It's only going to get worse when adding AI to this mix. The easiness of researching, synthesizing, analyzing, writing, creating with AI makes it irresistible especially to young, unformed minds. It's hard for us to abstain from using it, let along some children. But while our minds are already shaped, theirs still need the exercise. They don't need to have AI solve their problems, they need to solve them themselves. They don't need AI to think for them, they need to think for themselves so that they can form critical thinking. It is uncomfortable, I know, but facing discomfort is what shapes minds and characters. They should not be deprived of that opportunity by putting computers, phones and AI in their hands while they are supposed to shape their minds.
I did enjoy it! I don't know if you follow Rick Beato, but he used a similar analogy when describing acquiring music in the 70s-80s, having to work a job to raise the money for a record. Also music was hard to create - unlike today - thus making it more valuable. Scarcity brings value. Now there is abundance, but it's cheap abundance.
I am so glad you did, thank you for taking the time to read it.
Rick is wonderful. He posted a really great video yesterday regarding obtaining goals and the fact that there is more than one way up the mountain. https://youtu.be/VahNJ_EnH5w?si=vVx9iP7D_amHd8au
We need accountability. Covid didn’t do this to kids. Teachers unions and globalist politicians did. The media lied on their behalf. Now we have destroyed an entire generation’s ability to learn and flourish.
Parents need to take responsibility for the role they played as well. I’ve always been a screen-restrictive mom. Even my teens don’t have smart phones or social media. We’ve homeschooled since long before Covid and my kids have been educated with books and pencils. Everyone thought I was crazy. Parents all around me embraced ed tech from the beginning, long before covid. Why? Because they’re hypercompetitive. They wanted their kids to “win,” to learn about all the new technology (as if tapping around on an iPad will make their kid a computer programmer). They embraced this. They pushed for it in schools.
It was everyone. Not just policy makers or teachers.
Aspasia thank you. Your comment raised the issue of hypercompetitivity. Social media environments push the cursor in the continuum to the extreme, but not randomly. As a crosscultural expert I noticed that it is very precise traits that are being pushed to the extreme ...and it's turn out they are all anglosaxon traits (no offense) good for business not for wellbeing. I hope somebody study this because you best observe it in countries where you can spot it's IMPLANTED not natural, that is artificially implanted via social media apps videogames etc. How can you tell? It s an exaggeration or it doesnt fit with their history and culture and doesnt benefit the individual and the collectivity. As Tristan Harris put it Big Tech creates the ideal customer (and society) for their products. Covid included.
An Italian Senator Andrea Cangini in 2019 formed a committee inviting experts to study the impact of digital on students the report was published in 2021 and made clear in the conclusions that smartphone should not be given to children below 14. The Draghi Government fell but he was a journalist and put all the transcripts in a book called COCAWEB : saving a generation, containing powers. He wen't around Italy and theaters were filled with parents. I wonder how can it be that thousands of parents know the harms of smartphones but there is not a revolution in the streets to stop Big Tech from exploiting their kids? Big tech just like expert predators, first knocked out the authority protecting children then went for the kids.
Plus we have embraced this idea that limitation due to lack of resource is a sin. It is not. It is an extreme gift because it fosters INNOVATION. Constraints can unleash all sorts creative and far superior energy, talent, cunning, and yes, well honed skill with intelligence. We decry “boring” environments but look at all the tech and how overstimulating it is.
"West makes the commonsense observation that sending kids and families something as simple as art kits, building blocks and engaging picture books, instead of $1,000 laptops and internet equipment, might have been more educative and a whole lot more fun and imaginative."
I'm breaking my social media commenting fast for Lent here, but the lack of recognition for the fact that most parents were working full time jobs during the pandemic and could not assist their children with off-screen learning is a glaring oversight.
I say this as a stay at home parent. During Covid, I went full home-school with my then pre-schooler. He did receive art kits, books, toys, and packets full of hands-on activities from his school. I had the time to go even further and expand on each week's lesson plan. I had the time to play with him, teach him, and make sure he was getting what he needed from these packets.
I'll toot my own horn here, I did a good job. Five years later and he still wants to do home learning with me during breaks (this week is spring break and we are exploring the vikings together. It's an educational vacation. And edu-cation, if you will).
But, and this is important, I was able to do a good job and keep my child off of screens because I didn't have a job. I also didn't have other kids or any other responsibilities beyond my own home. The amount of work I put in was unpaid and exhausting. It was worth it, but it can't be expected that the average parent who may have had a full time job during the pandemic (possibly even outside the home!), caregiver responsibilities for elderly parents, and multiple children with different needs could have made good use of art kits and building blocks.
I will read the book to understand West's view on the topic more fully. Hopefully he expands on this point. As much as I am against the use of technology in schools and believe in the sparing use of technology at home, that belief comes from a place of privilege. I get to give my child a screen-limited childhood. Not everyone has that freedom.
I like how you approach the problem of ed-tech from a systemic perspective, blaming the systems that are in place rather than the individual parent/s. It's not fair to put it all on parents. We need reform on a societal basis. We need better pay for educators. We need to respect educators. We need to take some of the responsibility off the shoulders of our parents and allow educators to teach our children basics of life (home ec, how to do taxes, etc)
Thank you! I agree, it's a systemic problem. I think it's unfair to put too much blame on parents when the average family lacks the time, resources, and knowledge to fill in the gaps of education. Ed-tech made perfect sense during the pandemic because most families did not have an adult who could dedicate themselves fully to facilitating the educational activities, and even for those that did there was no guarantee that the adult was qualified to educate (what is the stat? 54% of adults read below a 6th grade level?). Heck, even a college educated adult might have trouble assisting a student with math and reading because those subjects were taught differently 30 years ago. (Case in point, my 2nd grader has to explain his math to me. I mean, I get it, but I'm not used to the extra steps).
Ideally, yes, during the pandemic it would have been better to send learning kits home with books and hands on projects, but if that had actually happened with the state most people were in, those kits would have gathered dust. It takes work to parent, it takes work to teach, and it takes work to learn. And it's all labor intensive, time consuming, exhausting work. Ed-tech was the only viable solution that reduced the labor load. It sucks that it didn't work, but here we are.
We want to pretend like choosing to use tech with kids, having an over reliance on tech, is a weakness of character. Like it's a moral failing to choose to use a tool. However, shouldn't we acknowledge that perhaps over use of technology is a symptom of a greater problem? That parents over use tech, not because they are lazy, but because they are being asked to do more than ever before. That schools rely on tech, not because they are drawn to the new, shiny thing, but because teachers are stretched thin? I'm not defending ed-tech, or screens for kids or anything like that. I'm saying it's kind of like junk food. We can blame a person for being unhealthy because they eat too much junk food, but maybe they eat too much junk food because they live in a food desert? Or have limited time to cook? Or can't afford fresh food? Or lack knowledge?
Sorry for the ramble, but this is something that has been bothering me for awhile! Perhaps because I live in a poor, rural area. I think folks in my community have been left out of this conversation.
I absolutely love what you said about using tech being seen as a moral failing. Again, our society has been taught (mainly by media) to put blame on the individual rather than the systems in place, therefore creating more finger pointing and less actual change. It's somewhat of a distraction. Another divisive tactic to stop real change in its tracks. If we can unite, we can make change.
As much as public education is "data driven", it seems they're ignoring the results of education by screen. Gone are the days of the overhead projector, paper and pencil writing, and physical books as primary resources.
I wonder if the reason numbers began dropping even before most young people had a screen at their desk is because of video games.For many years, they have replaced outdoor play, leaving children in poor physical condition. Processed food consumption both in the home and at school has increased as well.
A couple of things occurred to me after reading this:
- I did two masters degrees in the early 2010s, every single lecture with my laptop in front of me the entire time. I, an adult with a fully formed brain, could/did not resist the temptation to scroll through blogs, news, or social media to relieve the boredom of the lectures. As far as I'm concerned I wasted the opportunity to be in those programs and got very little out of them. How did we ever think it wouldn't be the same, or worse, for kids?
- Since having kids of my own I've resolved to treat any new types of digital technology, for them and for us, like a new medication or medical treatment; assume it's harmful and avoid it until a very rigorous process has proven it to be safe.
"The future of education needs to be a humanistic one." This is a crucial message to address the tradgedy of students drowned in distraction. We need people, not pixles, in order to learn.
I just revisited the 2017 guidelines for my classical school co-op that I led for many years, where the first principle stated:
"This program encourages face-to-face communication and a learning environment free of distractions, to provide an opportunity for students to grow in real relationships, practice face-to-face conversation, and to enable the development of deep attention. The development of these abilities is hampered or even completely prevented by the use of electronic devices."
There’s something about paper and pencil that’s much more effective for absorbing and retaining information than screens.
If developing minds interact with humans they’ll turn into humans; sit them in front of computers and they’ll turn into computers.
I’m not even convinced computers are a net benefit in the workplace. Most office workers are now inundated with emails. When it took two days to send a memo or letter via a typing pool communications were much more efficient.
Love your second paragraph, actually all of it. Touching paper creates serotonin; touching and looking at flat screens creates cortisol, the stress hormone.
Our local school district went technology heavy prior to the lockdowns and we actually achieved some success. But everything changed when we went to forced virtual. It was a complete disaster for education.
I ended up pulling my youngest out and homeschooling. We used technology and online resources and he did very well. So, it's not technology in and of itself that is necessarily the problem. It's how it's being utilized.
I think everyone has found that our kids still need that human interaction to be successful.
Thank you for shedding light on this incredibly important topic. We need to make 2025 the year we undo big techs death grip on education! The harms of edtech, especially in the hands of our youngest learners are deep and often unrealized. As an educator, I am inundated with emails pushing AI products daily without any consideration to the risks and harms they may impose. We can not forget we are raising humans first. As the tech industry profits, our children suffer. I recently wrote about some of these harms here: https://restorechildhood.substack.com/p/digital-danger-are-screens-in-schools
I’ve seen many blame the Common Core for the decline in outcomes. My retort has been consistent: More likely, it was the Ed Tech.
The Common Core standards arrived in K-12 at the same time as tablet technology began fueling a drive toward 1:1 student-device ratios.
Without a doubt, the edtech shift captured more energy and educator time and imagination.
As one indicator: the Intl Society for Tech in Education (ISTE) conference has been the largest US educator conference, by far, over the last decade. I could go on about the number of organizations that sprung up in praise of tech-enabled learning, including the federal Office of Ed Tech.
I think there is a much stronger case to make against the rise of tech than the one in the UNESCO book, and I’ll try to work on pulling it together one of these days.
But, the focus on tech over learning outcomes was real. I was there. I was part of the problem, as the Chief Marketing Officer at an Ed tech company from 2013-15. I paid for booths at the ISTE conference and cheered the promise that I hoped would materialize.
It didn’t take long for me to have doubts, and it wasn’t a coincidence that I was the CMO at a curriculum nonprofit within 2 years, promoting tech-lite programs built around real books.
I speak with confidence in saying that Ed tech was *at minimum* a distraction from the academically-oriented initiatives of the last decade, from the Common Core to the Science of Reading movement to the emerging Science of Learning/Math interests.
Today, every proponent of the push for stronger academics names an Ed tech hurdle. Every last one.
At this point Ed-tech is essentially necessary as a supplement to the public schools in the US.
The schools are systematically and willfully ignoring / neglecting the gifted / advanced students. If they are to use their minds properly some form of supplementation / alternative approach is going to be needed. And if the schools are unwilling to offer it, the parents are going to have to oversee it themselves. I have personal experience with two forms of supplementation - on-line and somewhat guided self-study.
~ 15 years ago I had my daughter in a 50% on-line schooling situation using the K12 online program because my daughter was bored out of her mind at school. In half a year she burned her way through a year and a half worth of material in 3 Middle School tracks - I think Science, History, and one other subject area that I do not remember. As she finished up one course of study they shipped her another set of books and workbooks. She made so much progress that the school skipped 8th grade alltogether and sent her on to high school.
Then I had her do remote study via Gifted Learning Links over the next and subsequent summers which had her reading and doing problem sets in her math classes. I had her do Geometry and PreCalculus by self study. Unfortunately, I was her convenient tutor for both and it had been 50 years since I had taken Geometry, so I had to relearn some of it. Frankly, the math self study stuck better than the on-line classes - but then she took math classes that required her to use what she had learned - which is how you really fix it in your memory. But we could do that - I have Ph.D. in Engineering / Physics and my wife had a MS in teaching English to speakers of other Languages, so we had the needed expertise at home to do it.
I am hoping the AI guided teaching will work better than our experience with K12 15 years ago - I have seen some reported results for undergraduate physics students that are quite hopeful.
But absent a school willingness to properly address the needs of advanced / gifted students, I think that online / LLM guided classes are going to be necessary.
Yes. I think the knee-jerk reaction against ed tech fails to take into account how crucial it is for gifted students.
My daughter is in a third grade class. Fully 1/3 of the class is functionally illiterate. She reads at a 9th grade level.
Her favorite academic parts of the day are when she gets to use the various learning apps, which disregard her age and keep challenging her with harder and harder problems.
Her least favorite parts of the day are when she does the same assignments as the rest of the class.
After school, we work together on Khan Academy Math, which has been a godsend. She gets to work at her own speed, and we both benefit from a math curriculum that is frankly amazing. I LOVE math and took it far into college. In the process of tutoring her through the Khan curriculum, I've discovered major concepts that I was never taught and never managed to intuit on my own. I'd never be able to give her an equivalent education without it.
Don't throw out the gifted baby with the screen bathwater.
After reading this, I recall that, during one semester in college, a group of us from one class decided to gather in the Student Union for review and discussion after each session. We all did much better in that class than any other!
I do hope that this damage can be reversed. It was an important experiment, but leaves at least one generation at risk. It will be important to follow this group through adulthood to see how, or if, they are affected over the long term.
The miseducation of students began long before technology. The passing on of accumulated knowledge from generation to generation begins with parents to their children. Following along with the industrial revolution, mass production was adopted by government of all kinds to increase the efficiency of every process. Education was industrialized and taken charge of by 'experts.' In the name of efficiency, one-on-one information transfer grew to one-on-many and refined into incremental grouping, first by advances in knowledge then to age grouping, eventually into grades kindergarten through twelfth followed by college then graduate school. Throughout the process education became progressively less personal.
Because only certain kinds of information can flow through an industrial organization, the understanding of education changed. Its measurement had to change as knowledge became more and more focused on quantity at the expense of quality. The introduction of technology is intended to be but another step in efficiency, but it was rather a leap into depersonalization. The fact that industrialization changed the nature of education, reducing it from amassing knowledge to amassing disconnected facts in small stages caused it to be less noticeable. Technology just made the change obvious, but apparently not its causes. Instead everyone is focusing on technology as the cause of failure.
Computers are good at storing and manipulating discrete bits of information; much better than humans. What they're not good at is imagination. And facts without imagination can't add up to knowledge. If we are to get back to education, we will need to get back to the person-to-person transfer of knowledge.
When oldest was in kindergarten and we started homeschooling (which happened to be 2012), all of our friends and family went on and on about the educational apps their kids were using on iPads. They bragged about their second graders doing PowerPoint presentations. The media extolled the virtues of smart boards in every classroom and a laptop on every desk. The schools were shouting that they needed more and more money to make this happen.
I was deeply suspicious. After all, good teachers had been educating kids quite well for centuries. This all seemed unnecessary to me, and as I watched my kids spending their days playing in the dirt, building forts, creating with our arts and crafts supplies, baking muffins, and putting on plays…I just had a sense that it wasn’t right for kids be tapping around on a screen as “education.” Everyone thought I was an uptight Luddite for protecting my kids’ space to grow gently, slowly, and naturally.
I really, really hate to say I told ya so when it comes to the well-being of an entire generation of kids, but….i did. A lot of people did. It wasn’t just educators and policy makers who created this mess. Parents were right there, competing with other parents, thinking technology would help their kids “get ahead.” Everyone needs to take responsibility for the role they played in this debacle.
Very off topic here, Jon, I apologize. But I’ve become aware of an alarming increase in myopia, globally. I’d appreciate it if you could connect some of the physiological harms (strictly biological, not behavioral) to screen use. If ed tech is affecting vision, this would be catastrophic for youth, affecting every aspect of their lives from athletics to career options. I don’t have the links handy but they are easily found with predictions of up to 50% of the worlds population and high prevalence in east Asia affected.
It's only going to get worse when adding AI to this mix. The easiness of researching, synthesizing, analyzing, writing, creating with AI makes it irresistible especially to young, unformed minds. It's hard for us to abstain from using it, let along some children. But while our minds are already shaped, theirs still need the exercise. They don't need to have AI solve their problems, they need to solve them themselves. They don't need AI to think for them, they need to think for themselves so that they can form critical thinking. It is uncomfortable, I know, but facing discomfort is what shapes minds and characters. They should not be deprived of that opportunity by putting computers, phones and AI in their hands while they are supposed to shape their minds.
You may enjoy my article where I discuss how the absence of limits is what has destroyed true creativity and inhibited building real skills. https://culturalcourage.substack.com/p/the-absence-of-limits
I did enjoy it! I don't know if you follow Rick Beato, but he used a similar analogy when describing acquiring music in the 70s-80s, having to work a job to raise the money for a record. Also music was hard to create - unlike today - thus making it more valuable. Scarcity brings value. Now there is abundance, but it's cheap abundance.
I am so glad you did, thank you for taking the time to read it.
Rick is wonderful. He posted a really great video yesterday regarding obtaining goals and the fact that there is more than one way up the mountain. https://youtu.be/VahNJ_EnH5w?si=vVx9iP7D_amHd8au
We need accountability. Covid didn’t do this to kids. Teachers unions and globalist politicians did. The media lied on their behalf. Now we have destroyed an entire generation’s ability to learn and flourish.
Parents need to take responsibility for the role they played as well. I’ve always been a screen-restrictive mom. Even my teens don’t have smart phones or social media. We’ve homeschooled since long before Covid and my kids have been educated with books and pencils. Everyone thought I was crazy. Parents all around me embraced ed tech from the beginning, long before covid. Why? Because they’re hypercompetitive. They wanted their kids to “win,” to learn about all the new technology (as if tapping around on an iPad will make their kid a computer programmer). They embraced this. They pushed for it in schools.
It was everyone. Not just policy makers or teachers.
Aspasia thank you. Your comment raised the issue of hypercompetitivity. Social media environments push the cursor in the continuum to the extreme, but not randomly. As a crosscultural expert I noticed that it is very precise traits that are being pushed to the extreme ...and it's turn out they are all anglosaxon traits (no offense) good for business not for wellbeing. I hope somebody study this because you best observe it in countries where you can spot it's IMPLANTED not natural, that is artificially implanted via social media apps videogames etc. How can you tell? It s an exaggeration or it doesnt fit with their history and culture and doesnt benefit the individual and the collectivity. As Tristan Harris put it Big Tech creates the ideal customer (and society) for their products. Covid included.
An Italian Senator Andrea Cangini in 2019 formed a committee inviting experts to study the impact of digital on students the report was published in 2021 and made clear in the conclusions that smartphone should not be given to children below 14. The Draghi Government fell but he was a journalist and put all the transcripts in a book called COCAWEB : saving a generation, containing powers. He wen't around Italy and theaters were filled with parents. I wonder how can it be that thousands of parents know the harms of smartphones but there is not a revolution in the streets to stop Big Tech from exploiting their kids? Big tech just like expert predators, first knocked out the authority protecting children then went for the kids.
Plus we have embraced this idea that limitation due to lack of resource is a sin. It is not. It is an extreme gift because it fosters INNOVATION. Constraints can unleash all sorts creative and far superior energy, talent, cunning, and yes, well honed skill with intelligence. We decry “boring” environments but look at all the tech and how overstimulating it is.
"West makes the commonsense observation that sending kids and families something as simple as art kits, building blocks and engaging picture books, instead of $1,000 laptops and internet equipment, might have been more educative and a whole lot more fun and imaginative."
I'm breaking my social media commenting fast for Lent here, but the lack of recognition for the fact that most parents were working full time jobs during the pandemic and could not assist their children with off-screen learning is a glaring oversight.
I say this as a stay at home parent. During Covid, I went full home-school with my then pre-schooler. He did receive art kits, books, toys, and packets full of hands-on activities from his school. I had the time to go even further and expand on each week's lesson plan. I had the time to play with him, teach him, and make sure he was getting what he needed from these packets.
I'll toot my own horn here, I did a good job. Five years later and he still wants to do home learning with me during breaks (this week is spring break and we are exploring the vikings together. It's an educational vacation. And edu-cation, if you will).
But, and this is important, I was able to do a good job and keep my child off of screens because I didn't have a job. I also didn't have other kids or any other responsibilities beyond my own home. The amount of work I put in was unpaid and exhausting. It was worth it, but it can't be expected that the average parent who may have had a full time job during the pandemic (possibly even outside the home!), caregiver responsibilities for elderly parents, and multiple children with different needs could have made good use of art kits and building blocks.
I will read the book to understand West's view on the topic more fully. Hopefully he expands on this point. As much as I am against the use of technology in schools and believe in the sparing use of technology at home, that belief comes from a place of privilege. I get to give my child a screen-limited childhood. Not everyone has that freedom.
I like how you approach the problem of ed-tech from a systemic perspective, blaming the systems that are in place rather than the individual parent/s. It's not fair to put it all on parents. We need reform on a societal basis. We need better pay for educators. We need to respect educators. We need to take some of the responsibility off the shoulders of our parents and allow educators to teach our children basics of life (home ec, how to do taxes, etc)
Thank you! I agree, it's a systemic problem. I think it's unfair to put too much blame on parents when the average family lacks the time, resources, and knowledge to fill in the gaps of education. Ed-tech made perfect sense during the pandemic because most families did not have an adult who could dedicate themselves fully to facilitating the educational activities, and even for those that did there was no guarantee that the adult was qualified to educate (what is the stat? 54% of adults read below a 6th grade level?). Heck, even a college educated adult might have trouble assisting a student with math and reading because those subjects were taught differently 30 years ago. (Case in point, my 2nd grader has to explain his math to me. I mean, I get it, but I'm not used to the extra steps).
Ideally, yes, during the pandemic it would have been better to send learning kits home with books and hands on projects, but if that had actually happened with the state most people were in, those kits would have gathered dust. It takes work to parent, it takes work to teach, and it takes work to learn. And it's all labor intensive, time consuming, exhausting work. Ed-tech was the only viable solution that reduced the labor load. It sucks that it didn't work, but here we are.
We want to pretend like choosing to use tech with kids, having an over reliance on tech, is a weakness of character. Like it's a moral failing to choose to use a tool. However, shouldn't we acknowledge that perhaps over use of technology is a symptom of a greater problem? That parents over use tech, not because they are lazy, but because they are being asked to do more than ever before. That schools rely on tech, not because they are drawn to the new, shiny thing, but because teachers are stretched thin? I'm not defending ed-tech, or screens for kids or anything like that. I'm saying it's kind of like junk food. We can blame a person for being unhealthy because they eat too much junk food, but maybe they eat too much junk food because they live in a food desert? Or have limited time to cook? Or can't afford fresh food? Or lack knowledge?
Sorry for the ramble, but this is something that has been bothering me for awhile! Perhaps because I live in a poor, rural area. I think folks in my community have been left out of this conversation.
I absolutely love what you said about using tech being seen as a moral failing. Again, our society has been taught (mainly by media) to put blame on the individual rather than the systems in place, therefore creating more finger pointing and less actual change. It's somewhat of a distraction. Another divisive tactic to stop real change in its tracks. If we can unite, we can make change.
As much as public education is "data driven", it seems they're ignoring the results of education by screen. Gone are the days of the overhead projector, paper and pencil writing, and physical books as primary resources.
I wonder if the reason numbers began dropping even before most young people had a screen at their desk is because of video games.For many years, they have replaced outdoor play, leaving children in poor physical condition. Processed food consumption both in the home and at school has increased as well.
A couple of things occurred to me after reading this:
- I did two masters degrees in the early 2010s, every single lecture with my laptop in front of me the entire time. I, an adult with a fully formed brain, could/did not resist the temptation to scroll through blogs, news, or social media to relieve the boredom of the lectures. As far as I'm concerned I wasted the opportunity to be in those programs and got very little out of them. How did we ever think it wouldn't be the same, or worse, for kids?
- Since having kids of my own I've resolved to treat any new types of digital technology, for them and for us, like a new medication or medical treatment; assume it's harmful and avoid it until a very rigorous process has proven it to be safe.
"The future of education needs to be a humanistic one." This is a crucial message to address the tradgedy of students drowned in distraction. We need people, not pixles, in order to learn.
I just revisited the 2017 guidelines for my classical school co-op that I led for many years, where the first principle stated:
"This program encourages face-to-face communication and a learning environment free of distractions, to provide an opportunity for students to grow in real relationships, practice face-to-face conversation, and to enable the development of deep attention. The development of these abilities is hampered or even completely prevented by the use of electronic devices."
There’s something about paper and pencil that’s much more effective for absorbing and retaining information than screens.
If developing minds interact with humans they’ll turn into humans; sit them in front of computers and they’ll turn into computers.
I’m not even convinced computers are a net benefit in the workplace. Most office workers are now inundated with emails. When it took two days to send a memo or letter via a typing pool communications were much more efficient.
Love your second paragraph, actually all of it. Touching paper creates serotonin; touching and looking at flat screens creates cortisol, the stress hormone.
Our local school district went technology heavy prior to the lockdowns and we actually achieved some success. But everything changed when we went to forced virtual. It was a complete disaster for education.
I ended up pulling my youngest out and homeschooling. We used technology and online resources and he did very well. So, it's not technology in and of itself that is necessarily the problem. It's how it's being utilized.
I think everyone has found that our kids still need that human interaction to be successful.
Thank you for shedding light on this incredibly important topic. We need to make 2025 the year we undo big techs death grip on education! The harms of edtech, especially in the hands of our youngest learners are deep and often unrealized. As an educator, I am inundated with emails pushing AI products daily without any consideration to the risks and harms they may impose. We can not forget we are raising humans first. As the tech industry profits, our children suffer. I recently wrote about some of these harms here: https://restorechildhood.substack.com/p/digital-danger-are-screens-in-schools
I’ve seen many blame the Common Core for the decline in outcomes. My retort has been consistent: More likely, it was the Ed Tech.
The Common Core standards arrived in K-12 at the same time as tablet technology began fueling a drive toward 1:1 student-device ratios.
Without a doubt, the edtech shift captured more energy and educator time and imagination.
As one indicator: the Intl Society for Tech in Education (ISTE) conference has been the largest US educator conference, by far, over the last decade. I could go on about the number of organizations that sprung up in praise of tech-enabled learning, including the federal Office of Ed Tech.
I think there is a much stronger case to make against the rise of tech than the one in the UNESCO book, and I’ll try to work on pulling it together one of these days.
But, the focus on tech over learning outcomes was real. I was there. I was part of the problem, as the Chief Marketing Officer at an Ed tech company from 2013-15. I paid for booths at the ISTE conference and cheered the promise that I hoped would materialize.
It didn’t take long for me to have doubts, and it wasn’t a coincidence that I was the CMO at a curriculum nonprofit within 2 years, promoting tech-lite programs built around real books.
I speak with confidence in saying that Ed tech was *at minimum* a distraction from the academically-oriented initiatives of the last decade, from the Common Core to the Science of Reading movement to the emerging Science of Learning/Math interests.
Today, every proponent of the push for stronger academics names an Ed tech hurdle. Every last one.
I think we should get ed tech out of classrooms.
At this point Ed-tech is essentially necessary as a supplement to the public schools in the US.
The schools are systematically and willfully ignoring / neglecting the gifted / advanced students. If they are to use their minds properly some form of supplementation / alternative approach is going to be needed. And if the schools are unwilling to offer it, the parents are going to have to oversee it themselves. I have personal experience with two forms of supplementation - on-line and somewhat guided self-study.
~ 15 years ago I had my daughter in a 50% on-line schooling situation using the K12 online program because my daughter was bored out of her mind at school. In half a year she burned her way through a year and a half worth of material in 3 Middle School tracks - I think Science, History, and one other subject area that I do not remember. As she finished up one course of study they shipped her another set of books and workbooks. She made so much progress that the school skipped 8th grade alltogether and sent her on to high school.
Then I had her do remote study via Gifted Learning Links over the next and subsequent summers which had her reading and doing problem sets in her math classes. I had her do Geometry and PreCalculus by self study. Unfortunately, I was her convenient tutor for both and it had been 50 years since I had taken Geometry, so I had to relearn some of it. Frankly, the math self study stuck better than the on-line classes - but then she took math classes that required her to use what she had learned - which is how you really fix it in your memory. But we could do that - I have Ph.D. in Engineering / Physics and my wife had a MS in teaching English to speakers of other Languages, so we had the needed expertise at home to do it.
I am hoping the AI guided teaching will work better than our experience with K12 15 years ago - I have seen some reported results for undergraduate physics students that are quite hopeful.
But absent a school willingness to properly address the needs of advanced / gifted students, I think that online / LLM guided classes are going to be necessary.
Yes. I think the knee-jerk reaction against ed tech fails to take into account how crucial it is for gifted students.
My daughter is in a third grade class. Fully 1/3 of the class is functionally illiterate. She reads at a 9th grade level.
Her favorite academic parts of the day are when she gets to use the various learning apps, which disregard her age and keep challenging her with harder and harder problems.
Her least favorite parts of the day are when she does the same assignments as the rest of the class.
After school, we work together on Khan Academy Math, which has been a godsend. She gets to work at her own speed, and we both benefit from a math curriculum that is frankly amazing. I LOVE math and took it far into college. In the process of tutoring her through the Khan curriculum, I've discovered major concepts that I was never taught and never managed to intuit on my own. I'd never be able to give her an equivalent education without it.
Don't throw out the gifted baby with the screen bathwater.
After reading this, I recall that, during one semester in college, a group of us from one class decided to gather in the Student Union for review and discussion after each session. We all did much better in that class than any other!
I do hope that this damage can be reversed. It was an important experiment, but leaves at least one generation at risk. It will be important to follow this group through adulthood to see how, or if, they are affected over the long term.
The miseducation of students began long before technology. The passing on of accumulated knowledge from generation to generation begins with parents to their children. Following along with the industrial revolution, mass production was adopted by government of all kinds to increase the efficiency of every process. Education was industrialized and taken charge of by 'experts.' In the name of efficiency, one-on-one information transfer grew to one-on-many and refined into incremental grouping, first by advances in knowledge then to age grouping, eventually into grades kindergarten through twelfth followed by college then graduate school. Throughout the process education became progressively less personal.
Because only certain kinds of information can flow through an industrial organization, the understanding of education changed. Its measurement had to change as knowledge became more and more focused on quantity at the expense of quality. The introduction of technology is intended to be but another step in efficiency, but it was rather a leap into depersonalization. The fact that industrialization changed the nature of education, reducing it from amassing knowledge to amassing disconnected facts in small stages caused it to be less noticeable. Technology just made the change obvious, but apparently not its causes. Instead everyone is focusing on technology as the cause of failure.
Computers are good at storing and manipulating discrete bits of information; much better than humans. What they're not good at is imagination. And facts without imagination can't add up to knowledge. If we are to get back to education, we will need to get back to the person-to-person transfer of knowledge.
When oldest was in kindergarten and we started homeschooling (which happened to be 2012), all of our friends and family went on and on about the educational apps their kids were using on iPads. They bragged about their second graders doing PowerPoint presentations. The media extolled the virtues of smart boards in every classroom and a laptop on every desk. The schools were shouting that they needed more and more money to make this happen.
I was deeply suspicious. After all, good teachers had been educating kids quite well for centuries. This all seemed unnecessary to me, and as I watched my kids spending their days playing in the dirt, building forts, creating with our arts and crafts supplies, baking muffins, and putting on plays…I just had a sense that it wasn’t right for kids be tapping around on a screen as “education.” Everyone thought I was an uptight Luddite for protecting my kids’ space to grow gently, slowly, and naturally.
I really, really hate to say I told ya so when it comes to the well-being of an entire generation of kids, but….i did. A lot of people did. It wasn’t just educators and policy makers who created this mess. Parents were right there, competing with other parents, thinking technology would help their kids “get ahead.” Everyone needs to take responsibility for the role they played in this debacle.
Very off topic here, Jon, I apologize. But I’ve become aware of an alarming increase in myopia, globally. I’d appreciate it if you could connect some of the physiological harms (strictly biological, not behavioral) to screen use. If ed tech is affecting vision, this would be catastrophic for youth, affecting every aspect of their lives from athletics to career options. I don’t have the links handy but they are easily found with predictions of up to 50% of the worlds population and high prevalence in east Asia affected.
Hi NEB, I think you might find this essay interesting and relevant!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/19/myopia-short-sightedness-epidemic-uk/