School isn’t what it used to be.
I suppose, in some ways, that could be good. But in many ways, it’s not so great.
In my view, what has changed the most and had the biggest negative impact on children and learning is the insidiousness of, and overreliance on, digital tech.
I am sometimes surprised when I talk to parents of younger children who are (rightfully) concerned about iPad time at home and when to introduce phones or watches. But when I mention that they should also be concerned about the technology use happening in school, they are surprised. Has it really changed that much?
Yes, and how.
Here is just a smattering of examples:
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iPads are seen as a “teaching tool,” and children as young as kindergarten take them home to work on “letters” or “numbers.”
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Screens are used to reward classes who behave well or “earn” enough points to get a “device day.”
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Learning Management Systems (such as Schoology, Canvas or Seesaw) are where teachers can post assignments and handouts and links to resources.
- Students increasingly have their own personal devices in the classroom. This includes smartwatches, especially for the K-5 set, which are highly distracting to teachers and other students.
- Schools use YouTube for “teaching,” so YouTube is rarely blocked on school devices.
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Schools force children to sign “User Agreements” that put the onus on children when technology misuse occurs. Parents often are uninformed about what their children consent to.
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Entire curricula are 100% digital. No textbooks, no workbooks, no handouts.
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Middle schoolers read books on websites, not on paper, because it’s easier to see students’ annotations. “Our school is not equipped for paper,” one school guidance counselor told me.
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In technology, data is gold. With so many unique platforms (hundreds) used by each school, data is easily accessed, bought, and sold by third-party companies.
- Click here to see more examples of tech in the schools.
At the end of the day, it is too much. The decisions being made about education are no longer being made by educators or professionals with child development expertise. Technologists and marketers know a captive audience when they see one, and our children (and their data) are the product.
After a year of dragging a low-quality laptop back and forth from school to home, complaining almost daily of intense headaches after school, and witnessing little to no benefit in the use of a computer for learning, we’ve decided this year will be different for our daughter.
Sylvie is entering 7th grade this fall, and I have let the district know that she will not be using the school-issued computer and internet access for the school year. Even though I created an UnPlug EdTech toolkit for parents like me who share my concerns, I am finding myself using my own materials in our efforts!
Because currently, I have not received the answer to this simple question:
Can our daughter attend school next year without a laptop, without accessing digital curricula, and without grades, if necessary?
It is surreal that in 2024, this is considered a question that has to be elevated to the highest levels of the district administration, but it’s where we are.
Opting children out of technology for school is surprisingly difficult, even though it shouldn’t be. Sometime between the launch of remote learning due to the pandemic and the post-pandemic mess of reentering schools, the use of technology-based tools increased, and the more schools depended on or justified one digital tool, the more they justified the use of others.
It is truly strange to me that I am asking a school district if my child can simply come to school, sit in the classroom without a computer, and learn. Even ten years ago this question would be seen as insane. Yet it is the landscape of education today, and things will not change until we push the conversation to happen.
But the research (that is, the independently-funded research) about technology use in schools beats a steady drum that this is all “too much, too young, too fast.”
In all of this, of course, is a child, Sylvie, who will be the one dealing with the day-to-day reality of being That Kid without a laptop in the classroom. We’ve been talking about it all summer and thinking about how she can respond when her classmates ask her, “Why don’t you have a computer?”
I’m sure there will be some kids who find her uniqueness a reason to mock or tease. That would be in keeping with what we know is developmentally normal for middle schoolers, after all. And I’m fortunate that Sylvie is actually uniquely comfortable with being unique, so I am actually not as concerned about this.
What I not-so-secretly hope is that her classmates will go home and tell their parents, “Hey! Did you know I don’t have to use the school computer? There is a girl in my class who doesn’t!” and that will prompt those parents to wonder…”Is this really an option?”
In situations like this, I like to share the analogy of the First Fish, which was first shared with me by Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, when I interviewed him for my book. He described how in a school of fish, the way they know to change direction comes from one fish veering off in a new direction. But that’s not all– the whole school won’t shift until a second and third fish follow that first fish.
Then, the whole school shifts.
**This article is reposted with permission from the author. Read it and other posts on The Screentime Consultant blog.
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