Technology and the age of unreason

Profit and exaggeration continue to distort too many rosy depictions of education technology. Smartphones replace pens and paper the same way looseleaf notebooks gave way to spiral notebooks. Except nobody argued that spiral notebooks were the key to winning the space race.

Several years ago, AT&T ran a commercial where a marathon spelling bee ended in a draw because no one made any mistakes. Under the slogan, “Rethink possible,” the ad declared that “the Internet makes us smarter,” inviting us to imagine how smart we’ll all be when “everyone has it.”

Here we are nearly a decade and countless iPhone iterations later. How much smarter does everybody seem to you?

Since AT&T is an Internet provider and big league technology player, recruiting more Internet users means more potential customers for AT&T. It’s hard to miss the profit motive. But words can be written just as well on paper as in liquid crystals, which is why nobody could seriously argue that the Internet will improve spelling. Or could they? While the ad’s exaggeration was part of its humor, it also distorted the truth about learning.

Profit and exaggeration continue to distort too many rosy depictions of education technology. Smartphones replace pens and paper the same way looseleaf notebooks gave way to spiral notebooks. Except nobody argued that spiral notebooks were the key to winning the space race.

Teachers dispatch students to websites and download stories onto iPods. Children as young as first grade then don headphones and listen individually, or play the “really cool” games, which “frees up” their teacher to work with reading groups. A school official explains that technology often doesn’t cost anything, which is “what’s nice about grant money.” She also observes that “kids don’t have a fear of technology, as some older people do.”

First, somebody — usually us — pays for grants, so the money isn’t free. Second, all objections to technology don’t stem from fear. Some of us just haven’t drunk as much Kool-Aid.

The same official raves that giving iThings to first graders “gets them hooked on technology.” In what other context is addiction good? Do we really want children addicted to phones, desktop screens and videogames? Do you want your children’s friends to be on Facebook or in your backyard?

Before there were stories on iPods, there were stories on CDs, tapes and records. I’ve got a recording of “Treasure Island” that’s so old, it’s pressed on shellac. Like iPods, they were fine to listen to, but they didn’t revolutionize schools or replace reading instruction.

Boosters contend that children can “practice their skills” by “reading along” as they listen to their devices. Except there’s no adult looking over their shoulder to catch their mistakes. Enthusiasts also crow that teachers can post recordings of students’ oral reading on the “class blog” so “parents can hear their child’s progress from home.” Wouldn’t it be better instead to have parents sit down with their child so they can hear their child’s progress at home.

Are we trying to make human relations worse than they already are?

One touted model eighthgrade class was “discussing the role of the traditional book in the age of the Kindle.” Except thanks to an electronic “group writing space” they weren’t talking. They were typing. To each other. In the same room.

A sage 13-year-old expressed her opinion that “books will become obsolete within a few years.” Edison said the same thing in 1913 after he invented talking movies. Another opined that online books are better “because of the trees.” Someone needs to tally the impact of “green” technology, from plastics and precious metals to satellites and the obsolete computers that wind up in landfills.

I don’t have a problem with students writing to each other or with unsupervised conversations. Those activities are called life. I do have a problem with calling unedited writing and unguided discussions education.

I have a problem with educators who think today’s students are unique because they’ve “had technology since they were born.” What generation hasn’t? The children who came of age in 1900 saw the first airplanes, radios, automobiles, telephones, light bulbs, movies and safety razors just for starters.

I have a problem with proposals that students connect online during class so they can “chime in with thoughts during a presentation.” I want my students to chime in during discussions, but we’re all live in the same room. Besides, students don’t need more distractions. And we’ve already done enough damage, in the name of selfesteem, by encouraging them to speak their minds even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I have a problem with wonders like the Automated Student Response System, a “remote control” arrangement where students take tests by pushing buttons. Boosters claim it enables teachers to identify the questions most students got wrong, replacing the old method where teachers simply noticed which questions most students got wrong as they corrected the test.

I have a problem with advocates who think photographing the board with your smartphone is the same as learning to take notes. I have a problem with critics who condemn teachers who lecture in class but tout “podcast lectures” and “flipped classrooms” where students listen online to prerecorded teachers. I have a problem with the fiction that all this hype constitutes a “new generation of learning.”

Technology has a place in education. And as we teach tomorrow’s adults there’s a place for rethinking what’s possible.

But given the folly crippling our schools, we first need to rethink what’s reasonable.

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