Technology Can Help Make the Educational System Easier.
I have a friend whose son has severe asthma. This has been a particularly bad year for him. He has already missed more than twenty days of school. The illness is a difficult one. It leaves him gasping for breath and wheezing. It is difficult for his parents, who love him and care about him, to watch him suffer and struggle. Each time he ends up in the hospital, they worry that he will not survive. His hospital stays are a logistical nightmare. Both of his parents work, and there are other children. Someone must stay with him, and someone must stay with the other children who are quite young. In addition, both parents work. They can not afford to miss time.
The young man lives with this illness. He works very hard in school to keep his grades up and is very successful. He is self disciplined and has goals and ambitions that make him want to do well in school. He is motivated and well-mannered. He has lots of friends and is making a good life for himself despite his condition.
As if all of this wasn’t enough to worry about, they have to be concerned about school attendance policies. Once he passes a certain amount of days missed in school, he and his parents have to formally petition the school board to permit him to pass his current grade even if, despite all obstacles, he is maintaining a very good grade point average. This is a stressful situation. It does not need to be this way.
Not one to complain without a solution, I would like to suggest the following. I am already a proponent of using technology and the Internet in education. Imagine, now, that students with medical conditions that cause illness severe enough to miss a substantial number of days in school could check out a laptop computer (if they don’t own a computer) from a convenient place. These students, when ill, could log on to a school wide system and check homework and classroom assignments. They could work at home and meet the same deadlines that students attending school were required to meet. They could walk into school on the day of a test and be ready to take it. They could make up their work before they returned to school. This would reduce so much of the stress on children and their families who are already dealing with the stress of the illness.
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