Janie B. Cheaney: The great screen experiment

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. When it comes to education, the delivery method of information matters. WORLD’s Janie B. Cheaney says that after several decades, the great digital school experiment may be waning.

JANIE B. CHEANEY: I hate to say I told you so . .

But I was not the only one. When school districts began purchasing laptops for all their students – and you can be sure Apple and Microsoft were right there offering sweet deals – I thought it was a bad idea. So did many others, even though the digital revolution was still relatively new and hopes for the Information Superhighway were high.

It still amazes me to have all the answers stored in a pocket device. How many arguments have you settled with a “Hey Google”? I’m old enough to remember the cumbersome databases I could only access at the library. And before that, the card catalogue! So thanks, IT: I couldn’t do my job without you.

But the developing brain of a 12-year-old is another matter. Maine was the first to adopt a statewide laptop program for 7th-graders in 2002, to be expanded over time. Fifteen years later Fortune Magazine reported that student test scores in Maine had not improved. By then school districts across the country had sunk millions into computer labs, Chromebooks, and iPads.

Now, almost a quarter-century after the experiment began, what’s the result? In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Horvath had some bad news.

HORVATH: So a sad fact our generation has to face is this: our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. Since we've been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents . . .

But, Horvath went on to say,

HORVATH: Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have, from basic attention to memory to literacy to numeracy to executive functioning to even general IQ, even though they go through more school than we did.

In a written report to the same committee Horvath clarified,

HORVATH: This is not a debate about rejecting technology. It is a question of aligning educational tools with how human learning actually works.

Exactly – but how does human learning actually work?

Every world-changing advance leads to corresponding ideas about the human mind. With the development of writing, and later printing, came philosophical speculation about the mind as a blank slate. The scientific revolution raised questions about the mind/body problem, which the industrial revolution answered by imagining the brain as a sophisticated machine. Today, our brains are seen as computers, processing information in basic binary code. So shouldn’t computer learning be compatible?

Apparently not. The mind remains a mystery, but children should be well understood by now. We know what comes naturally to them and what doesn’t, and discipline and focus do not. Once children grasp the ability to interpret symbols on a page as words, and transfer words into meaning, they can go from strength to strength – as long as they’re allowed to take their time and develop their comprehension skills without distraction. But distraction is the primary temptation of a digital screen.

Pushback may be coming. At least 35 states have signed or already enacted laws that ban the use of cell phones in class – an obvious, and overdue, first step. In Missouri, State Representative Tricia Byrnes has introduced House Bill 2230, which restricts the use of tech in the classroom through grade 5 and mandates cursive writing, with a pencil, on paper.

BYRNES: I just want people to come around the table and say, ‘hey, hold up. We all jumped on board with this, and nobody had any science. I mean, we beta tested on the kids.

Byrnes’ bill is currently in the Rules Committee and will soon head for the floor. May it pass, and others like it. This beta testing on young brains needs to end.

For WORLD, I’m Janie B. Cheaney

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