And It Appears That Schools May Be Contributing to their Decline

Last week’s Senate hearing on the impact of technology, social media, and artificial intelligence on the mental health of children and teenagers is well worth a watch.

This is especially true if you’re new to understanding how smart devices have influenced education in the last fifteen years.

But if you can’t fit in the entire two hour discussion, be sure to spend just a few minutes watching former teacher, cognitive scientist, and author Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath’s introductory remarks.

Video source: Scrolling 2 Death

Horvath studies how learning happens physiologically. According to him, humans are biologically programmed to learn from other humans, and screens circumvent the process.

Horvath along with co-panelist Emily Cherkin advocate for eliminating technology as the primary tool for learning in schools.

During the pandemic, schools were shut down, Chromebooks were issued to each student, and became, of necessity, the primary means of instruction. When schools opened up again, students returned along with this new—or at least more intensively used—way of teaching and learning.

The result is that on top of the hours spent on screens during their free time (estimates vary widely from 1 to 7 hours) , an additional 4 to 6 hours of instructional time were added during the school day.

You would think our collective hair would be on fire with data like this, wouldn’t you?

The plummeting ACT scores in the graph above underscore Horvath’s conviction that the tech tools schools use are, if not causing, then correlated to a decline in our students’ cognitive ability.

You would think our collective hair would be on fire with data like this, wouldn’t you?

So why isn’t it?

Photo source: First Fish Chronicles on Substack

Horvath’s co-panelist Emily Cherkin has some answers.

In her recent Substack post “Don’t Ask the Barber if You Need a Haircut” (which you can read without a subscription if you’re on her email list at First Fish Chronicles), she explains that the EdTech industry is “expected to be worth up to $570 Billion by 2034.”

Yes, you read that correctly. 570 BILLION.

Coincidentally, Cherkin reports, an organization entitled the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) sent a letter ahead of the hearing to Senator Ted Cruz, the Chair of the Senate committee. The letter explained that there’s a big difference between screentime use OUTSIDE of school and the objective-driven instructional use of screens INSIDE school.

In other words, criticism and regulation of social media and technology use for kids in general is fine. But decisions about school screen use? This must be left to the experts.

Here’s the problem. The experts seem to be oblivious about what the data shows about EdTech and learning.

Take a look at the list of organizations Cherkin cites in her article that signed the CoSN letter prior to the hearing:

AASA, The School Superintendents Association

AESA, Association of Education Service Agencies

American Federation of School Administrators

American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

American Library Association (ALA)

Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO)

Benton Foundation

CoSN – The Consortium for School Networking

Consortium of State School Boards Association (COSSBA)

National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP)

National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS)

National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)

National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP)

National Catholic Educational Association

National Education Association (NEA)

SETDA (State Educational Technology Directors Association)

Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB)

…the experts seem to be oblivious about what the data shows about EdTech and learning

These groups represent the people one expects to be most committed to children’s well-being and learning, the people that parents who aren’t educators themselves look to and trust.

Have the educational decision makers all simply been bought off by this big money industry? Or are the experts actually unaware when it comes to what children really need in order to learn?

In my opinion, both reasons are probably factors. I speak from over 30 years teaching in both public and independent schools.

Many teachers and administrators don’t really understand the biology of learning and the neurological complexity of what is goes on in the learning process.

In my book about the importance of reading aloud to children from the beginning, I describe this neurological phenomenon as the invisible toolbox— a metaphor for the connections that are made in the brain in the interplay of human connection and learning.

When EdTech companies market their wares promising personalized learning, guaranteed results, and the necessity of tech experience in the formative years for a future work force, many educators and administrators believe them.

But as Cherkin has shown, there’s also a lot of money at stake to keep the industry alive and booming.

Read my review of Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse is Making Our Kids Dumber (Clement and Miles, 2019) to learn about what the authors call The Education-Industrial Complex. They describe a network of oligarchs and politicians who have neither background nor expertise in education or child development, yet have an outsized influence on curriculum in the U.S.

As schools move to ban phones during the school day, the great irony is that screen use continues widely within schools. iPads and Chromebooks, many point out, are essentially just oversized phones.

And, as Dr. Horvath explains, screens simply are not what the human brain needs for deep learning.