifi network to be set up which also cost a lot of time and money. Why should schools be paying for a device that not only costs 3 times more than a textbook that functions the same way, but also serves as a big distraction for students?

When using a tablet, students may become distracted by many things on the internet. Even I have an urge sometimes to play games or play fantasy football on my laptop instead of do my homework. I know that this is a big distraction for others and even myself when doing schoolwork. I often see some of my classmates playing games during study halls, and sometimes during everyday class. This is a huge problem and may cause students to stay away from their homework until late at night. Schools must really look into this issue, and I feel that if you, the president would take this into consideration then this problem may actually be resolved.

Another addition to this problem is that some kids who do not have a lot of money do not have a wifi network at home. Now, some people could argue that a child such as this could go to a local library, but some people do not have any means of transportation. With tablets replacing textbooks these children would have no way to do their homework or look up any assignments. As research from the secretary of education shows, 100 million people do not have any wifi in the U.S. Why should poor kids have to pay for an expensive wifi network to do schoolwork when they can just use a textbook without any hassle? Thanks for your time future president, but I have just one request from you so that you can shut down this idea before it becomes too out of hand. I would very much appreciate it if you could just bring this topic up at one of your meetings and try to persuade the other politicians to think that this is a big problem as well. I hope that you took my ideas into consideration and may try to recognize what I said at some of your meetings.

Thank you,

8th Grader from the Cleveland area