School isn’t what it used to be.

I suppose in some ways, that could be good. But in many ways, it’s not so great.

In my view, what has changed the most and had the biggest negative impact on children and learning is the insidiousness of and overreliance on digital tech.

I am sometimes surprised when I talk to parents of younger children who are (rightfully) concerned about iPad time at home and when to introduce phones or watches. But when I mention that they should also be concerned about the technology use happening in school, they are surprised. Has it really changed that much?

Yes, and how.

Here is just a smattering of examples. (As a reminder, the exceptions to all this are the students for whom technology is a tool for a diagnosed learning need. But that should be the exception, not the rule. Currently, that is not the case.)

• Kindergarten students learn “Control-Alt-Delete” so they can log into school computers to take standardized tests. 

• iPads are seen as a “teaching tool” and children as young as kindergarten take them home to work on “letters” or “numbers.”

• Screens are used as a reward for classes who behave well, or “earn” enough points to get a “device day.”

• Learning Management Systems (such as Schoology or Canvas or Seesaw) are where teachers can post assignments and handouts and links to resources. 

• Parents have access to LMS as well as grading portals, where student grades are now kept and updated, often in real time. 

• Students increasingly have their own personal devices in the classroom. This includes smartwatches, especially for the K-5 set, which are highly distracting to teachers and other students.

• Students use their personal devices to text parents from class when they are upset, get a bad grade, or have a friend conflict.

• Many schools now have “1:1 programs”-- where each student has a tablet or computer of their “own.” They are often required to take them back and forth from home to school.

• Schools do not have computer labs, library computers, or even libraries anymore. 

• Schools use YouTube for “teaching” so YouTube is rarely blocked on school devices. 

• Schools force children to sign “User Agreements” that put the onus on children when technology misuse occurs. Parents often are uninformed about what their children consent to.

• Entire curricula are 100% digital. No textbooks, no workbooks, no handouts.

• Middle schoolers read books on websites, not on paper, because it’s “easier to see student’s annotations.”

• “Our school is not equipped for paper,” one school guidance counselor told me.

• Some digital curricula have “leaderboards” that a teacher can display to show the class which students are top performers– not just in “points” earned, but in how much time is spent on an app.

• Children are given laptops or tablets for school before they are taught critical skills like typing.

• Teachers, who are understandably frustrated by the misuse of technology in the classroom, are relying now on surveillance tools (such as GoGuardian) to “monitor” student devices in real time. A teacher now has a view on her computer of all the computers being used in her classroom at one time.

• Children are accessing inappropriate content online while at school. In some worst-case scenarios, they are contacted by online predators.

• In technology, data is gold. With so many unique platforms (hundreds) used by each school, data is easily accessed, bought, and sold by third-party companies.

• Research funded by the technology industry says that digital learning tools are effective. Independently funded research says it does more harm than good. 

I know there is more. These are just a few examples off the top of my head. 

At the end of the day, it is too much. The decisions being made about education are no longer being made by educators or professionals with child development expertise. Technologists and marketers know a captive audience when they see one, and our children (and their data) are the product.

After a year of dragging a low quality laptop back and forth from school to home, complaining almost daily of intense headaches after school, and witnessing little to no benefit in the use of a computer for learning, we’ve decided this year will be different for our daughter.

Sylvie is entering 7th grade this fall and I have let the district know that she will not be using the school-issued computer and internet access for the school year. Even though I created an UnPlug EdTech toolkit for parents like me who share my concerns, I am finding myself using my own materials in our efforts!

Because currently, I have not received the answer to this simple question:

Can our daughter attend school next year, without a laptop, without accessing digital curricula, and without grades, if necessary?

It is surreal that in 2024 this is considered a question that has to get elevated to the highest levels of the district administration, but it’s where we are. 

Opting children out of the technology for school is surprisingly difficult, even though it shouldn’t be. Some time between the launch of remote learning due to the pandemic and the post-pandemic mess of reentering schools, the use of technology-based tools increased and the more schools depended on or justified one digital tool, the more they justified the use of others. 

It is truly strange to me that I am asking a school district if my child can simply come to school, sit in the classroom without a computer, and learn. Even ten years ago this question would be seen as insane. Yet it is the landscape of education today and things will not change until we push the conversation to happen. 

But the research (that is, the independently-funded research) about technology use in schools beats a steady drum that this is all “too much, too young, too fast.”

In all of this, of course, is a child, Sylvie, who will be the one dealing with the day-to-day reality of being That Kid without a laptop in the classroom. We’ve been talking about it all summer and thinking about how she can respond when her classmates ask her, “Why don’t you have a computer?”

I’m sure there will be some kids who find her uniqueness a reason to mock or tease. That would be in keeping with what we know is developmentally normal for middle schoolers, after all. And I’m fortunate that Sylvie is actually uniquely comfortable with being unique, so I am actually not as concerned about this.

What I not-so-secretly hope is that her classmates will go home and tell their parents, “Hey! Did you know I don’t have to use the school computer? There is a girl in my class who doesn’t!” and that will prompt those parents to wonder…”Is this really an option?”

In situations like this, I like to share the analogy of the First Fish, which was first shared with me by Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, when I interviewed him for my book. He described how in a school of fish, the way they know to change direction comes from one fish veering off in a new direction. But that’s not all– the whole school won’t shift until a second and third fish follow that first fish. 

Then, the whole school shifts.