The results are in: Chromebooks cannot replace actual classroom instruction. After spending more than $30 billion collectively on laptops and tablets in schools, our American kids are doing worse than ever before. In fact, they're the first generation to do worse than their parents.
The issue here is that humans learn better with the analog tools and human congnition is strengthened by lessening distractions, not elevating them. Testimony before the Senate earlier this year from neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath confirms that these concerns are not just limited to students and their outcomes, but will have serious consequences for the nation.
There are Chromebooks in school where there should just be books. Instead of packing up their textbooks for school, kids lug laptops and chargers. When they're given assignments, they're often through these online portals like IXL and other nonsense that don't teach kids how to be anything but good button pushers. Horvath noted that in his testimony.
Written Testimony from Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MEd, Neuroscientist and Educator, Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
This demise in learning will diminish the capability of our future leaders in politics, arts, letters, and the corporate sphere. Our children will be more susceptible to indoctrination if they can't think for themselves. Critical thinking is a learned skill, not one that just happens, and it comes from focussed work, reading deeply, and actual concentration.
We already have teachers who think their job is to teach students what to think, not how to think, who show bias in their lessons. We've seen teachers and administrators create anti-ICE protests in which students stage walk-outs, though it's unlikely they know the facts of immigration law and border security at all. Teachers unions advocate for their progressive causes but not for students.
It's been a disaster. Everyone knows it's been a disaster. But the tech keeps being pushed anyway. In fact, Google is one of the pushers. During Covid the company donated massive numbers of Chromebooks to schools. More were donated to accommodate remote learning during the California wildfires. Once the devices were in schools, curriculum shifted to online rather than on paper and school districts signed years-long contracts with Google for devices and services.
Testing, individualized education plan services, and regular classwork moved to devices just as education and parenting experts screamed to give the kids less screen time. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep kids off screens when their actual homework is ON SCREENS? When the books they were assigned to read are ON SCREENS?
An added difficulty is that it's hard to see what your kids are studying when there's not books, workbooks, and papers, but portals, passwords, and online folders. Syllabi are distributed electronically, papers are turned in on Google docs or through Canvas. Even communication between parents and administrators or teachers happens through portals.
Teachers don't like it, parents don't like it, students don't like it, so why is it still happening? Author Jonathan Haidt asks: "Where are the students who think they benefited from Chromebooks and iPads in school? Where are the teachers who believe that ed tech greatly improved education?" He calls for them to be ripped out of elementary schools by September, noting that it will be harder in higher grades, but still necessary.
When Covid was over and kids returned to school, they took their Chromebooks with them. So much of so-called learning and education had moved online that it was just standard operating procedure to plunk kids down in front of screens and watch their eyes flicker with blue light all day.
Author and former teacher Auron MacIntyre said the Chromebooks facilitate cheating, copy pasting, watching pornography on school time, playing video games, and watching movies when they should be working. Cyber bullying was also a bigger issue once Chromebooks came into it, meaning that kids could be getting bullied while an entire class sat silently and teachers wouldn't even know it.
His assertion was backed up by Horvath, who said "Over half of our children now use a computer at school for one to four hours each day, and a full quarter spend more than four hours on screens during a typical seven-hour school day. Unfortunately, studies suggest that less than half of this time is spent actually learning, with students off-task for up to 38 minutes of every hour when on classroom devices."
Our educational system has been hollowed out and it's not just our students who are suffering, but our nation as well. It's time to get Chromebooks out of classrooms and bring back books, paper, and actual studying.
