15 Days of Haidt (#2): Reduce EdTech In Schools

Yesterday I wrote:

How is Haidt’s Agenda going over the past year? Is there progress?

Yes there is some progress on reducing smartphone use from 8am to 3pm in schools.

Today:

Haidt also advocates to decrease Edtech In Schools.

Is this happening already?

No. It seems to be increasing.

Here in Massachusetts, my neighboring town - Arlington - has the most aggressive Facebook parent-driven group with this mission. I admire them. Grassroots. It’s called Arlington MA Parents - Smartphone Sense. Of all the parents signing petitions for the state to create “Bell to Bell” phone bans in schools, Arlington has contributed the most (172 if you’re curious).

And recently they got 210 parents to sign a letter asking the Superintendent to pull Youtube access off school-issued Chromebooks. Yes, it’s just a drop in the bucket, but again, gotta start somewhere.

So that’s the state of play in the most anti edtech districts I know of.

Should we decrease EdTech In Schools?

I think so, but perhaps for a different reason than what advocates claim.

Let’s dig in.

Today in Haidt’s After Babel newsletter, Sophie Winkleman lays out “The Most Compelling Argument Against Tech In Schools.”

Haidt:

And as a college professor, I am one of those teachers. I banned the use of all screens in all of my classes at New York University several years ago, because it became clear that many college students can’t stay present in class when there’s a laptop or phone on their desk. I don’t see how we can expect eight-year-olds to do it.

I co-sign. If you’re lecturing or leading a discussion, no screens.

Winkelman:

*Why is cutting and pasting some information from Google into a PowerPoint superior to reading a passage in a well-researched textbook and handwriting a response?

*Why is homework listed on Teams better than jotted down in a paper homework diary?

*Why is digitally transporting a child to the Egyptian pyramids better than the child imagining it?

This kind of jazz-hands immersion as an engagement tool doesn’t work – it negates the need to imagine, rendering the pupil a passive rather than an active learner.

Parents ask these questions but they do not get answers.

Love “jazz hands.”

Sean and I have written about edtech AI: Transformative For The Motivated and Mere Meh For the Unmotivated.

And our friend Laurence Holt points out that 95% of kids, in this context of using math learning tools like Khan Academy as assigned by teachers, can fairly be described as unmotivated.

Edtech advocates are probably wrong in their claims of increased learning.

Edtech skeptics probably overstate their claims of “direct” learning harm. Many kids don’t do the pencil and paper problems assigned by teachers. Many kids don’t do the assigned “read the printed textbook” work, etc. If you spend time in schools, or read qualitative evaluations of classrooms and teachers and that literature, there’s lots of dead time, with or without screens.

Let’s not compare EdTech done badly to outlier well-taught traditional classes done well.

In RCTs, often the control groups (no edtech) and treatment groups (edtech) do about the same.

Also, it’s not that edtech in schools generates no wins. Sometimes it’s great. For example, this reasonably motivated 11th grader finds AI to be a powerful learning tool, here in Education Next.

It’s just that, on balance, the scoreboard tilts against edtech, imo.

Winkleman writes:

Sweden has taken note and been the first country to kick tech out of the classroom, re-investing in books, paper and pens. They had the courage to admit that EdTech was a ‘failed experiment’.

I’m intrigued. But have they really kicked tech out of the classroom?

Yes, textbook spending is up. Yes, their education minister has made the case against tech in schools.

Most English-language articles about Swedish schools, however, are future tense.

Like this from 2023:

In addition, teachers will put new emphasis on handwriting practice, printed books and reading time, while devoting less time to tablets, independent online research and keyboarding skills.

Bold is mine.

I’d love to read some “Hey we pulled most/all the tech out of our schools” type descriptions of Swedish high schools, if that’s in fact what is happening. Could be that my own Google skills are limited.

I’ll reach out to my Stockholm friend Gunnar to see what Swedish language newspapers are saying. Maybe he can set me straight.

The political context here is fascinating.

Having come to power at the end of 2022, the current Swedish government (comprised of the ‘Tidö’ coalition of right wing parties) has been expressing strong doubts about the excessive and ‘hasty’ digitisation of Swedish schools.

The national digitisation strategy (initiated in 2017 by the preceding centre-left administration) was heralded at the time as a world-leading effort to digitise schooling.

In USA, there’s no dividing line I can think of between Democrats and Republicans on edtech in schools. Evidently Sweden is different.

While I find edtech in schools, in toto, not particularly valuable for learning, I tend to agree with this critic when it comes to the claims of Swedish edtech skeptics.

One prominent feature of this shift has been the government’s repeated calls to follow ‘what the science says’.

More specifically, this has taken the form of canvassing the opinions of Swedish neuro-scientists and cognitive psychologists around the harms of young children’s excessive device use.

This fits with a general push toward ‘brain-based’ approaches in Swedish education thinking, and is seen to lend an empirical rigour to otherwise unsubstantiated claims around the educational benefits of digital technologies.

…..Above all, it is very difficult to translate neuroscience findings to education. Most experts in cognitive and brain research are extremely careful to stress the limits of their work, and avoid ‘one size fits all’ declarations. However, popular interpretations of neuro-science are much less careful – easily descending into loose talk around ‘neuro-myths’ such as learning styles and left/right brain thinking. The idea of the device-impaired brain is another such over-reach.

So if I buy this caution about the research claims, why do I like Winkleman’s idea of curtailing edtech?

Or to put my own spin on it, why would I love to offer families the choice of private, micro, or charter high schools which are entirely edtech free, so we can see what happens when you really and fully kick out edtech?

Because it would change what happens at home each night.

Parents currently cannot easily patrol their kids for distraction, in hopes of limiting screentime. Kiddo has to be online to do homework. The assignment is on Delta Math or in Google doc or in Canva or a million other places. So many kids can’t be that tech-proximate, literally holding phones and laptops, without getting distracted (and frustrated).

I personally use a flip phone, so I stay more present. Pru doesn’t need to! She’s got great control over her iphone use.

I personally go across the street to the hair salon from 6am to 9am. There’s no wifi there. I get lots written without the distraction of emails and internet.

I identify with the easily distracted teen. I’m an easily distracted teen adult (Pru says “teen” was correct).

Many teens would be way better off if allowed to get their schoolwork done without screens.

Do I think there’s demand for edtech free schools?

After all, I do create and co-create schools for a living.

Perhaps we’re in the early stages of this parent demand emerging?

If there were enough demand, I could imagine creating an edtech-free boarding school or hybrid boarding school to start.

Why boarding school? Because then you can pull kids from around the nation (or world), without a need for geographic density like all my other schools.

For now, I’m helping my friend Arvind design his Raleigh-area new private school. It does not go whole hog “no edtech” but it does affirmatively try to be much wiser about the use of edtech.

Update. Michael Bloomberg wrote a March 19 op-ed: Kids are spending too much time on laptops.

As some school districts finally awake to the benefits of banning smartphones during school hours, they should also reconsider their policies around in-class computers, which can be as problematic as phones.