It seems like everyone is against devices, cell phones, and artificial intelligence being allowed in America’s classrooms. Recently, I read articles written by a journalist, parent, and teacher criticizing all three, while pleading for a “return to normalcy” when teachers were able to teach what was important without interruption.
Mary Harrington, a contributing editor at Unheard and author of multiple books, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times titled “Thinking is Becoming a Luxury Good.” Harrington writes:
“When I was a kid in the 1980s, my parents sent me to a Waldorf school in England. At the time, the school discouraged parents from allowing their kids to watch too much TV, instead telling them to emphasize reading, hands-on learning and outdoor play.”
“I chafed at the stricture then. But perhaps they were on to something. Today, I don’t watch much TV and I still read a lot. Since my school days, however, a far more insidious and enticing form of tech has taken hold: the internet, especially via smartphones. These days I know I have to put my phone in a drawer or in another room if I need to concentrate for more than a few minutes.”
“Since so-called intelligence tests were invented around a century ago, until recently, international I.Q. scores climbed steadily. But there is evidence that our ability to apply that brain power is decreasing. Adult literacy scores leveled off and began to decline across a majority of O.E.C.D. countries in the past decade, with some of the sharpest declines visible among the poorest. Kids also show declining literacy.”
“Writing in The Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch links this to the rise of a post-literate culture in which we consume most of our media through smartphones, eschewing dense text in favor of images and short-form video. Research has associated smartphone use with A.D.H.D. symptoms in adolescents, and a quarter of surveyed American adults now suspect they may have the condition. School and college teachers assign fewer full books to their students, in part because they are unable to complete them. Nearly half of Americans read zero books in 2023.”
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I don’t think I need to share more of Harrington’s article. You probably know already where her article was headed.
Gail Cornwall is a parent, and a writer, based in San Francisco. Recently, Cornwall wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled “What Many Parents Miss About the Phones-in Schools Debate.” Cornwall writes:
“Someone keeps texting me while I’m at work, even after I asked her to stop, and I can’t block her, because she’s my 16-year-old daughter. A note sent during school lunch was about music lessons; she wanted to know what I thought about her switching from bassoon to cello. Another arrived in the middle of her third class: ‘For chem I need to bring in a half of gallon of milk by Thursday.’ A few days later, she asked me to call the attendance office.”
“These messages and dozens more like them could have been avoided had my daughter chatted with a classmate or waited to talk with me later. But just as objects in motion stay in motion, kids who have a cellphone use it. And my daughter has very much had hers while in school, when she’s supposed to be focused on learning and engaging with the people around her.”
“On the other hand, I appreciate her conscientious desire to deal with things right away. I also appreciate why many parents want their kids to have a phone accessible: It can be comforting to think that kids can be reached in an emergency, and convenient to communicate on the fly when after-school plans change. On the other hand, as a former teacher and a writer steeped in the academic literature on psychology, child development, and pedagogy, I know that letting kids have phones in schools comes with many costs. They can distract students from learning, increase social anxiety and stress, and suppress opportunities for emotional and intellectual growth. They can also diminish kids’ autonomy, in effect serving as a digital umbilical cord tethering students to their parents.”
“For years, teachers were largely left to make and enforce their own device policies, and parents wishing to curtail their kids’ phone us had to fend for themselves. But public opinion and, in many states, laws have shifted. According to a recent Education Week article, 31 states and the District of Columbia require (or soon will require) a phone limit or ban in schools; an additional five states recommend that districts adopt such policies, and two others offer incentives for doing so. (Most of these limited will rightfully come with carve-outs for students with special needs who rely on apps.) That means that within the next two years, a majority of U.S. kids will be subject to some sort of phone-use restriction.”
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Finally, a word from a teacher. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a physician and a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times titled “Here’s What Happened When I Made My College Students Put Away Their Phones.” Emanuel writes:
“I’ve taught the same course to a class of undergraduate, M.B.A., and medical and nursing students every year for over a decade. While I didn’t change my lectures or teaching style, somehow the students’ evaluations of last year’s class were better than ever before:
‘This course taught me more than any course I’ve every learned at Penn…’
‘The best course I have ever taken.’
‘Amazing class!’”
“Out of all the reviews, only one was negative But the point is not to brag – I don’t think these comments reflect anything about me and my teaching ability. I’m teaching in basically the same manner I have for years.”
“So what changed? I banned all cellphones and computer-based note taking in the classroom, with the exception that students could use a device if they wrote with a stylus. Initially, my students were skeptical, if not totally opposed. But after a couple of weeks, they recognized they were better off for it – better able to absorb and retain information, and better able to enjoy their time in class.”
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“My 40 years of pedagogical intuition tell me that this change made students less distracted and more engaged. I think it made them more attentive and satisfied with the learning.”
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I know I promised not to devote column space to the cellphone (along with devices and artificial intelligence) debate, but the overwhelming barrage of media focused on outlawing the one single piece of technology that could change learning forever is astounding.
To Parent Cornwall, the constant texting from your daughter is nothing more than how she captures her thoughts and identifies priorities throughout her day. To the older generation, the world is moving too fast. To Cornwall’s daughter, the world is moving the way it should.
To Professor Emanuel, congratulations on such fine evaluations. But, do you really believe the way you transfer your knowledge and skills through lecture and discussion is the right way for everyone to learn. I was chatting with a friend of mine years ago and he called the following question: As a learner, if you had the chance to learn from 1,000 of the best teachers around the world through a smartphone, compared to learning from a set of 100 teachers hired by a school district’s human resources department, would you take it?
And finally, to Mary Harrington, the journalist – I’ve had my phone beside me while writing this column the entire morning. I’ve chatted with friends via text, looked up information via the internet, and called my wife to see if we have an iron in the house, without losing focus once on what I was writing.
It is true that adult learning leaders have not done a good job teaching media literacy to either themselves or their students. But the solution isn’t to ban technology that can change learning forever. As learning leaders, we need to be better than that.
In the early 19th century there were bands of English workers who destroyed the new machines of the Industrial Age – especially machines found in Britain’s cotton and woolen mills. They believed that destroying those machines would save their jobs. They were wrong. So wrong that today we define “Luddite” as a person opposed to new technology or ways of working.
Now who wants to be called a Luddite?
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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