There is an incredible pressure on a lot of public facing endeavors to include digital, no matter whether it makes any sense at all or not. Take education, for instance - if it weren't such an important topic, it would be almost comical to observe how our schools are trying to jump through hoops to cram more IT into the classroom. (I wish the people responsible would take a look at Scandinavia though, where they are years ahead in that respect and have already begun taking digital devices out of the classrooms again.)
But it's not about what makes sense. It's about prestige, and about the ability to tell everyone "look at us, how forward we are!". This seems very clear to me, for instance, by the fact that the year 7 comp sci classes they teach in our local high school have what on their curriculum? Yep, that's right, you guessed it: AI. Because that's apparently the absolute basic CS that every student should start with these days.
Education is only one example, of course. But it's really creeping into everything. That museums have screen everywhere is no surprise. After all, flashing screen surely release more endorphins than non-interactive physical exhibits, so if you want to attract young folks, the pressure is on.
My wife and I toured our neighborhood public elementary school a couple years ago. Almost every classroom we passed the kids were staring at their chromebooks, even in the art room—digital art, I guess [1]. In the music room the kids were sitting at rows of desks with electronic keyboards and headphones while the teacher sat at the front of the class and gave them instructions through a microphone (to be heard through the headphones, I guess).
It was incredibly depressing. We decided to send our kids elsewhere.
[1] Nothing against digital art, but I strongly feel young kids should be working with actual physical materials.
My son went to one of those chrombook-intensive public schools (though at least at the time they didn't start using them until 3rd grade; they start younger now).
Any time he had the chromebook out, he just played webgames. Not an exaggeration, he would go back on task when the teacher corrected then switch tabs the moment the teacher was not looking over his shoulder. I told the teacher to take the chromebook away if he did that and the teacher said "but then he can't do the assignment." The obvious reply was "he also can't do the assignment if he's playing games on the chromebook" but that somehow didn't compute.
We finally got him a plan under section 504 of the ADA that stated if he was off-task on the chromebook, then it must be removed. The teacher ignored this. We complained. The teacher still ignored it. We paid a lawyer to draft a scary sounding letter and the teacher finally complied. We sent his younger sibling to a private school.
I've heard parents say they "got a 504 and then had to pay a lawyer to enforce it" so many times. I just hate the idea of being forced into such an adversarial relationship with the school. In my life, any time we start talking about needing a 504 I think "we might as well just say screw it, because what good will come of this?" Like, in your story, I assume that while they complied, the way they interacted with your kid was tainted in some other from that point forward because your kid got them in trouble. Hopefully I'm wrong, but it's that kind of thing that I worry about for my own situation.
If it weren't so detrimental to his learning, we probably would have not pushed so hard. The good news is that it was his last year of primary school when this was a problem. The next year was junior high and he had 6 different teachers.
5 of these teachers had zero issues keeping him off of the device (now an iPad). The sixth was (from what we could tell) just not particularly gifted at classroom management in general. Anyway missing out on some unknown fraction of 1/6th of his education was much less of an issue than missing out on 90% of the classroom time (thankfully there were no chromebooks in PE or Music class yet; surely they'll find a way to do that too at some point).
Yup, that's the other factor; unless these computers are completely bolted down or tightly monitored at all times, kids will be doing other stuff. It's just too easy to alt-tab to something else.
And the worst part is that this isn't new. Back when I went to elementary school (early 90's) this already happened in the computer lab. A few years later my mom volunteered in the computer classes; one had internet, so naturally as soon as she turned her back there was a gaggle of kids around it to look at nudes.
But they haven't learned. And they got a bag of money post-covid to help kids catch up on missed classes, which they spent on computers and IT, and some opt-in external homework help.
Kids's attention spans (and their parents, for that matter) are all over the place, giving them any screen will just trigger their dopamine hit seeking automatisms.
I mean yes, everyone needs to learn how to use a computer - a lot of these kids didn't know what a file is - but make it focused, make it supervised, and lock these systems down.
Silly aside: "digital art" is the means by which you legally "buy" weed in DC. You pay for the "art" and they "gift" you a box of special brownies or a joint.
Whoa I had not heard this. I'm really surprised that holds up legally.
D.C. legalized recreational marijuana under local law by initiative, including, explicitly, gifting, but as I understand it requires a license to sell it, and the licensing system hasn't been set up. The buy something else and get gifted weed is a workaround for that, but it probably only works because the District government itself sees the problem as being its delays in getting the regulatory and licensing set up, not because it is necessarily actually compliant.
DC legalized in 2014, but the house republicans have added language preventing the DC government from spending any money implementing a licensing program for the last decade:
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/210566-house-gop-blocks-d...
I don’t use it so this isn’t directly relevant to me but I’d been looking forward to some Colorado-style boosts of tax revenue other than my property taxes.
Pull almost* any thread, when the question is "why haven't we made more progress", and you'll find the same answer
A lot of things like this would probably fall over in court but they’ve simply never been tested yet.
When my kid was going to start preschool, we went to see a relatively posh private school in the neighborhood. The first thing they showed was a photo of a 3-year-old kid solving a jigsaw puzzle in a big touchscreen. A jigsaw puzzle, you know, that thing where 80% of the challenge for a kid that age is physically inserting the pieces the right way. In a touchscreen! They also boasted about not having any books until age 8 or something like that, I don't remember exactly.
We left appalled. We sent him to a public school instead, where they use screens much less (although they do use them, sadly) and they have books. I don't know to what extent this is a voluntary choice or just because they have less money to buy gadgets, but the result is better anyway.
Now days is is the other way around, the expensive private schools boast no/minimal screens and the public schools have Chromebooks.
This was in Spain 6 years ago. Here, educational trends in countries like the US or Northern Europe tend to be copied with ~10 years delay, so we are still in the "boasting about screens" phase, although awareness is building up among parents so I think they already boast less. I expect what you describe to become the norm in a few more years.
This is definitely true in SF.
Preschools definitely brag about having no toys with electronics and the posher the elementary school, the less screen time they have.
Why can't the public schools ditch the Chromebooks? They cost money, parents hate them, what's the point?
teachers love them
Really?
At best, it's a mixed bag.
The real answer is the same reason younger generations grew up learning how to use excel and word and windows, a rich company found yet another way to acclimate users to their ecosystem and bypass all those pesky regulations around tech and kids[1]. They give out dirt cheap tech to schools to get buy in, they get data, users, (mostly for life, how many non stem people do you all know who explore things like the software landscape?), in short, like everything else, money is the answer. they get marketshare. Schools get to boast about their modernity. only ones losing are us 99%'rs.
[1] https://youtu.be/N3zU7sV4bJE
No books before age 8 sounds like waldorf. They have this weird crazy belief that books shouldn't be introduced before the first adult teeth come out but at least they usually also shun digital in favor of more physical activities.
When we visited schools, we were also very surprised at how many schools encourage screen time. One of the most reputed school near us require each child to have an ipad at 6 years old. I'm completely against that. I see no value in introducing an addictive locked down device this early on. Instead, we chose a Montessori school that forbids electronic devices on campus except for the computing room where primary school children can go with a clear objective in mind (research, robotics project).
But, it was really surprising to me that that school is the exception and most highly ranked school have significantly more exposure to screens even at a very young age
Once saw a promotional tablet from a book company, aimed at getting librarians to appreciate electronic books. The featured one for toddlers? Pat the Bunny, complete with pages that "flapped" when you "turned" them, furry-looking texture on one page that "rustled" when you "touched" it, and a web-cam image where the mirror should be. We thought that… kind of… missed the point of Pat the Bunny. No problem with digital books in general. Just not… that one.
I wonder if there would be a market for schools or daycares offering "pre-digital" style classrooms with emphasis on books, blocks, puzzles, art, outdoor time, and policies to limit phones/screens.
On the other hand, these kids will eventually end up in a world saturated with displays and maybe even AR, so there's some argument for getting them involved with digital stuff at some point.
> so there's some argument for getting them involved with digital stuff at some point
And that's how the argument usually goes, but I don't buy it: every one of us who attended schools without devices learned to pick up that skill some other way. And usually without any problems.
In my opinion, the trade-off swings hard into the wrong direction: there's much more downsides to using devices in the classroom than upsides for the most part.
> every one of us who attended schools without devices learned to pick up that skill some other way.
Everyone? You sure? That has not been my experience at all. (It's also a very bold statement on your part to be speaking for a whole generation of people.)
My experience is that people who are not absolutely raving mad about tech do not, in fact, pick up computer skills on their own. My parents have been struggling with technology their whole lives (even basic things like writing in Word, keeping an email address book or bookmarking websites). I picked up these things as a child but I was also interested in programming and networking and more complex tech things, and it was blindingly obvious to me that this is rare because there was maybe one, at most two other kids like that in my school. Nobody else in class had the faintest conception of what programming is really like.
Even today, while talking to people online as well as offline, I am constantly reminded of this. People do not pick up tech skills, period. That includes people in intellectual fields (math teachers, puzzle enthusiasts, what have you), so it's not a matter of intelligence.
Now, I want to make clear that I'm not saying people need tech skills, or that tech skills should be taught in schools, or that a lack of tech skills is somehow an indication of some sort of lack or decline. I'm actually of the opposite view: I think most things taught to children in schools are useless in later life and I think we are squandering children's talents, curiosity and creativity by trying to force, coerce and mold them. As such, I agree with the sentiment that sitting every child in front of a screen for hours every day is detrimental. I just wanted to clear up this vast misunderstanding that just because you picked up certain skills without being taught, everyone would. It does not work that way. You picked it up because you were interested and passionate about the subject. Not everyone is.
And what really is the upside - it’s all administration and tracking - not teaching.
What’s easier and cheaper than opening a book, writing with pen and paper?
I mean, that’s Montessori. Plenty of opportunities to get exposure to digital stuff outside of school.
We had the same reaction - in our case they were proudly showing off kindergarten students preparing for chrome based assessments.
We ended up going to a private school. Our thought was bad habits are hard to break.
To be fair, we had a keyboard setup like that at school in the nineties. I can’t remember using it more than a handful of times though.
For the first few years of let's-make-school-digital it was even worse, all iPads instead of chromebooks. Not even a keyboard to type on.
> the year 7 comp sci classes they teach in our local high school have what on their curriculum? Yep, that's right, you guessed it: AI. Because that's apparently the absolute basic CS that every student should start with these days.
I think, if you went back to the origin of the term "AI" and tried to teach an introduction to the very fundamentals, this could actually be a fun and inspiring class - one that might not even need a lot of computer knowledge.
There are a number of board games with "self-playing" antagonists that are governed through clever sets of game rules.
There is also the historical predecessor of computer science, cybernetics, that dealt with self-governing analogous control systems, like thermostats.
Finally, there are the classical pathfinding algorithms (Depth-First/Breadth-First, Dijkstra, A*) which I still think are some of the most "bang for the buck" algorithms in terms of "intelligent-looking" behavior vs simplicity of the algorithm.
All that stuff could be engaging for high school students in the author's "hands-on" way.
All that of course if the "AI" class is really about giving a broad introduction to the field, and not just "we have to put ChatGPT into the curriculum somehow".
> After all, flashing screen surely release more endorphins than non-interactive physical exhibits
The irony is that this might not even be true. In the article, the author observed that the physical exhibits were much more interesting to the kids than the screens.
Another funny option could be to have the AI class be a linear algebra class.
Nothing funnier than tricking teens into liking math
Show them Red Faction (the video game) and then explain that all the destruction is calculated using binary space partitioning and that all they need for making similar games is to accurately calculate the intersection of planes, lines and points. Add a few linear forces and numerical integration and there you have your Trojan horse for getting kids hooked.
Oh, I absolutely love that you referenced that game. What a wonderful experience that was as a kid
Was that the one where you could blow up almost every wall (or at least the main type of terrain, which seemed to be some sort of dirt or rock).
No idea if the game was actually fun to play “competitively.” But as a tech demo it rocked.
It was. The campaign was good fun
...and then hit them with the "Attention is all you need" paper!
I volunteer for a historical museum about transportation (mainly steam engines/trains) I was recently approached if I could create an 'interactive video game' to use in the educational corner.
I politely refused, of course, but I did ask why we'd even want that. The reason was simple: we receive government funding to do 'educational stuff', and kids like computer games, right?
Having employees (or volunteers in our case) to educate visitors during all opening hours is a massive challenge for most museums, so an interactive screen/game sounds like the logical solution to ensure the funding is approved each year again.
I hear the same thing from other musea that we collaborate with. Reality is that these systems are broken more often than not. Typically designed on a budget by an external developer, who is no longer employed or paid to maintain it. Employees/volunteers don't understand how the system works, so the screen just stays off.
I feel like half the products the tech industry comes out with aren't really useful, but they exist because of this performative trend-following. Competitor has a mobile app, we have to have a mobile app. Harvard business review says blockchain is big, we need to have blockchain. Our CEO's investor buddy said AI is the next big thing, we need to jam AI in or product.
This has been an increasing problem. People, companies, and organizations implement things not because they make sense or benefit someone. They do it because they need to follow the trend.
That’s because the buyers are no longer connected to their own needs, and instead are easily swayed to buy trend.
Absolutely. RTO mandates. Blanket AI adoption for developers. All these asinine trends done solely to make executives feel like they are still relevant.
And it seems to be accelerating. We made a lot of stupid shit in the 2010s, but at least it had a user in mind. There seems to be this new, pure disdain coming from the top: we will invest a fortune in this thing, and anyone who doesn’t embrace our vision is a Luddite.
It will not end well.
I believe it’s rather
- schools being pressured to do “something” but being clueless about how education works - IT vendors exploiting this and happily selling them piles of digital something
The same cycle happens on political levels - “I know nothing about education, but I guess screens mean progress because everyone (= IT vendors) says so, so let’s give schools money earmarked for screens.
And of course the IT vendors happily support it by marketing and bribes.
In my high school there as a mediocre science teacher who made an effort to do all kinds of technology gimmicks: computer presentations, recording audio, getting special equipment. It felt like a massive distraction and waste of time.
This teacher won all kinds of teaching awards from district, state, etc. The administration loved him.
even teaching favors the promoters over substance.
To be devil's advocate it is really practical to develop and roll out digital experiences. You can be a lot more creative about it than the "big tablet" experience you have at McDonald's. Some friends of mine have built experiential art installations that have things like a custom coin-op video game, Pepper's Ghost style displays, a "time machine" experience using video projectors, etc.
I'd love to be able to sell location-based XR experiences to museums: like you go to the paleontology museum and put on a headset and now the museum is a mixed reality Jurassic Park. For that matter I'd love to set up a multiplayer VR park in a big clean span space. There are a lot of difficulties like the cheap headsets don't really have the right tracking capabilities for a seamless location-based experience [1] plus getting together and paying a team which can deliver that sort of thing. A museum with really robust funding could probably afford an XR experience and subsidize development that transfers to other museums but I can't see the economics working for turning an old American Eagle at the mall into a VR experience park: malls have unrealistic ideas about their spaces can earn and most of them have posts in them that player would crash into.
[1] It already knows where it is the instant you put the headset on and it doesn't have to retrain like the MQ3 would.
If our "real world" is screens, maybe. I really hate to think that this is becoming the case, but it is happening and this only hastens it.
The article was about real analogs or actual world objects. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is a fantastic example, as is the Field Museum there. Kids are full of screen time already. Is that all there is?
The Museum of Science and Industry and the Field Museum are both well-funded, so they better be held to a high standard :)
They also both host overnights - bring your sleeping bag and pajamas and spend the evening with tons of activities, sleeping among the exhibits, and a morning breakfast. Have done both with my kids :)
https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-here/events/science...
https://www.fieldmuseum.org/our-events/dozin-with-the-dinos
A significant number of people get motion sickness from VR and thus excluded. If you don't have a problem good for you, but please remember those of us excluded. Please leave some normal no electronics places for those of us who can't enjoy what you do.
Nobody is talking about replacing everything with VR, or anything even close to that.
> I wish the people responsible would take a look at Scandinavia, though, where they are years ahead in that respect and have already begun taking digital devices out of the classrooms again.
Yes, Sweden was doing so as discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42715841
Honestly, getting a class on AI and its dangers is probably a perfectly reasonable thing to have in your elementary school right now.
I don’t know what exactly they teach about AI, but trying out different AI tools could be very important, it’s a great learning tool if you want it to be. It can help students learn math, history, programming…
Indeed, but it's more like computer literacy not comp sci.
We also had a course in "computers" in high school. We had to know by heart the contents of "File" and "Edit" menus for Paint in Win3.1. Windows95 was just came out that year, so naturally the curiculum had not adapted yet. Anyway, guess how useful that was. The only one student who knew how to program got an F in the course :)
It was, of course, a way to teach nontechs how to use computers, as misguided as the material was. So, in that light, starting with AI makes sense. Would be nice to also include a bit more technical course, but apparently knowing where and when a poet was born is more important.
Usually, knowing where and when a poet or author is born does matter — it sets the cultural context for what and how the author is writing about.
> Scandinavia though, where they are years ahead in that respect and have already begun taking digital devices out of the classrooms again
While I personally suspect that social media and by extension phones are detrimental: what you're writing here is opinion, not fact.
Just like adding tech was an experiment which seems to have been accepted all over, removing the tech again is - at least to my knowledge - in experiment phase, too.
And because a real experiment would take roughly 12-20 years (students performance from start to finish, until they're gainfully employed)... Neither of these approached have really been validated. It's all speculation, because there are so many other reasons that could explain the issues we currently have in our schools
And frankly - even though I honestly believe that social media is bad for them - I sincerely think its nowhere close to being the main reason for dropping performance, inability to take responsibilities or whatever else people are saying about the current children.
> removing the tech again is - at least to my knowledge - in experiment phase, too.
Do you not consider the period prior to the tech? It was a significant amount of time.
but so much has changed since
My hole point was that you cannot isolate it to phones. Phones probably are net negative, but even if you removed them: our society has changed and wherever the removal will be positive for their development is hard to isolate, hence it's purely based on opinion
Relevant:
https://news.utexas.edu/2017/06/26/the-mere-presence-of-your...