Don’t teach tech in kindergarten
Forget coding, focus on broad foundation for life
President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos intend to prioritize science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education by making available $200 million in grants and recommend that coding and computer science skills be taught in K-12 schools across the nation. Though the intention to improve K-12 education is admirable, doubling down on technology in America’s kindergarten classrooms is not the answer.
As a lifelong educator now running a school in Mill Valley within the orbit of Silicon Valley, and a parent who writes regularly about education, we have daily insight into what tomorrow’s leaders need in order to walk confidently into the future — and it’s not the development of skills like coding.
All across the country, experienced educators will tell you that putting more digital devices into the hands of young, impressionable children won’t take them where we want them to go. Rather, it will leave students adrift in a sea of obsolescence.
A quick glimpse at a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which lists the fastest declining occupations for 2014 to 2024, demonstrates why pushing a narrow skill set — like computer coding — into our youngest grades is unwise. Over the past two decades, entire industries have been gutted by technological advances that were impossible to predict.
Instead of prioritizing technology first, we need to teach students how to think and adapt, how to communicate and ask questions. Childhood is a cherished, sacred time — one for sparking imagination.
Indeed, the purpose of K-12 education has expanded beyond offering just content and now entails equipping students with life skills. Elementary school is where the basic foundations of character are built, where self-control takes shape, and where students begin to perceive of themselves as part of a larger community.
Once this foundation has been established, abundant time remains for students to harness technology’s incredible power — but wisely. After all, leadership without ethics is of little ultimate use to humanity.
Ivanka Trump also weighed in on the proposed initiative, stating that “every unemployed, under-employed or discouraged American worker deserves a ladder to financial security and success.” However, this starts with creating ethical human beings, not automatons. As educators, we aren’t merely preparing America’s workforce for the unknown future, we’re preparing students to live a meaningful life in their chosen vocation that allows them to thrive — and not just financially, but holistically.
And it’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s the timing. Accelerating technology into early childhood is contrary to a growing body of research and the opposite direction we should be taking as a nation. We seek to create active participants in our democracy, not a new generation glued to their screens.
Inundating young children with technology is thrusting them toward an early adulthood plagued with disconnection, anxiety and addiction. Increasing funding for STEM education (particularly for students who come from low-income households) is a step in the right direction, if done at the appropriate time. Our youngest children have different needs — like art, music and access to time in nature. We need to fund these efforts in our schools.
Teaching students coding at age 5 is treating young children, whose brains have not fully formed, as miniature adults. Their cognitive abilities are vastly different, often more elastic and fluid than adults, but without the full ability to reason effectively. In fact, a person’s brain does not fully develop before age 21, when the prefrontal cortex can finally inhibit impulses and dictate social behavior.
The administration claims these grants, which are redirected funds from existing education initiatives, are not simply about learning to use computers, but the problemsolving skills that come with that. So, let’s talk about problem-solving skills.
A child’s ability to solve problems comes directly from creatively using materials and the flexible thinking linked to exploratory play and the arts. Children learn how to assess and address problems through the playful manipulation of their environment. Kindergarten-age children need to first experiment by solving problems happening in real life before they can begin thinking about virtual, imaginary problems to solve.
We would do well to remember what writers and philosophers for centuries have understood as integral to human development: Time spent in nature, the arts, music and relationship-based education ignites the fires of wonder, the root of all wisdom.
Of course, technology and computer science skills are important, but the great thinkers of the past didn’t possess such narrow ways of thinking. Instead, they dared to create computer science. It’s the same kind of original thinking our children will most benefit from — and it will only evolve if they first develop a holistic foundation.
Technology isn’t the antidote — not for the bold risktakers of tomorrow.
Shaheer Faltas runs the Greenwood School in Mill Valley. He has been honored by the California Assembly for pioneering cutting-edge approaches to digital media literacy and the U.S. Department of Education for leadership in environmental education. Kate Nicholson is a writer, researcher and mother of two young girls.