My friend, I'm an elementary school teacher with a master's degree in Learning and Technology, and my students' classroom experience is almost entirely unplugged. I'm intensely picky about the learning tools I provide, so when I do have them use their Chromebooks (and don't get me started on those pieces of busted-ass shit (I have feelings)), web monitoring and limiting software is crucial. Being able to see their screens, shut them down, redirect them, or restrict them to a pre-approved domain - like Chrome Music Lab during free time, or PebbleGo for animal research - is the epitome of micromanagement and a pain in the ass, but it's the only way I've found to keep control over what's going on at their desks. Also, Ctrl+Shift+T reopens closed browser tabs. That's a fun tool to have in your back pocket.
LOL - Busted-ass shit indeed! Your class sounds divine, and you’re lucky to have the flexibility to conduct it that way. Alas the teachers in many mega-districts are *compelled* to use these horrid systems. And so much budget has been squandered on the Google hardware and e-learning platforms licensing (not to mention endless IT support), that many teachers who would prefer to educate analog-style, can’t do so because there are strict budget caps on paper and printing. Mind-boggling!
100%. My man, I thank God above every day that I have as much freedom as I do when it comes to decisions about my classroom. Before I started teaching (in one of those mega-districts out west), I managed a sales team and, later, a logistics team for an ecommerce retailer. I also studied marketing management and accounting until I decided that I actually hated sitting behind a desk all day with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. But, because of that background, there will always be a part of me that thinks in terms of ROI; as I like to tell my kids when I see them being wasteful (OMG PUT THE LID BACK ON THE PLAYDOH WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH IT), "I don't love money, but I love what it can do." Now that I have experience and education, I'm aghast at how so many of our already sparse resources are being wasted on tech products and services by:
1. Teachers who don't know how to assess whether a tool will be beneficial (or potentially harmful - see the FTC investigation into popular "educational MMO" Prodigy Math)
2. Administrators in top-heavy districts who need to justify their position and salary, so they roll out a steady stream of "tools" for the teachers to learn and integrate into their instruction
I started typing a whole-ass rant about what I hate about Chromebooks (flimsy, not really a laptop, overused, etc.), but I just had to chase my puppy down in the rain, and now I'm tired. I'll just sign off by saying that, having taught in a major metro and a small, rural area, I'm confident that, were districts to move computers off desks and back into a Lab, where there's an adult monitor or teacher available to do the necessary micromanagement while the classroom teacher actually teaches, the vast majority of teachers would be super stoked about it. Maybe that's what we should be asking for...
Yeah, it always struck me that Chromebooks were essentially low spec android phones in a laptop shell.
And yes, during my time as a high school teacher, when I took the kids into the computer lab, you could monitor and if necessary take over their machines. This being a boys' school, I always used to scan the grid of thumbnails for green backgrounds, suggesting they were on some sort of sports game/video!
Omg, boys are hilarious to teach. A couple years ago, I taught a class of 18 fourth graders - 14 boys and 4 girls. That year was rowdy, challenging, and a whole lot of fun.
I taught science at a very selective (boys) grammar school, so I had it pretty good, relatively speaking. Loads of boys you'd be telling off for some bit of a cheekiness while struggling to hold back the laughter.
Catch22 Tech... Make sure the "Tech dissidents" are deterred. And of course Ukraine war and following crisis helped raise the price of paper and create a paper industry crisis at least in Europe. How convenient...Agatha Christie would feel uncomfortable with all these coincidences.
Doing the right thing well Is already Effort Energy and Love taking but Always worthwhile. Now, when technology creates multiple Energy absorbing obstacles to the correct desirable execution of one's own duties, as a parent or an educator, something has gone terribly wrong...
See - it is possible to teach with technology and manage a classroom effectively. Just letting the kids “run wild” on the internet is not responsible. But makes a good Substack headline, I suppose.
Anecdotes from a former 7th grade English teacher. I taught at a private school with 1:1 Chromebook usage starting in 4th grade. Many of the teachers used tech for every aspect of their lessons; the reasoning they gave was that it was more engaging, but it was clear that the real reason was often laziness. With tech, homework and quizzes can grade themselves, and there is no need to collect and organize paper. My school banned phones and used GoGuardian for Chromebooks, which teachers can use to monitor each device and even close tabs, block websites during their class time, or adjust settings so that only one website is permissible. But many teachers I know never learned all the aspects of this program. As the English teacher, my class sessions were twice the length of others, and Chromebooks only came out to (1) type essays - outlining and drafting were handwritten (2) complete research for said essays, with heavy monitoring from me (3) play IXL class-wide grammar games or vocabulary reviews as a special treat on Fridays, again with strict monitoring. After only a few weeks where my ability to catch every student was clear, most kids simply stopped playing games in my class. I’d rather them avoid work by staring out the window!
Google now requires explicit parental permission to use non-core applications, which include Earth, YouTube, Translate, and a few others. Their core apps are Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc., and do not require consent. In essence, YouTube should already be blocked at the school level for students under 18, based on the new guidance from Google as of March 2025. Google allows teachers to embed YouTube videos in Google Classroom or Google Slides. This requires some effort to curate and embed the videos by the teacher, and feels appropriate. If your child's school doesn't request permission, you should reach out to them to find out why.
I'm not sure why/how we ended up in a situation where a Chromebook tipped the balance of teacher authority. Where is the harm in a teacher beginning the class with, "Good morning, everyone...Put the Chromebooks in your bag as we will not be needing them today..." That's it. If the task doesn't require a device, it should be turned off and put away. Students shouldn't have a Chromebook open all day, every day. I'm not sure why that is allowed or makes any sense at all. Classroom management and putting the device away when not needed alleviate a significant amount of the angst.
Classroom management is more critical than ever before, which starts with the teacher and supporting them in the craft of teaching.
Here is a Google link to relevant details, where they have pushed permission and access to the school district without taking accountability for their non-core applications. That is frustrating enough, and I think even requesting parent consent at this point is foolish. I also wrote a small blog post on that aspect.
Sorry, but from what I’ve seen, GoGuardian changes the game only inasmuch as it distracts the teachers also, compelling them to interrupt their lessons to monitor yet another app for policing usage of devices which have no business being in the classroom to begin with. It is at best a band-aid on a hemorrhaging head wound. A band-aid that needs to be changed every 90 seconds. Most teachers at my kids’ schools can’t be bothered with it. Our teachers are overworked and underpaid as it is, and GoGuardian just puts another thankless task on their plates. Every second they spend on GoGuardian is time that could be spent actually teaching.
To me as a teacher, it was so counterintuitive for me to sit behind my screen while I monitor my students on their screens. No thanks - how about we just interact with each other face-to-face, which is how relationships can build and grow? 🤗
Hiya Lila! Signed! The petition is great. Unfortunately it's going to take a long time to turn the LAUSD supertanker around. Based on my experience, the first baby step with the biggest impact would be for them to *BLOCK YOUTUBE* at the district firewall. Yes, there's some solid educational content there, but 99.999% of student usage is just streaming brainrot...
My son's school finally (finally!) blocked YouTube. It took my son and his friends 15 minutes to get around the block. On the third attempt it seems to have actually worked, but it doesn't change the insanity. The teachers seen to be a part of the, at least in our district, because they don't assign any work and then need something to distract the kids. (We've tried to get them to send the kids to the library, or let them do their own work, but no go on that one.)
SFCxUS has you covered on that one, John! Jodi Carreon, co-lead in our org, has been successful in getting YouTube banned in her kids’ district. 🥳 (and she lives in CA too!) I’ll connect you with her, and I’m so thrilled that Lila from our group has reached out to connect with you as well. Haidt is correct that this is a collective action problem, and the more that we can team up, the stronger we will become!
Blocking YouTube is a start! And second on my list would be abolishing iReady. It's mind numbing and only serves to decrease a kid's interest in learning...
I teach middle school art and as much as I’d love to have students look up reference images or use their laptops as tools in the design process I find they have ZERO self control. I use go guardian to monitor their screens but it’s cumbersome and they manage to waste the class period because they struggle to transition from laptop back to analogue tasks. Many of them have no etiquette with taking care of their Chromebooks and drop them / toss them / spill things and never have to pay the cost to fix them. It’s all just a headache. I prefer to have them work with their hands and no screens since they sit behind them for the rest of the day anyway.
My take on kids behind computers....Phones are One Half the Problem
We need to get EdTech and AI out of the classrooms.
Everyone tells me we need to prepare our kids for the future workplace; that technology is inevitable. Research is showing that putting kids behind Chromebooks every day in every class is not helping them learn. Kindergartners do not need iPads. Global PISA scores show that we are falling behind. In fact, all this screen time filled with unfocused distractions is not neurologically appropriate for proper brain development. The scrolling, swiping, and gaming are not teaching our children the skills they will need to succeed in six to ten years when they graduate. School administrators like the tidy workflow that Edtech provides them. But at what expense to our future generations?
We need to prioritize printed text books, handwritten note taking, and hands on assignments. We should return to the century’s old proven methods of learning. Schools could have a computer lab for coding skills and typing only. AI should not replace reading and writing for kids. Ditch the 1:1 computers... Finland and Sweden are.
I’m going to write out a longer more thoughtful post in response to this. I have had a unique experience similar to this. In the 9th grade I attended a Charter public school that was implementing self directed digital learning as the approach to education. We all got chromebooks and Gmail accounts and were suppose to work through material everyday for 1 hour and on Fridays all day, with the weekday classes all being group based projects. It was a unique idea that in some ways succeeded especially with teaching us group dynamics. What failed was thinking you could give a kid the internet and they would self direct their education and not get distracted.
Your article gave me chills as i remember how fucked up this education approach was. We were all watching YouTube and playing games anytime we could. We quickly learned shortcuts to hide screens and change tabs, cheating was rampant especially year one. As the years passed they added more security and prevention measures yet undoubtedly we evaded them and found ways to use our devices freely. Students learned how to take tests not how to learn. For some the self directed approach allowed them to excel in areas and hyper specialize in their interests(about 10-20% of the nerdier students seemed to succeed). The mass got by alright passed the classes and most applied to colleges. It took a few years to see the effect, many intelligent classmates failed in the rigorous college settings. Even good students struggled to focus and retain information. Most dropped or failed out although the 10-20% seem to have done fairly well the bulk spent the years they should’ve been learning distracting themselves. We also had a stupid viral game called cookie clicker where you just click on a giant cookie over and over, it was like a pubescent casino. So glad I made it out… it took me years to eventually enjoy learning again and walk away from mindless distractions but it is still a challenge and impacts me to this day.
Good on you for stepping up for your kid, I’m terrified for what the future holds seeing the interdependence on technology (primarily dopamine driven distractions). Google got about 10 years of my data because I never thought to switch accounts until recently, great trade off for the cost of a Chromebook.
Thanks Rasmus! Really great to get the perspective of someone younger who was actually subjected to this EdTech madness and already sees it for the folly it was. 👍
Our kids are in a k-8 classical catholic school with a strictly enforced zero tech/zero phone policy. The kids learn cursive and Latin and read the Odessy and Aristotle and Shakespeare, and they still manage to navigate YouTube well enough to find skibidi toilets in the wild, so any argument that they need to “learn technology” rings insane to me. The stuff is catastrophically intuitive and addicting, kids don’t need to be digitally discipled - they’re all born digital natives at this point in history.
Oh gosh... dreading returning to the US with my daughter who is a rising middle schooler next year. At her school in Spain there was absolutely zero tech in classrooms.
A friend who is a really great (high school) teacher just retired for this reason - walking the halls, and peeking into classrooms, she didn’t see any interaction, discussion, or debate - only screens. And the kids don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.
Even when I was in school, a long, long time ago, we were gaining very little from our access to computers and by extension, the Internet. Even in high school, when my programming class gave us exclusive access to a few school-issued laptops, I spent most of my time on it playing web browser games, pirating music and games over peer-to-peer, and getting better at Minesweeper. The dream is that giving kids early and constant access to technology will make them engineers and programmers by osmosis, through proximity to the devices that enable those things. All we've really done is give them an outlet to escape the mind-numbing prison of their lives [especially in school] and they're taking the exit.
But the real issue isn't the laptops or the screens or the kids being too nihilistic and bored, it's the Internet. It's like if you decided to move school from a dedicated building to a mall food court. It's just too many distractions, too many options for burning time, and with zero investiture required. In my opinion the solution is pretty simple. Just remove Internet access from those Chromebooks while in school, put it on a closed network, and every kid will at least be stuck with Minesweeper and Freecell, and have to exert a tiny bit of effort to try to figure out something else to do instead of school work. There's no reason to have the world at your fingertips when all you need to look at is a single page handout.
You’re correct that a very short whitelist of genuinely educational web domains (khanacademy.com, nasa.gov, etc.) would improve the situation markedly, but even when locked down thusly, the Chromebooks still offer a galaxy of distractions (noodling with customization visual settings, playing system alert sounds thousands of times, webcam mischief, etc. etc.) They are just inherently distracting shiny, shiny objects that need to go. Per my essay, kids can (and should) still absolutely learn any needed computer literacy skills in one class devoted to that-ideally when they’re older. To use an analog, um, analogue - there’s a reason they didn’t put manual typewriters in every academic class back in the day; they simply weren’t relevant to the core lessons at hand. So yeah, I would say what you propose is a step in the right direction, but by no means a solution.
Your consistently immaculate sentence structure and expansive vocabulary leads me to think that you might have been a little more studious in your youth than you would have us believe. Haha.
When my district moved to an inferior browser monitoring system all the middle school teachers complained but weren’t listened to, so I moved away from doing pretty much anything on the 1:1 chromebooks. I’m not in the classroom anymore and a transition option would be trying for an Ed tech job but I can’t bring myself to do it. Very few of the multitude of Ed tech curriculum add ons actually increased student success in my experience but districts are spending so much money on all these resources beyond the base curriculum. And every year my students were in awe of my typing skills because they are never taught the very basic tech skills. I’m glad this backlash is starting now so maybe my kindergartner will benefit because I’m dreading the appearance of the Chromebook.
Yes! For all the time schools require students to be on computers, they don't teach typing! I was shocked to see how my son and his peers in college type..
hunt and peck! To top it all off, they haven't taught cursive (or really any sustained focus on handwriting at all) for decades now, resulting in college educated twenty year olds today crudely printing out their signatures. Are we now that far from a past where common illiterate citizens were just told to "make their mark" when signing their name?
I’m a sub at my local junior high and high schools, and your descriptions of what is happening in the classroom is spot-on, even down to the hot Cheeto stained fingers. It’s distraction after distraction with the Chromebooks and the constant junk food snacking and now the squishy cubes. It’s a dopamine frenzy masquerading as education. 🤦🏼♀️
Thanks Angie. I’ve been accused of exaggerating this by some. And full disclosure: exaggeration is indeed one of my vanishingly few talents! But in this case I really was not, and hearing it confirmed by so many teachers like yourself from all over the country is very gratifying. Thanks for reading and taking the time to share your POV. 🤓✌️
My friend, I'm an elementary school teacher with a master's degree in Learning and Technology, and my students' classroom experience is almost entirely unplugged. I'm intensely picky about the learning tools I provide, so when I do have them use their Chromebooks (and don't get me started on those pieces of busted-ass shit (I have feelings)), web monitoring and limiting software is crucial. Being able to see their screens, shut them down, redirect them, or restrict them to a pre-approved domain - like Chrome Music Lab during free time, or PebbleGo for animal research - is the epitome of micromanagement and a pain in the ass, but it's the only way I've found to keep control over what's going on at their desks. Also, Ctrl+Shift+T reopens closed browser tabs. That's a fun tool to have in your back pocket.
LOL - Busted-ass shit indeed! Your class sounds divine, and you’re lucky to have the flexibility to conduct it that way. Alas the teachers in many mega-districts are *compelled* to use these horrid systems. And so much budget has been squandered on the Google hardware and e-learning platforms licensing (not to mention endless IT support), that many teachers who would prefer to educate analog-style, can’t do so because there are strict budget caps on paper and printing. Mind-boggling!
100%. My man, I thank God above every day that I have as much freedom as I do when it comes to decisions about my classroom. Before I started teaching (in one of those mega-districts out west), I managed a sales team and, later, a logistics team for an ecommerce retailer. I also studied marketing management and accounting until I decided that I actually hated sitting behind a desk all day with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. But, because of that background, there will always be a part of me that thinks in terms of ROI; as I like to tell my kids when I see them being wasteful (OMG PUT THE LID BACK ON THE PLAYDOH WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH IT), "I don't love money, but I love what it can do." Now that I have experience and education, I'm aghast at how so many of our already sparse resources are being wasted on tech products and services by:
1. Teachers who don't know how to assess whether a tool will be beneficial (or potentially harmful - see the FTC investigation into popular "educational MMO" Prodigy Math)
2. Administrators in top-heavy districts who need to justify their position and salary, so they roll out a steady stream of "tools" for the teachers to learn and integrate into their instruction
I started typing a whole-ass rant about what I hate about Chromebooks (flimsy, not really a laptop, overused, etc.), but I just had to chase my puppy down in the rain, and now I'm tired. I'll just sign off by saying that, having taught in a major metro and a small, rural area, I'm confident that, were districts to move computers off desks and back into a Lab, where there's an adult monitor or teacher available to do the necessary micromanagement while the classroom teacher actually teaches, the vast majority of teachers would be super stoked about it. Maybe that's what we should be asking for...
Yeah, it always struck me that Chromebooks were essentially low spec android phones in a laptop shell.
And yes, during my time as a high school teacher, when I took the kids into the computer lab, you could monitor and if necessary take over their machines. This being a boys' school, I always used to scan the grid of thumbnails for green backgrounds, suggesting they were on some sort of sports game/video!
Omg, boys are hilarious to teach. A couple years ago, I taught a class of 18 fourth graders - 14 boys and 4 girls. That year was rowdy, challenging, and a whole lot of fun.
I taught science at a very selective (boys) grammar school, so I had it pretty good, relatively speaking. Loads of boys you'd be telling off for some bit of a cheekiness while struggling to hold back the laughter.
Catch22 Tech... Make sure the "Tech dissidents" are deterred. And of course Ukraine war and following crisis helped raise the price of paper and create a paper industry crisis at least in Europe. How convenient...Agatha Christie would feel uncomfortable with all these coincidences.
Doing the right thing well Is already Effort Energy and Love taking but Always worthwhile. Now, when technology creates multiple Energy absorbing obstacles to the correct desirable execution of one's own duties, as a parent or an educator, something has gone terribly wrong...
See - it is possible to teach with technology and manage a classroom effectively. Just letting the kids “run wild” on the internet is not responsible. But makes a good Substack headline, I suppose.
Anecdotes from a former 7th grade English teacher. I taught at a private school with 1:1 Chromebook usage starting in 4th grade. Many of the teachers used tech for every aspect of their lessons; the reasoning they gave was that it was more engaging, but it was clear that the real reason was often laziness. With tech, homework and quizzes can grade themselves, and there is no need to collect and organize paper. My school banned phones and used GoGuardian for Chromebooks, which teachers can use to monitor each device and even close tabs, block websites during their class time, or adjust settings so that only one website is permissible. But many teachers I know never learned all the aspects of this program. As the English teacher, my class sessions were twice the length of others, and Chromebooks only came out to (1) type essays - outlining and drafting were handwritten (2) complete research for said essays, with heavy monitoring from me (3) play IXL class-wide grammar games or vocabulary reviews as a special treat on Fridays, again with strict monitoring. After only a few weeks where my ability to catch every student was clear, most kids simply stopped playing games in my class. I’d rather them avoid work by staring out the window!
Google now requires explicit parental permission to use non-core applications, which include Earth, YouTube, Translate, and a few others. Their core apps are Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc., and do not require consent. In essence, YouTube should already be blocked at the school level for students under 18, based on the new guidance from Google as of March 2025. Google allows teachers to embed YouTube videos in Google Classroom or Google Slides. This requires some effort to curate and embed the videos by the teacher, and feels appropriate. If your child's school doesn't request permission, you should reach out to them to find out why.
I'm not sure why/how we ended up in a situation where a Chromebook tipped the balance of teacher authority. Where is the harm in a teacher beginning the class with, "Good morning, everyone...Put the Chromebooks in your bag as we will not be needing them today..." That's it. If the task doesn't require a device, it should be turned off and put away. Students shouldn't have a Chromebook open all day, every day. I'm not sure why that is allowed or makes any sense at all. Classroom management and putting the device away when not needed alleviate a significant amount of the angst.
Classroom management is more critical than ever before, which starts with the teacher and supporting them in the craft of teaching.
Thanks Luke - this is really useful info that we'll use in our efforts with LA schools!
Here is a Google link to relevant details, where they have pushed permission and access to the school district without taking accountability for their non-core applications. That is frustrating enough, and I think even requesting parent consent at this point is foolish. I also wrote a small blog post on that aspect.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/15154073?hl=en
https://luke-callahan.com/why-simply-asking-parents-for-consent-is-not-a-fix-for-student-data-privacy/
Sorry, but from what I’ve seen, GoGuardian changes the game only inasmuch as it distracts the teachers also, compelling them to interrupt their lessons to monitor yet another app for policing usage of devices which have no business being in the classroom to begin with. It is at best a band-aid on a hemorrhaging head wound. A band-aid that needs to be changed every 90 seconds. Most teachers at my kids’ schools can’t be bothered with it. Our teachers are overworked and underpaid as it is, and GoGuardian just puts another thankless task on their plates. Every second they spend on GoGuardian is time that could be spent actually teaching.
To me as a teacher, it was so counterintuitive for me to sit behind my screen while I monitor my students on their screens. No thanks - how about we just interact with each other face-to-face, which is how relationships can build and grow? 🤗
John, your experience corresponds almost exactly with mine, after my son entered an LAUSD middle school last year. I organized a group of equally-appalled parents & teachers, and we’re starting to fight back against these (bananas) policies. Please join Schools Beyond Screens and sign our petition! https://papa.fournorms.com/campaigns/schools-beyond-screens-lausd-reduce-lausd-s-reliance-on-classroom-tech
Hiya Lila! Signed! The petition is great. Unfortunately it's going to take a long time to turn the LAUSD supertanker around. Based on my experience, the first baby step with the biggest impact would be for them to *BLOCK YOUTUBE* at the district firewall. Yes, there's some solid educational content there, but 99.999% of student usage is just streaming brainrot...
My son's school finally (finally!) blocked YouTube. It took my son and his friends 15 minutes to get around the block. On the third attempt it seems to have actually worked, but it doesn't change the insanity. The teachers seen to be a part of the, at least in our district, because they don't assign any work and then need something to distract the kids. (We've tried to get them to send the kids to the library, or let them do their own work, but no go on that one.)
🤯
I completely agree—both about YouTube and the LAUSD supertanker. Fortunately the petition is just Step One in our larger battle :)
SFCxUS has you covered on that one, John! Jodi Carreon, co-lead in our org, has been successful in getting YouTube banned in her kids’ district. 🥳 (and she lives in CA too!) I’ll connect you with her, and I’m so thrilled that Lila from our group has reached out to connect with you as well. Haidt is correct that this is a collective action problem, and the more that we can team up, the stronger we will become!
Thanks Kathleen that would be great!
Blocking YouTube is a start! And second on my list would be abolishing iReady. It's mind numbing and only serves to decrease a kid's interest in learning...
I teach middle school art and as much as I’d love to have students look up reference images or use their laptops as tools in the design process I find they have ZERO self control. I use go guardian to monitor their screens but it’s cumbersome and they manage to waste the class period because they struggle to transition from laptop back to analogue tasks. Many of them have no etiquette with taking care of their Chromebooks and drop them / toss them / spill things and never have to pay the cost to fix them. It’s all just a headache. I prefer to have them work with their hands and no screens since they sit behind them for the rest of the day anyway.
What ever works to penetrate young rock hard skulls.
My take on kids behind computers....Phones are One Half the Problem
We need to get EdTech and AI out of the classrooms.
Everyone tells me we need to prepare our kids for the future workplace; that technology is inevitable. Research is showing that putting kids behind Chromebooks every day in every class is not helping them learn. Kindergartners do not need iPads. Global PISA scores show that we are falling behind. In fact, all this screen time filled with unfocused distractions is not neurologically appropriate for proper brain development. The scrolling, swiping, and gaming are not teaching our children the skills they will need to succeed in six to ten years when they graduate. School administrators like the tidy workflow that Edtech provides them. But at what expense to our future generations?
We need to prioritize printed text books, handwritten note taking, and hands on assignments. We should return to the century’s old proven methods of learning. Schools could have a computer lab for coding skills and typing only. AI should not replace reading and writing for kids. Ditch the 1:1 computers... Finland and Sweden are.
💯
I’m going to write out a longer more thoughtful post in response to this. I have had a unique experience similar to this. In the 9th grade I attended a Charter public school that was implementing self directed digital learning as the approach to education. We all got chromebooks and Gmail accounts and were suppose to work through material everyday for 1 hour and on Fridays all day, with the weekday classes all being group based projects. It was a unique idea that in some ways succeeded especially with teaching us group dynamics. What failed was thinking you could give a kid the internet and they would self direct their education and not get distracted.
Your article gave me chills as i remember how fucked up this education approach was. We were all watching YouTube and playing games anytime we could. We quickly learned shortcuts to hide screens and change tabs, cheating was rampant especially year one. As the years passed they added more security and prevention measures yet undoubtedly we evaded them and found ways to use our devices freely. Students learned how to take tests not how to learn. For some the self directed approach allowed them to excel in areas and hyper specialize in their interests(about 10-20% of the nerdier students seemed to succeed). The mass got by alright passed the classes and most applied to colleges. It took a few years to see the effect, many intelligent classmates failed in the rigorous college settings. Even good students struggled to focus and retain information. Most dropped or failed out although the 10-20% seem to have done fairly well the bulk spent the years they should’ve been learning distracting themselves. We also had a stupid viral game called cookie clicker where you just click on a giant cookie over and over, it was like a pubescent casino. So glad I made it out… it took me years to eventually enjoy learning again and walk away from mindless distractions but it is still a challenge and impacts me to this day.
Good on you for stepping up for your kid, I’m terrified for what the future holds seeing the interdependence on technology (primarily dopamine driven distractions). Google got about 10 years of my data because I never thought to switch accounts until recently, great trade off for the cost of a Chromebook.
Thanks Rasmus! Really great to get the perspective of someone younger who was actually subjected to this EdTech madness and already sees it for the folly it was. 👍
Our kids are in a k-8 classical catholic school with a strictly enforced zero tech/zero phone policy. The kids learn cursive and Latin and read the Odessy and Aristotle and Shakespeare, and they still manage to navigate YouTube well enough to find skibidi toilets in the wild, so any argument that they need to “learn technology” rings insane to me. The stuff is catastrophically intuitive and addicting, kids don’t need to be digitally discipled - they’re all born digital natives at this point in history.
Oh gosh... dreading returning to the US with my daughter who is a rising middle schooler next year. At her school in Spain there was absolutely zero tech in classrooms.
A friend who is a really great (high school) teacher just retired for this reason - walking the halls, and peeking into classrooms, she didn’t see any interaction, discussion, or debate - only screens. And the kids don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.
As a middle school teacher, this is the most accurate piece I have read in 14 years.
Even when I was in school, a long, long time ago, we were gaining very little from our access to computers and by extension, the Internet. Even in high school, when my programming class gave us exclusive access to a few school-issued laptops, I spent most of my time on it playing web browser games, pirating music and games over peer-to-peer, and getting better at Minesweeper. The dream is that giving kids early and constant access to technology will make them engineers and programmers by osmosis, through proximity to the devices that enable those things. All we've really done is give them an outlet to escape the mind-numbing prison of their lives [especially in school] and they're taking the exit.
But the real issue isn't the laptops or the screens or the kids being too nihilistic and bored, it's the Internet. It's like if you decided to move school from a dedicated building to a mall food court. It's just too many distractions, too many options for burning time, and with zero investiture required. In my opinion the solution is pretty simple. Just remove Internet access from those Chromebooks while in school, put it on a closed network, and every kid will at least be stuck with Minesweeper and Freecell, and have to exert a tiny bit of effort to try to figure out something else to do instead of school work. There's no reason to have the world at your fingertips when all you need to look at is a single page handout.
You’re correct that a very short whitelist of genuinely educational web domains (khanacademy.com, nasa.gov, etc.) would improve the situation markedly, but even when locked down thusly, the Chromebooks still offer a galaxy of distractions (noodling with customization visual settings, playing system alert sounds thousands of times, webcam mischief, etc. etc.) They are just inherently distracting shiny, shiny objects that need to go. Per my essay, kids can (and should) still absolutely learn any needed computer literacy skills in one class devoted to that-ideally when they’re older. To use an analog, um, analogue - there’s a reason they didn’t put manual typewriters in every academic class back in the day; they simply weren’t relevant to the core lessons at hand. So yeah, I would say what you propose is a step in the right direction, but by no means a solution.
Your consistently immaculate sentence structure and expansive vocabulary leads me to think that you might have been a little more studious in your youth than you would have us believe. Haha.
Banning phones in schools is a win — but if we’re not also talking about Chromebooks, we’re only solving half the problem.
💯 As I said in the essay, "we're coming for them next!"
What’s the point of banning cellphones if you’re going to allow them to use their Chromebooks for the same things?
When my district moved to an inferior browser monitoring system all the middle school teachers complained but weren’t listened to, so I moved away from doing pretty much anything on the 1:1 chromebooks. I’m not in the classroom anymore and a transition option would be trying for an Ed tech job but I can’t bring myself to do it. Very few of the multitude of Ed tech curriculum add ons actually increased student success in my experience but districts are spending so much money on all these resources beyond the base curriculum. And every year my students were in awe of my typing skills because they are never taught the very basic tech skills. I’m glad this backlash is starting now so maybe my kindergartner will benefit because I’m dreading the appearance of the Chromebook.
Yes! For all the time schools require students to be on computers, they don't teach typing! I was shocked to see how my son and his peers in college type..
hunt and peck! To top it all off, they haven't taught cursive (or really any sustained focus on handwriting at all) for decades now, resulting in college educated twenty year olds today crudely printing out their signatures. Are we now that far from a past where common illiterate citizens were just told to "make their mark" when signing their name?
I’m a sub at my local junior high and high schools, and your descriptions of what is happening in the classroom is spot-on, even down to the hot Cheeto stained fingers. It’s distraction after distraction with the Chromebooks and the constant junk food snacking and now the squishy cubes. It’s a dopamine frenzy masquerading as education. 🤦🏼♀️
Thanks Angie. I’ve been accused of exaggerating this by some. And full disclosure: exaggeration is indeed one of my vanishingly few talents! But in this case I really was not, and hearing it confirmed by so many teachers like yourself from all over the country is very gratifying. Thanks for reading and taking the time to share your POV. 🤓✌️