Our school has been given a grant to make necessary improvements to its facilities. We can spend it on new books for the library or on more computers. Our school already has books in its library and it already has computers. Since we have more books than computers, I think that new computers will benefit the students more.
Computers can access up-to-date information on the Internet. Right now, the reference books in our library are very outdated. Our encyclopedia set is eight years old. But if every student had access to a computer, we all could have the latest facts and figures on everything.
Unfortunately, giving every student a computer means we need a lot of computers. Right now, the ratio of computers to students is one to twelve. This means students only get to work on the computers three or four times a week. But if every student had a computer, we could use it whenever we wanted.
"Information on demand" should be our slogan. Students today need lots of information right away. Life goes by too quickly to wait. It takes forever to identify a book that you think might have the information you need. Then you have to go to the library and look for the book. Usually it's not even there.
With a computer, information searches are instantaneous. If we all had computers, we could access more information and access it faster by computer. We could have all the information we needed for our schoolwork. We could all improve our grades. For these reasons, I feel that purchasing more computers will benefit us more than buying more books.
The problem that whether school should choose to buy books or computers can be controversial nowadays because people often think that computers can replace books soon. However, I would like to be on the side of people who suggest that schools should books instead of computers. There are several reasons of it and I will discuss two main causes.
First, even though students can access the information they want more easily, they often recognize that most of the information in computers is apt to be inaccurate. Due to the fact that many people send their information by the Internet or email in order to get their own interests such as money and fame, in this case, their information are often distorted and biased.
Second, students who study their special area cannot get a deep and wide knowledge through computers because the knowledge from computers is inclined to be shallow and introductive. If possible, students have to print them out to study with long time and write something related on it.
School's essential purpose, I believe, is getting student to have a deep and wide knowledge to prepare for their future lives in society. In this perspective, books are more suitable to achieve this quintessence duty of schools than computers. Therefore schools should choose to buy books.
