Summary Of In Defense Of Laptops In The Classroom

With technology becoming more prevalent in this day and age, it has become an increasing trend to see students using their laptops in class. While there are professors who ban the use of laptops in their class, believing that it is a form of distraction to the students, others support the use of laptops in class. This includes Rebecca Schuman, a journalist and education columnist for Slate. Her article “In Defense of Laptops in the Classroom ” was published on 15 June 2014, on Slate’s online portal. Schuman aims to persuade the readers that laptops should be allowed in classrooms as she feels that it is essential. I feel that her article does not serve its purpose as her arguments were weak, over-generalised and irrelevant.
Firstly, Schuman’s argument is weak when she argues that using laptops in class is a cheaper alternative to buying printed materials, in paragraph 5. While I agree with her, however, the claim that Schuman is putting across is an appeal to reason. This requires evidence such as statistics or quotes from reliable journal articles, which are clearly lacking in this paragraph. There is no proof to show that the printing allowance given to the students is less than the amount given to purchase a laptop. The argument is unsupported, therefore making it weak.
In paragraph 5, she states that we cannot “expect an entire generation that doesn’t learn to write by hand to be able to take notes”. It is absolutely not possible that the entire generation Y does not know how to write notes, instead of typing into their laptops. As we are referring to college students, it strongly suggests that they would have learnt how to write by hand in their earlier years. Hence, this gives the readers an impression that Schuman does not fully comprehend the situation thoroughly and thus, I will not highly regard her