George Will has written over 8,000 articles as a columnist for The Washington Post. It was actually a story about Will’s prolific opinion writing streak that led me to start A Better Path to Learning. Will was interviewed, after his 8,000th article appeared in The Post, about how he found so many topics to write about over his storied career. Will provided two answers.
First, he told the interviewer that he read five to eight newspapers every morning, and rest assured, he would find one or two stories that would raise his temperature, causing him to take to the pen.
But second, he shared that, early in his opinion-writing career, he noticed certain topics reappearing in his morning newspaper reads – war, inflation, unemployment, political disagreement. Will was faced with an essential question: do I continue to write about these reoccurring topics and run the risk of losing readers due to boring repetition, or do I cut back on these topics in the interest of offering my readers more diversity regarding what they are reading?
It’s hard not to feel Mr. Will’s dilemma when it comes to the topic of whether devices should be allowed inside classrooms, schools, and other learning environments.
On one hand, today’s education news is filled with stories about teachers, schools, and school districts banning devices in the interest of improved learning and improved mental health. ABPTL could continue to cover these stories and the overall message contained in most of them – devices are bad for kids and they should be severely restricted if not totally banned.
On the other hand, a reader can find a story on the evils of cellphones and social media during any scroll throughout the day. And those stories usually report the same news – this is bad for kids – so why continue to cover it as news? Let’s move on.
Honestly, ABPTL doesn’t really know the best way forward.
A couple days ago my wife sent me an article from The New York Times titled “What Happened When My Yale Students Gave Up Their Phones for Four Week.”
The story is written by a writer and instructor at the Yale Summer Session, and it pretty much follows the script of what is going on in most classrooms, schools, and school districts across the country:
Teacher confiscates the student’s cellphone.
Initially, the student rebels.
But then, the student(s) “see the light” about what the world offers when they don’t have their eyes planted toward a screen.
And the students learn more and feel better.
So what this story, and many like it, concludes is that this is an either/or proposition. Either you give up your cellphone and reap the benefits of improved learning and mental health. Or you don’t and you continue to suffer.
But what if the solution to cellphone and social media use isn’t built around an “either/or” proposition? What if the solution is built on a philosophy of “and”?
By “and” I mean that young learners are trained early in their learning career to decide the right time to use their cellphones for learning and leisure, while understanding when cellphones need to be put away. And experience tells me that most of these decisions are made with the support of a solid learning plan and a dedicated adult learning coach.
Balance is the answer, not banning.
And even though ABPTL would like to move on from this “to ban or not to ban” story, I’m guessing tomorrow’s news, or my wife’s next text, might include the same type of story.
I feel your pain, George. I feel your pain.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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