Kill the Damn Computers

I hate to say, “I told you so.”

Actually, I don’t really mind.

The recent and justifiable angst over kids and social media has deep roots. So too does the less widespread recognition that technology in schools may not be a panacea, or even a significant benefit.

A column today, April 10th, in the New York Times cited some of the evidence that the technology craze in schools has been a near bust. Duh, ya think?

Many of us saw this coming long ago. There is no good reason for having any computers, iPads or other technology in early childhood education. (There are, admittedly, some limited benefits thereafter.)

In 1999 I wrote of a grandparent who attended an admissions event at the Calhoun School, where I served as head for 19 years. Following the speechifying, he came up to me, perhaps hoping to burnish his 4 year-old grandson’s credentials, and bragged, “He already knows how to work the computer!!” Even then, before joining the grandparent ranks, I knew that bursting his bubble would be needlessly cruel. So I smiled and said, “That’s nice.”

I forgave him because he (and I) lived during and through an era when “working a computer” represented a tangible and quite complex skill. I know of what I write, as my father was a philosopher/mathematician who worked at IBM in the 1950s, ushering in the computer age. In 1956 he developed the first computing center at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland. I have memories of the UNIVAC computer filling a room. An excerpt from Wikipedia:

The UNIVAC I was too expensive for most universities, and Sperry Rand, unlike companies such as IBM, was not strong enough financially to afford to give many away. However, Sperry Rand donated UNIVAC I systems to Harvard University (1956), the University of Pennsylvania (1957), and Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio (1957). The UNIVAC I at Case was still operable in 1965 but had been supplanted by a UNIVAC 1107.

Forgiveness aside, grandpa’s comment had me thinking of how absurd he would have found bragging that a child knew how to “work” a television. (These days I find my Xfinity-powered Samsung with multiple remotes and a sound bar far more challenging than my MacBook Air!)

By 1999 that was no longer true. Then, and more so today, a reasonably bright primate could operate increasingly “user friendly” machines. But the unexamined belief that technology is really important has not faded. I invite you to search for any preschooler who doesn’t know how to “work” a computer, smartphone, or both.

I could write - have written - about the educational-technological complex that surpasses the military-industrial complex in its rapacious romp through American culture. But I write today to illuminate two largely unobserved dimensions of the ed tech boom.

It is almost hilariously ironic that most of the early designers and promoters of technology in schools were educated before personal computing was a thing. They, like I and many of you, had no difficulty whatsoever learning to “work”a computer when doing so was useful, necessary or profitable. I’ve previously noted - with slight shame - that there are more Apple devices than apples in my house. I would be no more adept had my kindergarten class been equipped with iPads instead of napping pads. In fact I think I could prove, should I care to expend the effort, that the ease with which I and others adapted is due in large part to the fact that we did not have technology in our early years.

There is abundant evidence of harm done by excessive screen time. The damage is cognitive and emotional, apparent in the isolation, depression and addiction revealed in recent years. The addiction is no less intentional than the marketing of vaping and various tobacco products to young folks. But unlike those addictions, we are still being sold the bill of goods that technology is really a good thing overall and that we should just manage it more carefully. Just half a pack a day, kids.

Those are what I refer to as the “acts of commission” in the manipulative ed tech takeover of schools. The greater damage is found in the “acts of omission.”

This week and next my grandchildren are sitting at computer screens taking the tests known as Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS). My earnest 3rd grade grandson reported that he was getting good sleep, taking a vitamin and having eggs for breakfast to be optimally prepared. An utterly useless enterprise during a stretch of lovely spring weather when nearly anything else, including the daydreaming that occupied my spring school days, would be a better use of time. But you know . . . it’s the data and metrics.

Virtual reality is not reality. The digital representation of life is not life. Children are organic creatures. Humans, especially small ones, learn through touch, sound, sight, movement, smell and constant interaction with their physical world. They should be playing, taking risks, making up fabulous stories, and learning to navigate their world and their relationships. They should paint, whistle and run. The more time they spend with technology, the less time they spend playing and discovering. It really is that simple.

But on this lovely spring day they’ll be glued to computer screens until dismissal, after which time too many of them will be glued to smartphone screens.

It’s criminal. As with most crimes, just follow the money.