Why Johnnie Still Can't Read
From the "He's too upset to Concentrate" dept.
The comments below were presented by the author to the Trustee/School Head Conference sponsored by the California Association of Independent Schools. Held February 5-6, 2000 at San Francisco's Argent Hotel, the conference brought together several hundred of California's most successful Independent School trustees and Heads in wide-ranging discussions of the many issues of vital importance to the state's independent schools.
The session I produced was entitled Technology: Where Do We Go From Here?
Reading the Op-Ed in the July 7 Sunday Register [Get Smartphones Out Of Schools] I was compelled to (what else?) go into the archives and dig out the notes from my now 24-year-old session on the efficacy of technology in the classroom. Thanks to the Apple ][, Commodore and Sinclair computers, bright teachers and students were already creating compelling evidence for the advantages of classroom tech. By the 1990’s though, something fundamentally changed the relationship of the computer to the classroom.
I was the Director of Technology at The Branson School located 11 miles north of San Francisco, that blazing cauldron of innovation that was beginning to make it’s presence felt far beyond the world of programmers to that of venture capitalists.
My 320-student college prep was literally one of the first high schools in the nation to have a website, the original branson.org. (seen here courtesy of the Wayback Machine) Even more important was the fact that virtually every computer on campus was networked. With the inclusion of the Ethernet port on the motherboard of each computer, we now were ushered, ready or not, into the world of Interconnected computer Networks.
With that world-changing innovation, you were no longer an isolated entity. With the connection of an ethernet cable, we were thrust into a new world of responsibilities and ethical challenges that, in my view, were not adequately dealt with in the rush to “connect everything” in those days.
By 1999 however, I had experienced virtually every digital malady that our campus social media (read: email) could visit upon us. They were variants of the same problems that now threaten the well-being of this generation of Iowa students.
The answer was obvious: eliminate anything that disturbed the time-honored practice of contemplative, reflective, rigorous classroom/homework routine. The promise of the Internet would only work if you instituted rules for its use within the school’s pre-existing standards. Standards that, of course, allowed for creative “play” and experimentation with innovations and interdisciplinary explorations.
This was the era before portable communications devices (iPhones) which could literally steal your students’ mind and attention whilst leaving their unattentive bodies still sitting in your classroom.
I remember suggesting to a former head of school that we should create a Digital Morality 101 class and was met with quizzical looks….
…Which brings us to the July 7, 2024 Sunday Register Op-Ed.
Believe me, I’ve seen the heights and the depths of people’s experiences with a connected world. In the right conditions, we as a society reap the rewards of purposeful, well-informed technology usage. In the wrong conditions…well…the Op-Ed only tells a small piece of the story.
We acknowledged at the dawn of the Internet that we were entering a world where “attention” was the new Black, to misuse an expression. Attention for you eyeballs and corporate attention to purloining your personal information were widely seen as the new frontier for Internet (or should I say dot.com) pioneers of the 90’s.
The very things that you now recognize as toxic and damaging were seen at the beginning as innovative and worthy of both enormous financial and concomitant political influence. (ahem….J.D. Vance, your table is waiting…)
If someone had told you in 1999 that an entity with access to your child could derail your childs’ academic process and indeed their mental wellbeing I don’t think you’d consciously have allowed it. But that, my friends, subscribers and readers is what has happened.
Simply because social media came to us through technology, we bypassed our ‘greater scrutiny’ filters. It is a decision the results of which we see today: kids attention derailed by an experience designed in collaboration with human behavior scientists to be addictive, clannish and often without effective moderation.
In the year 2000 as the “commercial” Internet (the dot.com) was approaching, Mine was a near-heretical position. I posited that in the not-that-distant future…
The Internet will become too polluted to use
• How to provide a high quality educational environment is the challenge on the horizon. Basically what I see is an Internet II-type initiative for secondary schools which will establish partnerships with major institutions to provide access to a dot.com-free online learning environment.
• How to leave room for research and discovery while not making our students vulnerable to the culture of retail creeping into our networks.
Reverence for Intellectual Property (Napster had just appeared)
• The creeping retail-ization of the Internet is posing two fundamental problems as we deal with young minds.
The outside world is encroaching on our class time by stealing valuable attention time with marketing schemes disguised as games designed to attract young teens. These online attractions compel teens to give out personal information about themselves and pull them into a culture of materialism at a time when they should be focused on learning.
I am seriously concerned about cheapening the work of thousands of musicians, visual artists and wordsmiths whose work is copied without permission by millions of people who routinely pirate music and other intellectual property. Our young people are being desensitized to the fact that the music and art we enjoy were produced over many years by artists who in many cases were never fairly compensated for work they contributed to our society. The ease with which music and many forms of visual art can be reproduced digitally presents an ethical question which falls directly on our shoulders as educators in the 9-12 arena.
Solution: I watched while my own children were barraged with anti-smoking and anti-alcohol message throughout the 90’s in their elementary and middle schools. By the time they were in high school, they were firmly in the non-smoking, non-drinking category. The same approach to Internet morality is now necessary in middle and certainly in high school. Just because we as educators can hide behind our fair use status, doesn’t mean we can shrink from the society-wide problem which starts with that first double-dub tape recorder we buy to make copies for our friends.
Those were my thoughts on the emerging Internet and 24 years later, what can I say? A decade ago here in Des Moines, I began a Quixote-esq campaign to disallow cellphones in the middle school where I was a teaching artist. The damage being done to the learning environment was obvious, deep and frustrating.
However, when talking to teachers and administrators who acknowledged the decline of classroom decorum, they could only default to the standard arguments about parent-student-contact concerns (while parental involvement in PTA and classroom-assistant modes was dismal.)
It is now obvious in 2024 to even the willfully blind that social media has stolen valuable attention replacing it with exploitive chaos. Kids only generally get one chance at each grade level and to waste any portion of that time with social media-laden distraction is in my mind simply unconscionable.
I was (am still) a computer-using educator and artist. But all things tech are not to be viewed with the same light, especially when evaluated within the context of enabling a full education.
We looked aside when an industry, led by Napster, appeared offering to users all the music they could consume for free…!?
Artists now face a deeply perverse situation where the alleged innovation (this time its AI) must be allowed to proliferate despite the fact that its lifeblood is supplied in large part by “co-opting” the work of others without compensation.
A fact as old as the labor/management struggles of the old World. Because all this wonderfulness came to us through a computer screen, less scrutiny was paid to what the social costs would be.
What seemed like a community has turned into an asylum
Mark Zuckerberg is now a very wealthy man whose platform has indeed changed the world in fundamental ways. Like many in the tech space, he wrapped his early pitch for FB in a new-age plea to build community and to be in touch with one another. Unfortunately for many, Zuckerberg failed to inform you that he was going to sell your data without giving you a share of the profit while at the same time allowing him to perform algo-psy-ops on your children. (oh yes..and through Cambridge Analytica eff with our election process. =-(
2020 hindsight reveals that we let the techies distort our perception of reality to their benefit and our childrens’ detriment.
To reiterate: because many saw technology in general as new magic, they failed to sufficiently review the already-apparent flaws and inherent contradictions contained within the credo of 1990’s tech. (hmmmm, you mean like “music should be free??”)
I “came of age” in the early 80’s with a 300 baud modem, a Commodore 64 and later a Macintosh. Online I discovered heretofore unseen communities accessible only through the phone/computer connection. These communities that were focused and intentional, usually with developed systems for self-regulation of members.
The WELL was the first organized social gathering space that I’d heard of. When I moved to Marin County, in 1987, my Mac and modem put me in good company with proto-tech pioneers like Howard Rhinegold, Ted Nelson, the Knoll Brothers. More about them in later posts as they, in their own ways, shaped the online experience we have today.
When I became aware of Facebook, it was clear to me that this Zuckerberg person, was up to something that I would want no part of. FB was pitched as a ‘community organizing’ tool but was really a user-information-data collection/advertising/business. How’s that going for us now?
Today I close with this: As the new school year approaches just remember that we have several thousand years of experience raising up and educating youngsters. Of course the nature of the material to be studied will be updated as new (hopefully vetted) new information comes to light.
What doesn’t change is the human capacity to learn in an atmosphere of reflection, rigor and consistency. Every time a smartphone-induced interruption fractures that flow, precious time is lost.
It was always insane to let anything interrupt our children’s learning processes. If parents, teachers, administrators and policy makers can’t work together to figure this out then the current madness will continue.
It was always an interesting factoid that the silicon valley techie geniuses didn’t let their own kids play with this stuff in school. It was traditional pedagogy all the way.
What does that tell you?
I am very interested in what you readers think about this. Like a slow-motion trainwreck, I've seen the damage build until now. Congrats to Hoover High School for at least making some steps in the right direction. Dr. Roberts, and Matthew Smith are you taking note?
So true. I worry for my grandchildren. Thank you for backing me up.