Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is a licensed psychotherapist and a specialist on children’s screen addiction. In this article in TIME magazine, he asserts that the schools’ investment of $60 billion in new technology benefits the tech entrepreneurs, not the students. He calls it a hoax driven by the pursuit of profit.
He writes:
As the dog days of summer wane, most parents are preparing to send their kids back to school. In years past, this has meant buying notebooks and pencils, perhaps even a new backpack. But over the past decade or so, the back-to-school checklist has for many also included an array of screen devices that many parents dutifully stuff into their children’s bag.
The screen revolution has seen pedagogy undergo a seismic shift as technology now dominates the educational landscape. In almost every classroom in America today, you will find some type of screen—smartboards, Chromebooks, tablets, smartphones. From inner-city schools to those in rural and remote towns, we have accepted tech in the classroom as a necessary and beneficial evolution in education.
This is a lie.
Tech in the classroom not only leads to worse educational outcomes for kids, which I will explain shortly, it can also clinically hurt them. I’ve worked with over a thousand teens in the past 15 years and have observed that students who have been raised on a high-tech diet not only appear to struggle more with attention and focus, but also seem to suffer from an adolescent malaise that appears to be a direct byproduct of their digital immersion. Indeed, over two hundred peer-reviewed studies point to screen time correlating to increased ADHD, screen addiction, increased aggression, depression, anxiety and even psychosis.
Why have we allowed this educational “Trojan Horse” into the schools, he asks. Answer: Follow the money.
The education tech marketplace represents a $60 billion market. Everyone in the industry wants to get a piece of the market. The salmon are working overtime to convince your school and school board that you must have the latest thing.
But Dr. Kardaras says: Wait. Look at the evidence of the harm that screen addiction does to children.
Apparently, leaders of the tech industry know this. We read five years ago about the hottest school in Silicon Valley where tech entrepreneurs send their own children. It is a Waldorf school in Los Altos that does not allow children to use technology in school. Instead they learn with their all their senses and bypass technology until they leave school.
The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.
This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.
It worries me for public schools because it will be really difficult to go back to the public for funding if they jump on this bandwagon and waste thousands or millions of dollars.
They have no idea what the return on this investment will be for public schools and students – they’re not just risking public funds- they’re risking the credibility they need to function. And for what? So they can be “first”? Why is it at all important they be “first”? There’s no inherent value in “first” for a public school.
I bet that school district that bought Joel Klein’s devices aren’t celebrating that they were “first” right about now. They blew that money. Good luck getting any more from the public.
I agree 100%. Now that the flood gates are open, states with morally reprehensible policymakers are eager to off load the responsibility of educating their young people, especially their poor young people, to a corporation. This trend will continue until the voting public makes it stop. Many states are refusing to increase spending on education, and as you have mentioned, some states do not even want to acknowledge that public education exists.
It is important to note who wrote that article.
Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is an addictions specialist and Clinical Director of the Dunes, a holistic mind-body rehab center in Easthampton, N.Y.
Not a medical doctor and probably someone who diagnoses every kid he’s ever seen as either ADHD or Autistic.
The leading cause behind the rise in diagnosed ADHD cases is over-diagnosis – its like the prescription of antibiotics regardless of what a kid has
Chiara is right on–Murdoch has moved on from Ed Tech as Klein has continued to try and sell his digital snake oil.
And in response to Terrence Marselle’s comment below: Um, actually I don’t diagnose every kid with autism or ADHD. Look, I’ve taught neuropsychology on the doctoral level and had been a clinical professor at Stony Brook Medicine for almost a decade. The research is clear: hyper-stimulating screens engage the H-P-A Axis–the Hypothalmus Pituitary Adrenal Axis, otherwise known as the fight-or-flight response. These hyper-stimulated kids not only suffer from mood-dysregulation, but then also need to be continuously stimulated to stay engaged. These digitally-raised kids can’t tolerate the slower pace of the non-digital real world. They become perpetually bored and impatient. Which oftentimes looks like ADHD. Am I saying anything that anyone who works with kids and has eyes hasn’t seen first-hand?
Best,
Nicholas Kardaras, Ph.D.
Author: Glow Kids
Klein has left Edtech and now works for an online private health business called OSCAR. It seems to in some retrenchment. Just pulled out of New Jersey and Dallas-Fort Worth
http://mobihealthnews.com/content/health-insurance-startup-oscar-pulls-out-two-aca-based-markets
Terrence, while your last paragraph rings true, what’s wrong exactly with Kardaras’ credentails? What part of the article do you think is questionable?
T. M., what do you is wrong with the article, and how does the author’s credentials interfere with the believability of the statements in it. Like
over two hundred peer-reviewed studies point to screen time correlating to increased
As a teacher it is my responsibility to be aware of the harm technology does, and to protect my students from data madness driven politics. This is THE issue. Do I want a Chromebook cart in my classroom so my students can read online textbooks on screens instead of paper textbooks? No thank you. How about signing up for some computer lab time so my students can “get used to” the technology in prep for online interim and summative tests? Gee thanks, but no. Do I want a private vendor of tech centered professional development to come to my classroom and order me around? Not really, no. And now, here’s the big one: Will I smile and nod approvingly in staff meetings at the purchase and use of every edu-website that comes along or will I face reprimand and retribution from tech entranced colleagues and administrators? Thank you for asking. Please sign me up for battle.
We get all this at my school too. Administrators are such abject conformists. They are just as terrified to deviate from the norm as insecure little seventh graders, and the norms, alas, seem to be established by Silicon Valley. We pretend that evidence matters; it doesn’t. Peer-group norms are almost omnipotent.
This year our district purchased a raft of expensive new education gadgets in lieu of many better uses of money. The vendors’ trainers have attempted to brainwash us with the SAMR taxonomy. According to this scheme, probably pulled out of the butt of some well-paid Silicon Valley sycophant, there are four types of tech use in the classroom: substitution (S); augmentation (A); modification (M); and redefinition (R). What was particularly insidious about this taxonomy is that it was set up as a hierarchy: S and A were low; M and R were high. I knew how this was playing in the minds of many colleagues, especially the ambitious ones: “I WILL do R”. That is, she will radically restructure her lessons and unit so as to make them all revolve around technology use. No lowly S –e.g. Microsoft Word for paper –for her! Thus Silicon Valley masters our psyches, and keeps the profits high.
Sounds eerily familiar. My district spent well over five million dollars on a website to evaluate my performance. Using technology is one of the categories in which I am evaluated by the site. I can only be considered proficient or advanced if tech is the axis around which all instruction revolves. An advanced score is achieved by proselytizing other teachers and classes into the techno fold. A developing score is received for using tech once a week. If I do not use technology at all, my employment can be terminated.
Left Coast Teacher: What do you do for the struggling readers in your class? Do you provide them with an alternative formatted text so that they can READ their textbooks and the other printed materials? If you are not allowing for this in your classroom, you are not providing FAPE for those students in your classroom that are not reading at grade level!!! You are denying them their 504 Civil Rights protection!!!!
I use focus texts and alternative formatted texts. Why are we calling them texts, anyway? They’re called books. Books, I say! I also use discussion to let students of all levels bring their own prior knowledge and experience to the verbal and then written level. It’s the human social interaction that makes the poem, the story, the essay come alive for struggling readers. We make it memorable by creating projects in the real world. With our hands, that is.
I have, in the past, used all kinds of tech in heinous, “intervention” track classes. The tech always finds ways to bore, insult the intelligence of, and therefore frustrate the students. Sometimes the artificial intelligence gives them incorrect feedback which frustrates me. The fact is Siri doesn’t understand people. It does not. It cannot. Computers algorithms do not understand or tailor to reading levels, interests, or learning any more than they can care about people.
“Texts” is a product of the waterfall of crap that drains down from academia. When I took my first college English Lit course more than 25 years ago, one of the first things I learned was to make “the text” and “the reader” my most heavily used nouns. (If you’re writing about film or television, then it’s “the viewer.”). It’s important gear that we use to take part in the lie that we’re writing objectively as professionals, not personally as people.
How about you’all take some interest in training yourself (and the students) about the various assistive technology available for use in your schools and classrooms – especially regarding the benefits of implementing AT in your classrooms, which levels the playing field and provides them access to grade level text (and beyond) by “ear reading” versus sight reading for class. Then they would not be warehoused and stuck at a lower instructional levels for their entire time in the classrooms under SPECIAL EDUCATION, because somebody before you failed to properly instruct them using proven methodologies (such as ORTON GILLINGHAM or LINDA MOOD BELL) for instructing them appropriately so that they’d be better able to read and write at grade level.
M,
Nope.
What?
Nope. I’ve heard the sales pitch. I’ve gone to the training. I’ve implemented the tech toys. I’ve seen the results. I’ve wasted time and money. Never again.
Nope.
LeftCoastTeacher, I think that M is deliberately not understanding what we are saying. He/she seems to be trolling, possibly for an Ed tech company, and I am ignoring him/her henceforth.
I recommend you do likewise.
Zorba, I have no affiliation with any ED TECH company. What I have is an issue with supposedly credentialed professionals that are totally clueless about Dyslexia and how to remediate it or support Dyslexic and Dysgraphic students daily in their classrooms as is required under section 504 and the Office of Civil Rights!!!!
Zorba, I have no affiliation with any ED TECH company. What I have is an issue with supposedly credentialed professionals that are totally clueless about Dyslexia and how to remediate it or support Dyslexic and Dysgraphic students daily in their classrooms as is required under section 504 and the Office of Civil Rights!!!! Bookshare is FREE and does not cost a school a cent and it would provide struggling learners with an avenue to read text at grade level and with more comprehension!
It is embarrassing that professional educators do not take this much more seriously! I in 5 students statistically will have Dyslexia. It is the most common learning disability, and yet it is a hidden disability that is IGNORED routinely by teachers!
Part of it is that your teaching colleges do not teach you how to effectively remediate it, but that is no excuse for professionals who’s mission it is to educate these students, no matter what their demographics are, to learn how to effectively instruct and scaffold them so that they can close the gaps as well as work to the level of their academic potential versus the level of their learning disability, which in reality is the instructional disability of the teachers who do not have a clue as to how to remediate them.
Thank you Rage for speaking up for the children and families that struggle significantly with this hidden disability that has been ignored way too long.
Thank you Rage for “getting it” (…. as well as my frustration regarding this matter!!!)
Please, continue to speak up for those students that you think might be struggling with undiagnosed or remediated Dyslexia!!! I cannot reiterate enough how having a teacher that truly “gets it” can help change the status quo culture that ignores the struggles and amount of effort that these kids have to exert to stay afloat!
(It is a much more common disability than Autism, yet Autism is given much more attention both in & out of the classroom)
LeftCoastTeacher: So would you would deny a student the ability to use a Chromebook in your classroom if they asked to use it? What do you know about BookShare? What do you know about speech to text programs and text to speech programs? Do you support the use of these programs in your classrooms?
Ponderosa: If they are not using the internet to work on items in the classroom during school, why is it a such a strange concept that they would not think to use it at home?
Students need to be instructed in how to use the technology just as you all like to be instructed in how to use technology before you transfer that knowledge to other areas for use.
Flerp,
Where I went to school, wow, just over 25 years ago, we studied literature. I took literature classes. I do not recall taking a text class, a texting class, or a tweeting class. But then, I went to a good, public university, not ITT Tech. Sorry.
Text means anything with printed text.
You find it humorous that 1 in 5 students in your classroom cannot read printed text with proficiency and therefore would benefit from using a Chromebook in your classrooms to be able to “ear” read along with the printed text? Or to use speech to text programs to “write” their essays?
This is what is wrong with public schools.
Nobody takes these children’s struggles seriously nor does anything to help them stay afloat and close the gaps they struggle with in your classrooms.
It’s all a big joke to you all.
You may have been fortunate enough to take your English Lit classes at a university where you weren’t required to write and speak like a literary theorist, which is a good thing for you.
But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and have my alma mater insulted.
That was good. I like you, FLERP! .
M
The problem is that schools make no attempt to screen for dyslexia, dysgraphia, or dyscalculia. They have no idea which 4 or 5 kids in every elementary class could benefit from the technology. It is one of the great scandals of our time. The powers that be have chosen to do nothing.
“Bookshare” – text to voice library is available to schools for free – over 400,000 fiction and non-fiction titles in their online catalog.
RageAgainstTheTetsocracy: EXACTLY my point! As are every teacher that knows that they have a student that struggles with reading and writing. It is not rocket science! A blind person could have realized that my foster child was in need of proper instruction to remediate him.
Rage,
Please note that schools are not doing their job and are in violation of Child Find education regulations if they are not locating and identifying those students residing or attending schools in their district that are in need of Special Ed (and 504) remedial instruction, supports and services.
Please point out that this is a direct violation of federal education law if school administrators and other staff know there are students in their district or classes that might not be identified as being in need of Special Education (or 504) accommodations, supports, and services and are not assessing and identifying students that may be in need of such identification.
The level of ignorance regarding dyslexia on the part of professional educators is not just embarrassing but continues to mislabel and stigmatize otherwise intelligent children as academic failures when it is the system that has failed our children and their parents.
Teachers do not let M’s frustration cause you to dismiss her point.
Instead try to become proactive this year and push for a meaning professional development day that educates us all about this devastating learning disorder.
Try contacting your state affiliate of the grassroots parent group, “Decoding Dyslexia” for more information.
http://www.decodingdyslexia.net/
Try educating yourself if your district will not:
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8170.Best_Dyslexia_Books
M,
Your basic claim is that only a computer can remediate low reading skills — and for that matter, that a computer can teach remedial reading in the first place. You can blame teachers for learning disorders or for poverty. You just can’t support your accusations with fact. Students deserve real, personalized attention, not the pseudo attention of an artificial teacher. It can be very frustrating trying to communicate with an automated response machine, an automaton. (Hint hint.) I know I am getting frustrated.
LeftCoastTeacher:
NOPE! I never once said that a computer can remediate low reading skills.
Where did you find that I said that? Please, please, please show me where I said that a computer can remediate low reading skills?
But a computer program can in deed be used as a supplement to an effective reading program along with an Orton Gilingham or LMB program when implemented with fidelity.
I CAN & WILL BLAME TEACHERS for NOT DOING ANYTHING TO REMEDIATE THESE KIDS!!!!
AND I CAN SUPPORT MY ACCUSATIONS WITH FACTS!
AND I DO AGREE THAT “Students deserve real, personalized attention, not the pseudo attention of an artificial teacher.”
BUT IN GENERAL THEY ARE NOT RECEIVING EFFECTIVE, REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION WHILE ATTENDING SCHOOL DAY IN & DAY OUT EITHER!!!!
TOO MANY OF YOU ALL ARE ALLOWING THEM TO BE LEFT BEHIND IN YOUR CLASSROOMS and NEVER REACHING THEIR ACADEMIC POTENTIALS!!!
Heck, most of you don’t even believe in using technology in your classrooms to help them by the sounds of it!!!
Thank you Rage for speaking up about this SLD and asking your peers to do the same and to become more informed about Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia.
Zorba,
I know. Thank you. M is a “reformer”. Reformers are angry with teachers for using facts to discredit their cult. If you make a strong enough argument, they start calling you a child molester. If I had a nickel every time someone tried to say I was a bad teacher and a horrible person for not cheering charter chains, demanding data driven drivel, and caucusing for Common Core I would have enough coins to rival the wealth of Puff Daddy or Justin Beiber. But I choose not to ignore them because they don’t go away, unless someone gets down to their level and engages.
Well, LeftCoastTeacher, bless you for continuing to engage M and others who post such stuff.
M never did answer me about the students I taught, which included schizophrenic, severely autistic, severely developmentally disabled. He/she was totally fixated on dyslexia and dysgraphia. I agree that those are still not being addressed the way that they should be in very many classrooms. There are learning systems such as Orton Gillingham and others that do help for dyslexia, and that I was trained to use, and that I used. But although Orton Gillingham works well for very many students, even it does not work for all dyslexics.
But technology still has nothing to do with most of the kids I taught. It was a help for the nonverbal and others, but it had nothing to offer for my severely emotionally/behaviorally/mentally involved kids. They needed a teacher with them who knew how to deal with them.
M’s technology fixation would not have helped them at all.
Zorba,
How many students that were identified with Dyslexia or Dysgraphia were remediated by you and the school districts that you worked for?
How many closed their proficiency gaps and reached grade level proficiency?
Please enlighten me!
(I am specifically talking about children with SLD diagnosis, not ED classifications! How many of them remain warehoused in Special Education track and never reach their academic potential because they are only being expected to work to their level of disability???!!!)
Zorba,
What did you do for those students that did not show improvement with Orton Gillingham or LLI/Whole Language methodologies? Did you try any other methods? Were they then offered Linda Mood Bell or some other Speech Language pathology methodologies?
Please enlighten me as to what the scenario would be for those that did not improve using traditional or OG methods and what would be offered next.
Rage,
Once again I don’t mean to disagree with you. Learning about dyslexia is an important part of teacher training. I just disagree that only tech can help. We know better.
Speaking of getting down, I can’t resist, I have to point out this line: “Text is anything with… text.” We need to be more thoughtful with our language. LOL. OMG. ROFLMAO.
You’re such a class clown LCT.
Are you still teaching?
If so, I really hope that you start taking your job more seriously about helping students reach their academic potential and use whatever they need to work at their level of ability versus their level of DISABILITY!
I hope you do not belittle your students as you attempt to belittle others such as myself here that disagree with you and who are not afraid to point out the failures of the current system and possibly your own failures to help students who need or benefit from AT in your classroom.
Kudos on being such a professional. It shows your true colors….
The idea is to provide dyslexic learners with strategies to overcome their difficulties recognizing letters and words. Those strategies work. Tech can be used as a crutch during instruction, but not provide those strategies for later life. Using tech is like teaching to the test in a way. My students are taught research strategies, not shown a search engine. My students are taught writing strategies, not given a word processor with spellcheck. My students are taught to learn, not given a crutch to get them through the standardized test.
M, out of respect for Diane, I am playing nice. She asked me to, once. Please try to communicate your ideas without insulting me and my profession. I will return the favor by not insulting you back.
Then start getting serious about teaching literacy skills to students so they won’t need any additional technology to learn to read and stop waiting for them to fail!!!
I think M stands for Missing the Point. M, it is important that we not dismiss the research to diss the teacher. I know dissing the teacher is fun, and it makes some of your classmates admire your nonchalance, but the search for truth and the pursuit of quality require us to work together, facts in play.
LeftCoastTeacher: you all are the ones that are “missing the point”… If you bother to watch the video, you should realize that!!!!
Nope.
These tech gadgets are another form of corporate welfare. It is another way for tech companies to gain access to public funds. Nobody is even questioning the educational value of the technology. It is assumed it is needed because big money is behind the curtain pulling the strings of the right people to make it happen. ESSA is another boondoggle of corporate welfare that will create toxic public, private “partnerships” to sell products masquerading as “solutions.” Beware of “pay for success” schemes on the horizon.
YES. The fully important point: ESSA is simply a newly-named form of corporate welfare; all the “buying in” and “playing along” by those who suggest it is might be a useful law will simply bring more toxic deadness to creative learning.
This is wonderful. For the past decade, it has become more and more obvious to me that tech spending was a huge waste of money. I came into education after a career working in magnetic recording. I believed that technological tools were the tools of the future and students should use them and that technology would enhance engagement in learning.
What I have observed is that huge amounts of money are being spent on ridiculous purchases of bad software and devices such as i-pads or laptops to promote the cams like 1:1 learning and CBE. They do not help with pedagogy plus they undermine engagement.
Like any purchase, a careful cost benefit analysis needs to be made when purchasing technology for a school. In addition, care must be taken that the analysis is made by experienced educators who are not blinded by the technology hype and certainly not technology specialists (OK one on a committee of 10).
You are correct about technology being a wonderful tool. It often enhances instruction. However, in its current state and perhaps forever, it has limitations. It cannot effectively engage, build relationships and make connections the way a skilled human teacher can.
AND: When there is NO interest in paying technicians in-building as a necessary resource for keeping technology and computer labs up and running, much expensive hardware turns into nothing more than uselessly expensive hardware.
If people are interested in the private sector/public sector uncritical marketing of this, check out the US Department of Education Ed Tech division.
It is 100% cheerleading. This isn’t “science”. It’s marketing. Why the federal government feel they have to market this product is beyond me- they’re damaging their own credibility as a neutral. I no longer believe schools can rely on them for anything approaching objective analysis.
The people who sold this to Los Angeles public schools are down the road, onto exciting careers in private sector ed reform. The people who bought it are stuck with it. Let the buyer beware.
https://twitter.com/OfficeofEdTech?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
Recently students asked me how they could complete a map assignment at home if they didn’t have the desk atlases we use at school. I asked, playfully, “Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Internet” I was struck by the irony: these tech tools that for twenty years have been ballyhooed as the gateway to educational renaissance, are seen as anything BUT educational tools by my students. While it’s true that kids do use the tools for research now and then, no one told us that 98-99% of the time they’d be using them for chat, Instagram, gaming, watching porn, sexting, absorbing conspiracy theory videos, cyberbullying and other far-from-edifying uses. Um, the tech dealers left that little fact out of their PowerPoint sales pitches.
I agree. The ease of technology along with business inserting itself into education has attempted to harness educational practice into so many “data points.” Teachers are not wasting time collecting data instead of teaching. VAM is another monstrosity of the computer age!
Correction : delete-not
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Beware of the latest high-tech thing. Tech is not always the best choice.
$60 billion?
Think of what that could have paid for:
— lower class sizes
— teacher aides (some of whom are university students apprenticing to become teachers… some of them not)
— raises & benefits for teachers to attract and retain teachers
— renovations for aging school facilities
— construction of new facilities
It’s enriching the U.S. tech industry at the expense of students, both in the U.S. and in other countries.
In Australia, the principal of that country’s pre-eminent private schools, John Vallance, was way ahead of the curve on this
https://dianeravitch.net/2016/04/07/oecd-education-chief-technology-is-doing-more-harm-than-good/
————————————-
“Last week, John Vallance, the principal of one of Sydney’s most expensive private schools, Sydney Grammar, said that laptops were not necessary in class and that more traditional teaching methods were more effective.
“Schools in the Catholic sector are also moving away from laptop centred learning after an OECD report found that countries which have invested heavily in education technology have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in results for reading, mathematics or science.
“Australia has spent $2.4 billion putting laptops in the bags of as many schoolchildren as possible through the Digital Education Revolution of the Rudd and Gillard governments.
“Education is a bit like the stock market, it overshoots.” said St Paul’s Catholic College principal Mark Baker. “Computers have been oversold and there is no evidence that it improve outcomes. Giving out laptops was the educational equivalent of putting pink batts in people’s roofs”.
“Mr Baker said every school in NSW has become a Google or an Apple school. “If I put McDonald’s signs all over the school saying McDonald’s was bringing you education, there would be an outcry.”
“The Manly school has banned laptops for one day a week in an effort to get pupils out onto the sporting field and away from LCD screens. “If you say that at an education meeting you are branded as an educational dinosaur,” the principal of 17 years told Fairfax Media….
“While laptops have brought a plethora of resources to the fingertips of students, educators remain concerned about their use as tools of distraction….
A new survey of 1000 young adults has found that 39 per cent obsessively compare their life and achievements to others on social media, according to the Optus Digital Thumbprint program.
Mr Baker believes that removing the centrality of the laptop in the classroom might be the first step in getting that balance back.
“Parents expect schools to have the technology,” he said. “The issue is the appropriateness. Anyone who says we should stop using textbooks is peddling dangerous nonsense.”
“Education leaders agree: “If we want our children to be smarter than a smartphone then we have to think harder,” Mr Schleicher said.”
————————————
Andreas Schleicher, who is education director for the OECD and oversees the international assessment PISA, spoke recently in Australia, saying much the same thing:
———————-
(Schleicher) was especially concerned about the overuse of technology in schools.
“The Sydney Morning Herald reported on his comments:
“ ‘Private, Catholic and public schools are reducing their reliance on laptops and tablets following a damning international assessment and concerns over the impact of social media on learning.
“ ‘The reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today,” the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s education chief Andreas Schleicher told world leaders at a global education forum this month.”
from here:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/the-reality-is-that-technology-is-doing-more-harm-than-good-in-our-schools-says-education-chief-20160330-gnu370.html#ixzz44xdVlNHh
Here in Northern California, home to Google et. al., it feels unpatriotic to criticize tech. Australia may have less vested interest in inserting tech everywhere.
Jack, the $60 billion is what the school districts and schools have invested in the new tech gadgets, etc. And you are correct- think of what could have been done with that money that would have directly benefitted students and schools.
Now add to that all the money the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, Eli Broad, et al, have spent on, let’s face it, propaganda to push all this technology and required testing and so on.
It would amount to quite a chunk of change that also could be used as you have stated above.
Lower class size, fixing crumbling schools, teachers aides, retaining trained teachers, yes, indeed, and while we’re at it, counselors and social workers for schools, art and music and PE teachers, nurses in at least schools with at-risk students, and so on and so forth.
Early childhood education that does not involve treating pre-schoolers and children in the lower grades to act like robots. More recess. More hands-on learning for all kids, up through no including high school.
And on and on and on.
Sigh.
Good list, Zorba. It is quite striking that no superintendent or billionaire reformer ever seems to ask us teachers what we could use. Shouldn’t we be the first people to ask?
You would think so, ponderosa.
Although I mostly taught in public schools, for a few years, I taught at a private, residential school for the developmentally disabled. I was lucky that the heads of that school trusted the teachers there. Yes, we followed the students’ IEP plans, but the administration allowed us to develop new programs and do what was best to teach the students.
There is a reason why my grandsons, ages 9 and 4, love to go to Home Depot, and see all the tools and other toys of adults. I know this is anecdotal but I think it reinforces the premise of this article.
Nice!!
I tend to agree with Waldorf.
It’s digital heroin addiction—the brains of our children on tech are like the brains of those addicted to heroin or crystal meth thanks to all this over use of tech both at home and at school. The frontal cortex of the brain is damaged and executive functioning skills go down the toilet. Trying to wean kids off of this stuff gives them the same kind of withdrawals that a drug addict would have trying to kick their habit. It takes going cold turkey (even no television) for 4-6 weeks to reset the brain. Get out the Legos, Lincoln Logs, checkers, mancala, Monopoly games, read single use books…..even the Kindle should dumped. Dr. John Medina, who studies the brain at the molecular level, says much the same thing.
We’ve been duped–again–This tech fever coupled with badly written software and ineffective/inelegantly imbedded AI is bankrupting schools across the nation.
And to think the .01% want to turn teachers into “edututorists” buy flooding our schools with this stuff and sitting our students in front of screens all day long with Competency Based Education programs.
It will take a parent revolution to correct this and the charter school mess.
We are just the messengers–yet, no one listens to teachers. When will we learn not to be afraid and stand up against fads…..
Here’s a link to an article written by the same Doctor–He has coined the digital heroin reference. Much of what he has written I have summarized above.
http://nypost.com/2016/08/27/its-digital-heroin-how-screens-turn-kids-into-psychotic-junkies/
I believe that there is a moderate middle ground between technology gimmickry and Waldorf. Let’s say we’re learning how to annotate text in my literatuer class. Would I rather have a document camera that I can project a passage from the book onto a whiteboard, or would I rather have to use an overhead projector, or would I rather have to print it really big on a special kind of large paper to do the demonstration? I’d prefer the 1st choice. When I’m teaching ESL, would I rather go through elaborate gesticulations and bad drawings by me to explain the difference between a panda bear and a koala bear, or would I prefer to pull up pictures on google and project them onto the board for everyone to see? I’d prefer the latter. Google is terrific as a repository of images that help my ESL students to quickly understand new vocabulary.
Do I need Rosetta Stone? No. Do I need all students using ipads? No. Do I need a smartboard in the classroom? No. Just a computer with a projector that projects onto a whiteboard. That’s it. Maybe access once a week to a computer lab for my ESL students to do some independent listening practice from free online websites, and that’s not 100% necessary.
Would I send my kids to a Waldorf school? No.
I am very wary of the idealization of Waldorf schools in contrast to the overemphasis on technology in public schools. I am wary of the teacher preparation for Waldorf teachers that focuses primarily on Rudolf Steiner’s writings. It doesn’t seem to contain much critical analysis. I am very wary of a school system that delays learning to read. I see a lot of conformity in Waldorf’s methods. I was reading by the time I was 5, and I loved reading. Would I be a better person today if I had been knitting instead of reading during that time? I don’t think so. I also don’t think it is the school’s place to control the technology that is used at home. If I have a kid who shows a natural curiosity and interest in computers and technology at a young age, I’m going to support that. In fact, I’d help the kid to take apart a computer and then build her own working computer from scratch. (Okay, disclaimer, it wouldn’t be me doing that, but my husband would, and I would support that.)
When people talk about Waldorf or forest preschools, I think that it can be easy to fall into a mythology that low-tech is inherently better than high-tech. I also think that it can be easy to vilify all technology and to blame it for ADHD and other problems that children have. Clearly, not all kids who grow up surrounded by tech have ADHD or are unsuccessful in life or somehow damaged by “screen-time.” We need to be careful to look critically at every method of teaching and not to idealize one as if it is the “magic formula to success” — that’s what Charters do, isn’t it?
We live in a world where technology has a lot of usefulness and benefits, but we must learn how to use it well. The answer is not to ignore it entirely. We must teach children from a young age how to make good choices in using technology.
Great post, Laura. I agree that some tech is fine. What’s bad is how tech seems to paralyze educators’ critical thinking ability; it seems to cast a mesmerizing spell that leads them to equate tech use with good teaching. I’m not exaggerating here. The fact that so many of us have so easily been duped into thinking that more tech is The Way is one of the many reasons I think our profession is ailing. We ought to have a stronger “immune response” to these kinds of assaults by sales people.
I also agree with your views on Waldorf. On the one hand we have the Cult of Technology; on the other, the Cult of Rudolph Steiner, who is truly a cult leader. I’ve spent time in biodynamic circles (Steiner’s baby) and even attended a biodynamic reading group where we read Steiner’s ludicrous, woo-woo filled writings about how you need to make mini-sausages from nettles and elk bladders to channel energy from Jupiter into your compost pile. The credulity of the reading group members was frightening. And I’ve met a 19 year old who was homeschooled Waldorf style who never learned to read because her mom withheld the instruction –she never showed signs of the requisite “readiness”. The girl was quite depressed about it.
Where are the wise, gray-heads in education who ought to be steering us away from things like the Cult of Technology, the Cult of Charters, and the Cult of Rudolf Steiner? We’ve got Diane, thankfully. But there ought to be many more!
Doesn’t Waldorf, per its leader Rudolf Steiner, espouse a belief in the existence of gnomes or trolls — which Steiner called “earth spirits”?
Here’s an ATLANTIC article written a Waldorf charter school parent who confirms this to the true, and hey, she’s cool with that:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/my-waldorf-student-son-believes-in-gnomes-and-thats-fine-with-me/274521/
Parents are often fooled into believing that video games help children to focus, especially children with ADHD symptoms. This New Yorker article on Cogmed is an excellent rebuttal: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/brain-games-are-bogus
Convincing…. Thanks.
The other day in my world history class, a student had a good question of a factual nature during a discussion. It was not long until a couple of students had the answer, searching on their phones. Teachers all over are thinking of ways to enhance learning with technology. What we need is a definitive debate over whether we can actually afford training and hardware investment in place of smaller classes and more reasonable work loads.
What has generally has happened in the past is that administrators have bought into complex systems without teachers’ input, and the technology sits around unused, a monument to poor planning. Then the teachers are excoriated for not training themselves or the next wave of what is new and sexy in education pushes aside the last technology.
This is all silly. The only thing teachers do not know is what the folks who study the specifics like the Dr. Kardaras are saying. Generally, we make good decisions.
So you are al lol telling the parents who’s children you haven’t successfully instructed to become proficient grade level readers and writers and that they will be denied access to grade level content in their classrooms, which under the office of civil rights is a violation of section 504?
If a student can access grade level content using Assistive Technology and demonstrates that they can ear read with better comprehension than they sight read and can write more proficiently using assistive technology such as keyboarding or text to speech programs, that they will be denied what is needed for them to demonstrate what their academic ability is versus demonstrating what their current instructional level is???!!!
Who in the ever-living Hell is saying that students who require assistive technology would be denied such assistance?
Before I retired as a special education teacher, I had students who needed such technology to read better, to write better, and even to communicate at all, for that matter.
You are misreading this entire article and twisting it to say what it is not saying.
Any student who has an IEP or a 504 plan would, of course, still be able to use any assistive technology necessary.
And if they need such technology to access grade level, they should have, at the least, a 504 plan.
This entire article is about the majority of students and how over-use of technology might impact them.
Go take a few deep breaths, M.
Zorba, Let’s see… pretty much everyone has posted negatively about the money spent on technology in the posts above (or stated it was a waste of money or stated the school had purchased technology that you all didn’t know how to use because you were not trained, etc!)
PS – It’s pretty easy to self-train yourself’s to some extent using google and video’s that are posted on this new thing called the world wide web/internet…. PS2-Maybe you could use a ‘speech to text’ application to get some better comprehension by ear reading most of the posts above which rant against using technology in the classroom….
Maybe you could use some speech to text technology yourself, M. You are not reading what I am saying.
And I realize that not all kids who need a 504 get one, or the entirely appropriate goals, or the entirely appropriate teaching for those goals, and that is a failing of the public schools.
But I am still not seeing how shoving tons of technology into the classrooms, while at the same time schools are taking their limited budgets to remove teacher aides, counselors, special teachers, special education teachers, etc, in order to have the money to buy and install the technology, is going to help the students.
It’s all about making good, and appropriate, choices. Let me capitalize CHOICES.
Not every student does well with technology, and neither do all students do well without it. As Laura said, we need to teach the students to make appropriate choices.
And, as well, I must say, what computer program is going to be able to deal with a student who is having a melt down, a student who has become aggressive or self-abusive? Do you have an answer for this? Does technology have an answer for this?
Maybe they are having meltdowns because they can not read the material let alone comprehend it.
Maybe they are acting out because they are struggling with what you are asking them to do because they have not had proper or effective instruction provided to them foundationally, and now they are so far behind it’s not funny and they have no way to demonstrate what they do know.
And believe me, I agree that schools are wasting money on tech that they never use!!!
Or could use the tech much more effectively if anyone took the initiative to do so!
(This thing they call the internet can really provide lots of instructional videos on how to use those smart-boards that are being purchased and placed into your classrooms!)
Wrong, wrong, wrong, M.
They were having meltdowns not because they could not read or comprehend the material.
They were having meltdowns because they were schizophrenic or otherwise severely emotionally disturbed, severely autistic, severely developmentally disabled, and so on.
You have no idea what the hell you are talking about when it comes to the severely-involved special education students, and I am through answering you.
(BTW, which tech company is paying your salary?)
I’m prepared to answer just about any concern here, most of the time. But Zorba, you may have been right. (You’ve been right all through this post.) At some point, we might just have to ignore a commenter who keeps repeating instead of debating.
LeftCoastTeacher, thank you.
Technology can certainly help many children, but it will not help all of them. The commenter you are referring to seems to believe that technology is the be-all and end-all for all students.
It certainly didn’t apply to the students I used to teach (with the exception of those who were non-verbal and needed assistive technology to learn to communicate, which we provided).
But even with the severely dyslexic, technology is not always the answer. It does help some dyslexics, it does not help all. Some of them need an actual trained teacher to guide them and help them with remediation. After I retired from classroom teaching, I worked as a tutor (and education consultant) and I tutored a lot of dyslexic and dysgraphic, etc, students. Most of them would not have done well with just using assistive technology. They needed the human contact, and a teacher who could understand where they were coming from, and support them.
This is why I will no longer engage with the commenter to whom you are referring. He/she is not debating, he/she just keeps repeating the same things, over and over.
I would like to invite him/her to work in one of my former classrooms for a month or so, or to work with some of the students I tutored.
Zorba,
* With the exception of Laura who wrote:
“The answer is not to ignore it entirely. We must teach children from a young age how to make good choices in using technology.”
AT is a “good choice” and use of technology for those that struggle with learning to read and write proficiently and who have the cognitive ability to succeed at grade level.
Zorba, you know darn well that not all children get the appropriate goals in an IEP or 504!
Plus you know that many, many kids never get identified that should have been and therefore are not provided a 504 plan let alone an IEP.
And then even if they have a IEP or 504 plan, how many ever get the appropriate instruction to close the gaps they have?!?!?!
It is rare that they ever close the gaps in the public school setting, is it not?
I still believe that Waldorf is a great model, and that the forced feeding of technology on the public classroom is ubiquitous, too easily accepted, and dangerous, but participating in the comment community of this post made me think a lot on the subject and taught me to temper my views a bit. A small amount of tech is useful at the discretion of a professional teacher. Thank you for this post.
Agreed.
The important thing is to use technology, not to let it use you
Well said, Diane.