It’s not screens that are the problem, per se, but how they are used, and how schools and teachers were rely upon them to do every single little thing rather than using an appropriate methodology which integrates traditional teaching techniques which use technology to assist.
And they wouldn't have to have the screen do everything if they were paid the appropriate amount given the importance of their station
It’s not even the pay. Every child deserves the education to be tailored to them but there aren’t enough people to sit down one on one with every kid. No budget meant no kid ever got one on one unless they had a disability and the school got money for another person. It always came down to not enough bodies. The pay was just insult to injury.
One on one isn't even necessary, look at the Montessori curriculum, two competent Montessori guides can manage a classroom of 30 kids with each kid working at their own pace (within guardrails, of course). The structure of public education in the US is a problem in addition to chronic underfunding
Montessori style education works very well for certain learning types, but often under-supports others and can suffer from poor implementation just like any other educational model. One-on-one is far superior for some students, and that will never not be the case.
Screen use should be relegated to a smart board/overhead projector and computer lab. Make kids use real books/pencil & paper and every test score will improve as long as a zero smartphone policy is enforced.
People naturally want to make things as easy as they can for themselves; if you introduce a tool that can make things better when used in moderation, but worse if overused, it will inevitably be overused so long as that's the easier thing to do. Convenience is one of the biggest factors in making the global population dumber and more complacent, and it's often introduced as a useful tool in moderation.
I don’t think introducing digital textbooks that also allow notetaking is gonna make anyone dumber. Especially if it’s limited to just those tasks.
But giving every kid an iPad or a Chromebook, where they can absolutely abuse it no matter the intent, yeah… I see what you mean.
Definitely. While I agree with rolling back some of these tech first policies, I think we need to be focusing on HOW it’s used.
I worry that disabled kids will be caught in the line of fire, too.
No. Shit.
Giving every student a distraction to take with them everywhere typically is a bad idea.
If it so much as has a button to change text size I know kids would rather mash that button and watch the screen go crazy than to pay attention to the lesson.
This is a problem for adults too, which is why they make dedicated distraction free writing devices and software. It’s not the screens, it’s how they are being used.
The issue here is that the technology itself, instruction, and implementation was incredibly poor this century. Schools weren't doing basic things like typing classes for primary school, there was no instruction on how to program or use the operating systems, and kids weren't given PCs; they were given tablets and chrome books which favored internet access based learning platforms over products stored locally on machines.
I grew up during the 1980s, and my primary schools had 1 apple pc in the classroom. We took turns learning typing. We learned how to operate the machines by inserting floppies and typing commands. Things we were given access to were all instructional. I have vivid memories of learning math via computer with a program called number muncher.
Access to the tech was limited and supervised. This is what created an environment that taught me how to use computers as I transitioned to secondary education. This century, all of the implemented controls were related to limiting access to pornography rather than teaching students anything about the actual tech. Now we have a generation of people entering the workforce that don't know how to use PCs just like the boomer demographic.
When I first started working on computers in 1994, I thought that by 2010 every kid/teen/adult would be able to repair their computers themselves. How wrong I was. They know how to use computers and tablets but the hardware is a mystery to them.
I worked at a STEM university and was helping a Computer Science student with his laptop. It had a SSD and a platter HD in it for storage. The platter HD was failing and needed replacing. I wrote to the student stating he “needed a new HD”. He had no clue what I meant. He didn’t even know it was possible to replace. He was going to buy a new laptop.
Capital is trying to corral all the tech into “the cloud” so they can control it all and rent it out forever.
They do not want anyone to know anything about hardware.
This most recent hubris with AI is because they think it can be used to create new tech and instruct installers so they no longer need ANY human capacity with knowledge.
Of course that was not and never will be true but isn’t it interesting how the billionaire class will pounce on any opportunity to cement their power without reliance on society hmmm it’s almost like they’re the fucking bad guys
I worked in a school system after 2011 in a county going technology first hard. They had thinkpads initially but the cost was so high for them that chromebooks became much more tantalizing as a budgetary measure. I do agree with you though whole hearted, because of a lack of instruction on computer usage and understanding kids were taught to just click this icon, do the work, be done with out. There was little to no attempt to explain the technology behind what they were doing. As a tech I would try to for the ones that'd listen but for them to really grasp it would require an actual class to do so.
As well kids are being given screens far too young for their developing minds and those screens allow access to short attention span favoring content and slop. If you Googled something you might remember more likely when I was a teen, you didn't have instant access to it. Now y do and I think it's detrimental what can be accessed.
Can confirm. I've spent several hours the last few weeks teaching a friend's 24 year old daughter basic computer literacy on a W11 system. None of her friend group could help because they know just as little. When we started, she didn't know how to shut down or reset the system.
I'm in tech and a connoisseur of modern stuff, but even I wouldn't want my non existing kids to be screen only. Have an IT class to get them to know how to use those devices, then back to books and paper. A friend struggles like hell keeping her son from spending his whole day on digital devices, if the school pulled that off, he'd be toast.
“TEchMoLoGy iS tHe fUTuRe anD wE mUSt PrEpArE tHE stUdEnTs!”
Yeah, no. You can stick to teaching them core curriculum. Speaking on behalf of GenX, we never needed school to tell us how to use technology.
Flashbacks to being in elementary school in like 2004 and they had to teach us how to use calculators. "Had" is a strong word. They literally spent an entire day of math one day telling us how to use a normal non-graphing calculator. I distinctly remember hearing "don't hold it like a Gameboy, don't use your pencil to press the buttons," and even then thinking how useless of a day that was. They wanted it to still seem so important. Remember, you won't have one of these in your pocket every day.
I preferred pen and paper for note taking, didn't take notes on laptop for CS uni even. But having instruction material in digital form wins imo. Bulky exercise books are not worth it imo. I suspect publishers prefer those for beefy books for other reasons....but I would not be surprised if for lower elementary school exercise books with lots of images and fun exercises have positive impact.
same, laptop is too distracting anyways.
We can blame Google, Microsoft, and Apple for this mess.
I agree, the obsurd idea that "screens in class would help students" was just devices being pushed on customers.
And it's not without consequence obviously.
Let's also remember that before the screens, we had shitty textbooks, and underpaid teachers and a serious shortage of supplies.
Schools in the United States need more than a review of tech, but a complete overhaul and a budget that doesn't look like Republicans are literally trying to kill the education system.
But after these funds dried up, schools have struggled to replace broken or outdated devices, which last on average less than a decade despite Google’s efforts to extend device life spans.
HA
Even disregarding the google planned obsolescence stuff, they expect to get 10 years out of a computer that is used daily for 3/4 of the year AND being given to teens/kids who are on the go from class to class and then home. It's not a reasonable expectation. Even treating a laptop perfectly, its just too much of a dangerous environment for a piece of tech to reasonably expect it's going to make it to the 10th year.
Right?
"What's that Google? When you design things from the ground up with planned obsolescence in mind, it's suddenly hard to UNDO the mess you made of the hardware? Who would have thunk it."
Toss the chromebooks and let kids mess with the inner workings of the computer. Teach them to make their own backups and have restore drives available.
Wow! Who could've thought of that?! /s
How is it that it took until 2026, nearly 100 years after the advent of the nuclear bomb, for school administrators to realize that not all technology is inherently good in every application?
It's not the tech, it's capitalism, and the fact the people making decisions are usually oblivious to the dangers of capitalistic tech.
But the tech companies told me that everyone should learn to code in grade school!
Honestly that wouldn't be a bad idea. Even if few people ever code themselves, learning a little logic is good for anyone.
The problem is the tech companies didn't actually deliver on the promise. We didn't hand kids devices that encouraged tinkering and discovery. We handed them locked-down iPads suitable only for content consumption, not knowledge creation.
Wonder when they'll admit that AI existing at all makes students much, much worse off?
Most teachers I've seen already do and are terrified of what they're seeing it do to their students
The teacher I'm seeing are using AI
TL;DR: it’s not the screens or tech’s fault. It’s the overall pressure to lower standards and people that for whatever reason can't work with tech.
After seeing my kids go through school I’d say the chief issues with performance are external. Tech and screens are like any tool, they’re only as good as the user.
Parents and society place less importance on education and critical thinking, in fact they often insult it. Parents teach their kids that they’re not responsible for their failings, it’s the teacher’s or the school’s fault. Parent’s don’t have the knowledge to help with the tech, nor will they police the kid’s use of the tech, either because they dgaf or can’t understand it. Teaching standards keep moving the goalposts to help the least common denominator. Teachers also aren’t allowed to teach in a way, there’s always some “do-gooder” latest study that’s supposed to teach kids better, but it’s bullshit management worried more about studies and metrics than just teaching. Teachers spend more time jumping through hoops than teaching.
Only way I have ever learned, in school, is by writing notes by hand into my own notebooks. Rewriting text book chapters, taking notes from teacher, writing answers down. It takes time, longer than taking notes on a laptop. But writing on laptop just doesn't "stick" the information into my head. Back in high school, I was the last student to still hand-in my essays etc in paper and my teachers were very happy to grade them, one told me it brought her good memories from the times there were less screens and teaching was easier. No wonder..
When I had laptop in glass, it was very easy to play games, watch Netflix or scroll Reddit. I had no self-control, I was not able to force myself to focus in learning. They started using laptops and tablets in glasses when we were 13 and most of us found ways to play games etc on them, bypassed the restrictions. And we shared the knowledge on that. Oh, also I dropped out eventually.
This is likely a hot take but, I don't think this was the fault of the in-class laptops. They thought removing phones were going to solve the issue, it didn't, they thought computers were going to solve the issue, they didn't.
The core issue is: School is fucking boring. As a kid/teen you spend 8-10 hours a day sitting at a desk listening to a teacher yap about shit that at the time you don't believe is even important so you can regurgitate said useless information in tests that you then proceed to forget 2 weeks after taking. Hell even now I think I learned more actual life and useful skills in college. I have more engagement and entertainment working a full time job, than I did in a classroom, and at least I was making money with the job.
The school districts are shocked that upon providing a tool that could be used to lessen the tedium and lifelessness that school shoves down kids throats they then misused said tool. I don't understand it.
Make learning fun and engaging, add actual life skills to classrooms like how to read an analog clock, or how to write a check. Talk about how to survive in the real world, how interest works, how your credit score is really important, maybe how the government works cause I know I never had a civics class. Stuff that kids in middle/high school would actually care about, instead of how to solve 3 unknowns in an equation, or how to find an angle of a triangle when you know the 2 angles, or learning about colonization for the 8th time. Make it so it isn't just "read this board, repeat on the test".
If you solve the underlying issues at play, instead of trying to remove the tools that kids are misusing in order to fix the issue that the school system as a whole created, I think it would be found that computers would be a net positive. I know having a computer in class significantly improved my scores and learning capability, as I could use it for legible note taking, and I could record sessions if I needed to. Yes I definitely accessed coolmathgames at times but, I can tell you right now, the ability to do that helped remove the monotony of the classroom, and if I didn't have that tool at my disposal, I would have simply zoned out and gained nothing out of the day, instead of what I did. My scores definitely wouldn't have gone up like the article seems to be alluding to.
I don’t entirely disagree, but it’s worth noting that to some extent learning is inherently boring, like, making it more interesting makes it less effective. Reiterating the same thing to the point of boredom and beyond had been shown to be effective if I remember correctly. It’s why things like Duolingo take so much longer to teach you a language, because they’re trying so hard to be somewhat fun they actually compromise the effectiveness of the teaching.
So I do think schools need to remove distractions, especially ones engineered to be distracting like Facebook.
But your point is valid too, just because some boredom is necessary doesn’t mean they can’t do better, a lot better.
To some extent yes, I do agree with you, but if your student at least understands why they are needing to, or shows reasonable expectation that it will actually improve their life later on, you stop fighting the kid the entire way and learning becomes a whole lot easier.
I do agree that teachers shouldn't enable it, but I don't believe the proper response is to throw the blame strictly on the kids and remove a resource to them. Removing said resource isn't going to make them want to be there, or make them learn anything. You need to address that issue first, otherwise it's just going to move to the next distraction (like talking to your peers or just skipping class altogether)
well, let's be a bit more specific: The screen is not the problem. The operating system, the applications, and the abysmal integration is the problem.
When I was in middle school. I thought that it was really cool that the kids in 'murica could take laptops and tablet into the school to use in class for learning. Then I stopped being a middle schooler.
Using laptops to replace books and writing is not a tech first approach in the first place. It's just that you replace a book with a computer, that's not tech education. The letters and words are still the same, except now you have a distracting screen in front of a kid on a machine that can do other things to satisfy the impulses of a bored kid. There is nothing wrong with laptops in class just use it to teach the kids to use the tech for things those machines were build for. And not as a book and a teaching assistant substitute. Teach kids how to operate a real OS, teach them basic cyber security and cyber hygiene, let them install a printer and wifi. Anything that is useful for when they will use a PC as adults.
You can have a Linux running on a raspberry pi, but you have to build the device yourself. That's my solution.
Tech devoured everything as it does. Put some funding back in shop class, arts, home ec., etc. That was the issue around here going back decades.
They defunded all those things here. Back then my high school got a ton of fancy Apple computers. Those went unused except for the IT guys fucking around with them and never actually deploying them for some reason. Only the aging Windows PCs were used by students. That was the only funding being spent anymore.
The world is more than just the big tech industry. It's no wonder so many trades professions are aging out into oblivion. We listened to techbros who are converting the world into digital zombies.
Give the kids things to do again other than screen time. The rest of the entire curriculum has long ago been gutted down to pure theory. Of course they're bored to death, and searching for stimulation on their screens.
I was part of the first school year where my district implemented a one-to-one laptop/student policy. Our school district got a fat grant the year before, because they implemented a drug-testing policy and used the money to buy each student a MacBook Air.
It was a complete disaster. There were some positives to it, but it really changed everything from there on.
Our IT department was ran by 3 guys, spread across a high school, middle school, and 6 elementary schools. They had no idea what they were doing most of the time. We had some Windows machines in the drafting classroom, my profile became corrupted, preventing me from being able to log in. The admin couldn’t figure out how to delete my profile, and insisted that I just used someone else’s login. I also lost work because he couldn’t figure out how to sign in as an administrator, and yank my files from my user folder.
We had full admin rights on those computers, and the MDM (JAMF) was not installed correctly allowing us to uninstall it. Many of us ran pirated software.
The biggest thing was cheating. It just became so easy. The school couldn’t do anything about it because all the answer keys were being uploaded to Quizlet, which was a service many teachers were using for study guides.
The school tried to block iMessage from working on these machines, and failed miserably. We figured out how to bypass it within the first week of implementation.
Since I’ve graduated, they’ve made a lot of changes for the better in terms of device management. However, I have no idea about how the classrooms have changed since.
Furthermore, this school district did a horrible job of teaching kids how to use computers. They did typing lessons, but didn’t ever explain how to use the computers. So when the laptops came in, many students had no idea what a file was or how to submit them to the LMS.
I at the least can be thankful that they gave us actual computers, rather than Chromebooks. I work in secondary education now, and so many students have Chromebooks because that’s what their school taught them how to use. They have no clue what software is, and only know how to share a document through Google Docs, rather than getting the file exported as a .pdf or .docx and properly submitted into the LMS.
IMO Chromebooks have ruined a generation. Especially since schools forced this upon the masses.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
