The Mantras

The mantras are the repetitive catchphrases heard in Quebec’s “debate” about “educational” screen use, or EdTech, in schools.

The mantras lead us straight into EdTech’s pockets by giving the impression that we are thinking deeply about screens in schools and moving forward in a coherent, child-centered way. Our so-called “debate” belies the reckless experiment on our children that is actually occurring.

Some parents, teachers, politicians and journalists are pro EdTech in schools. Their responses have been repeated so often that they have become mantras. I am struck by the vehemence with which people will make these flimsy arguments, a sort of religious fervour.  The mantras are often recited with a condescending smugness: “Don’t be a Luddite. Be reasonable.”

The mantras create an artificial seriousness, as if someone out there is thinking deeply and guiding our children in the right direction.  (Perhaps it is Premier Legault? Or Bill Gates? Someone? Anyone?) The mantras show up in newspaper headlines once in a while and then recede, leaving people with the sense that we as a society are taking things seriously.  This superficial debate serves to distract us from the deeper questions at hand, at thus stymies any real action. The mantras make citizens passive, even robotic at times: experts are no doubt figuring it all out, so we don’t have to think, or judge what is right in front of our eyes.

I list the mantras and respond to them. Then I address some of the issues that the mantras are masking, that we are not talking about, the questions we are not asking. Then I will get back to the main question: Why can’t we say no?  Why are we so inert, so passive? Why can’t we change course? Why do we, in Quebec schools, have to barrel ahead on a path ¹ we know is hurting our children while other countries are already shifting course? I asked teachers and the principal at my son’s school: Why the iPad? Here are the stock responses:

Mantra 1: Schools must teach children how to use technology or they will be left behind!

Have you ever seen a 2-year-old with an iPad? Children are learning how to use technology just fine. Not to mention the elderly glued to their devices as well.

When I was a child, I learned to use a Vic20 computer. Good thing I did, because they are everywhere now! When our children are older, technology will be completely different. The screens and applications they are using will be long gone.

There’s a difference between learning technology and using a gadget. The children are not learning how to build an iPad or use Excel, or develop an app. They are learning how to swipe and scroll, copy and paste, like any 2-year-old or 80-year-old consumer.

The iPad is clearly a stupid tool for research and writing. If you really want to prepare children to be researchers or leaders in technological innovation, then you should at least teach them how to type properly. But our children will have neither the ability to write cursively nor type quickly. We’ve trapped them in a sort of netherworld between analogue and virtual realms. (It really baffles me that we don’t teach them to type quickly and well.)

Mantra 2: If schools don’t teach children how to use technology, the parents will fail to do so properly.

There may be some families who do not guide their children in the use of technology, but it’s rare. However, forcing all children to spend their days on a personal screen is not the solution to this manufactured problem.

It is much simpler, safer and more educational to teach a specific class on technology use, or on how to build computers, or on how to code in a computer lab. No need for each child to be in front of a personal screen all day long to do that.

After having seen the “teaching about technology use” at my son’s school, I call bullshit on this reason for screens in class.

The reality is that rather than teaching what technology and the online world are about, the screen is reified as a sort of ubiquitous oracle of truth. The medium becomes the message. The first time my son’s class was introduced to “online research”, his teacher asked the class to write a few paragraphs on a certain subject. They were told to go to Wikipedia for the information. Not one child (nor the teacher) questioned the veracity of what they read in the Wikipedia entry. They were not taught what Wikipedia even is. The reality is that rather than teaching children about the digital world and how to understand it (a difficult yet important task, best taught in the family), the schools are teaching children to treat the screen as their master. When the children’s learning experience is framed through this ubiquitous little rectangular gadget, they learn, on an embodied level, that the screen is the portal to reality, to truth.

I think it’s too much to ask teachers to teach their subjects while also safely navigating the evolving online world with children on personal devices.

Mantra 3: Schools need to teach children how to use technology as a tool.

My son’s school prides itself on teaching children how to be “responsible” and “autonomous”.  These are worthwhile goals. However, from day one, the children must use an app called Studyo on their iPad for their class and homework agendas.  A tool is only a tool if the child has an ability or skill to extend. It’s like giving a child a robotic leg, without ever teaching them to walk on their own leg. It becomes less of a tool and more of a complete outsourcing of the skill. Children need to learn to think, organise their time, make notes of dates, ideally with a notebook and pen, before they might consider a digital tool to augment their skill or save time, etc. We are depriving children of using their brains, developing thinking and organisational skills by substituting apps for brains at this age. The children are less autonomous, less attentive, less responsible and less able to organise their time and activities, because they are deprived of the opportunity to learn to do so. They’ve outsourced their brains before they’ve even begun to develop them.

Promoting autonomy and responsibility while using EdTech is less about cultivating virtues and more about virtue-signaling.

Here is another example of the iPad not being used as a tool, but rather as a replacement for learning and reflection: Children in all grades at my son’s school must purchase and use the AntiDote application for English and French. These apps give you definitions and spelling and grammar corrections. The child never has to take the time to look something up in a dictionary, using their brain and hands, which is actually how kids learn. Glancing at a screen is not the same as taking the time to manually look something up, think, and write it down. We adults all know this. Can you remember much about what you read on the internet 5 minutes ago, this morning, last week, or last month?

The students also miss out on the opportunity to discover unexpected new words, as they sift through the pages of a dictionary. They don’t get the sense of language as a whole, the beauty of so many words, and the many worlds contained in each word.

Then there is the travesty of giving children note-taking apps before they have even learned to take notes. When you type on a screen, you tend to transcribe words from the lecture verbatim. When you write with a pen, you have to process the information and summarise as you write. Studies ² show that students using handwritten notes score much higher on conceptual understanding questions. i.e. you have to think and understand more deeply when taking handwritten notes in class. Also, we don’t need studies to know this!

Rather than a learning tool, the iPad becomes a tool of control. 

In my son’s class, he was the only one writing notes in a paper agenda. However, this was frowned upon and some of the teachers refused to verbally tell the class the dates of the exam, or what the homework was, insisting that the children go online to find out. I have been very stuck by the intensity of some teachers’ responses when one child dares to not bow down to the screen god. My 12-year-old was sent to the principal’s office twice for NOT having an unrestricted browser on his iPad. A very shaming experience for him. For context, a child in his class was caught cheating on a test. The teacher caught him but told the class she was not sending him to the principal’s office because that was a bit “extreme”.

When I told the teacher that my son would be using a book dictionary, the teacher was clearly annoyed. His response? “But a dictionary is so HEAVY to carry around.” I said that my son was an athlete and could probably handle it. Nevertheless, my son uses a paper dictionary at school and at home, so that he can take the time to actually learn and write definitions. Another teacher mocked him in class for using a dictionary during a test.  When using a book rather than a screen becomes a source of anger and distress for the adults, leading to the humiliation of the child, then the screen is not a learning tool, but a means of control. When teachers get angry at a child for NOT using the screen, pedagogy morphs into some a strange ideology. What is this ideology?

EdTEch is less a tool than a source of ever-expanding intrusion.

You have one app or platform, and then suddenly you have many. It’s addictive. That’s the whole point of the apps that we use today, unfortunately. It’s how they’re built. Each app necessitates other apps. Each app creates a problem that must be solved with, you guessed it, another app!  It’s pay day for the EdTech companies and the school administration cadre that comes along with screens, aka the Education Technology Complex, or ETC.

When children use screens at school, they must use many different apps, a hodgepodge of communication modalities, learning platforms, portals, emails, and notifications. It is not a cohesive plan founded on sound pedagogical and ethical principles. Each teacher uses the apps and modalities that are most convenient for him. The children’s capacities to think for themselves, organise in a grounded, thoughtful way are further inhibited. There is absolutely no reason for a 12-year-old to have to check countless apps to get through the day. This is fertile ground for promoting obsessive-compulsive behaviours, to say the very least.

Mantra 4: We need to teach children how to use technology safely.

Schools are so eager to offer this defense. But really, it’s an excuse for the enormous bureaucratic machine (the Education Technology Complex) that has sprouted up around screens in schools. The schools, i.e. the taxpayers and parents, pour vast amounts of money into workshops and specialised staff, entire tech departments, and endless educational materials to “protect” children, to teach them about “safe” social media use and how to manage their anxiety.  There is a lot of money to be made in this field!

The Education Technology Complex conveniently fails to recognise that the educational platforms such as Studyo, Classroom, Desmos, i+Interactif, Hudl, MonClubSportif, My CECZone, are also social media. They use the same algorithmic designs to incite dopamine hits and increase user “time on screen”. These apps reduce learning to a form of passive entertainment, flatten human relationships, commodify the students, surveil and extract information to make vast profits for Silicon Valley billionaires.

We spend millions of tax dollars teaching children how to protect themselves from social media, how to manage screen use, while at the same time forcing their educations to be mediated through social media, mesmerizing the children with silly gamified exercises, putting screens in front of their faces at every opportunity.

In the name of safety, we are blindly handing children tools that are useless and unsafe in many ways and then expending so much energy running around trying to pick up the pieces of the inevitable fallout.  Can’t we just focus on learning how to read, write, and do math?

At my son’s school, there is endless blah blah blah about internet safety. I’m very struck by how practical safety is not even a consideration. For example, the children are not told to cover their cameras and turn off their microphones when not in use. Or to turn down the blue light that interferes with their circadian rhythms, and their hormonal and immune systems.

At my son’s school, the children must have unrestricted browsers in order to not inconvenience the teachers. The teacher might spontaneously choose a site for the students to open in class. If the student doesn’t have free access to any new site of the teacher’s choosing, the teacher gets upset. Giving children unrestricted browsers is serious neglect. Yes, the IT department blocks some porn sites, but when my kid started high school, the kids could watch beheadings on the news on their iPads. I showed the principal a beheading accessible on my 12-year old’s unrestricted iPad at school, but she was strangely unconcerned. Many of the children use VPNs and easily bypass the school’s on-site restrictions. In fact, it’s considered a badge of honour to get around the IT department blocks while at school.

We’re not teaching kids how to use tech safely. We are submerging kids in endless tech so that they can’t even see it, never mind reflect on safe usage.

This is not safe. It is abuse.

Mantra 5: There are apps that are really cool, like Google Earth, which we can’t get in the analogue world.

Um, Ok. Well the teacher can project their computer on a screen in front of the class if it’s so important. Done. No need for 3000 iPads.

Any parent who looks through the “Transformative!” content on their child’s iPad or Chromebook can see that it’s just a hodgepodge of exercises taken off the internet. No different than a handout. I mean, come on. Just a lot less work for the teacher!

Mantra 6: There are some cool things you can do on a screen that you can’t do with paper and pencil. You can’t manipulate cool 3D objects in math without the apps.

Again, before you do the virtual stuff, it’s important to use your brain so that you have a capacity to extend as opposed to replace. If you’re so excited about children having an iPad for math, then wait until they are 16. In Quebec schools, there is no acknowledgement of the different developmental needs of children with respect to screen use. A 12-year-old is not a 16-year-old.  The fact that there is no discussion about the different developmental needs of students at different ages in this “debate” is indicative of the lack of seriousness. Personally, I don’t think the advantages of a 3D app in math outweigh the disadvantages of screen learning for a 16-year-old either. Children’s math scores continue to plummet. ³

When I was studying psychology in university, I took statistics courses in the math department. We learned how to do the statistical tests and models by hand with a pencil, paper and calculator. Students who took statistics in the psychology department used applications to manipulate the data. When I got to grad school, I realised that the majority of doctoral students had very little understanding of the statistics that they were running in their experiments. They were good technicians, but did not understand the MEANING of the numbers, what the tests represented (models in vector space). And this lack of grappling directly with the math made it almost impossible for them to come up with good experimental design. Many grad students feel deep anxiety because they can write up fancy papers but not understand their own work on a fundamental level. It’s like moving to long division after only learning addition and subtraction with a calculator.  You would never really understand what you were doing.

An architect friend of mine told me that their recent interns cannot even sketch a 3D object on paper, which you need to be able to do on the fly in the field. They can only use software.

Of course, a computer is an excellent and necessary tool for many things. But in order to use it well, you need to have learned in a deeper way first. For most children, the app itself is a distraction from the material it is trying to teach, not a tool. My son was intrigued by the possibility of using different text colours in the class app. His teacher admonished him for focusing on fonts rather than on the subject he was writing about. We give the children shiny gizmos, designed to create compulsive behaviour, and are upset when they are distracted from the task at hand.

Mantra 7: Screens/Apps help with communication.

The screens provide ways for teachers to communicate with students and parents. However, as any parent of school age children will tell you, the technology just spirals out of control. For my high school son, the teachers communicate through multiple platforms. There is lots of replication of information. And still, (surprise!), the children couldn’t organise themselves out of a paper bag. Let the children write down things in class in their agenda for heaven’s sake. Technology just becomes more and more complicated. Having 25 apps makes life less efficient and a lot more stressful. Why are we doing this to the kids?

Posting information on a bulletin board works perfectly when the children are in the same building 5 days a week and can easily just walk by, read it, and note it down. Done.

Mantra 8: Screens are convenient for teachers.

Yes. This one’s true. It’s easier to cut and paste or download lessons from the internet than create your own. It’s easier to send out group emails to children than interact one on one.  But is this a good argument for screens in the schools? Quebec seems to think so.⁴

As a 12-year-old, my son must use countless apps and online management platforms to do basic schoolwork. Even though his classes and schedules are accessed through 3 platforms, Studyo, Classroom and the school’s Portal, individual teachers add their own protocols and apps. One teacher organises the next session by emailing his own calendar app that the child must log in to and see if it fits into his class schedule (which is clear on all of the other platforms), and then email the teacher to confirm. They can’t just plan it in person when they see each other, iPads in hand. Another teacher insists that absences be emailed to him directly, even though the parent has already notified the Portal system. Spanish class involves each child staring at their screen being taught by a “fun” app rather than a teacher. Each sports team uses its own social media platform. It is endless. And that’s the point of EdTech.

This is not to say that the teachers are not principled or well-intentioned. It’s just that they too are caught up in the rapacious EdTech machine, which requires ever-more technology to solve ever-more manufactured problems.

The people who argue most for EdTech in classrooms are those who benefit from the perpetuation of the status quo. Teachers have a stake in the Education Technology Complex. So do administrators, the ballooning tech departments, the schools funded by Silicon Valley, and the ever-growing staff to help with children’s mental health.

Is faster and more convenient better for students? ⁵ 

It’s not about the kids.

Mantra 9: Using screens instead of paper is saving the Earth.

I almost can’t bear to respond to this inane mantra. Paper is recyclable, screens aren’t. Have you ever seen a lithium mine, or the vast data storage facilities that power the internet, the endless IT departments (more machines to manage the children’s devices), the “mountains of useless digital trash”? ⁶ These machines end up in landfills, child slaves are mining rare earth minerals used by our devices, mountain ranges are being destroyed. The heat alone from these screens and data facilities is astronomical, the resources used far outweigh paper. It blows my mind that this reasoning still exists.

The same school that pride itself on saving of paper, requires the children to buy new copies of the same novels every year, rather than each grade passing them on to the following cohort, as schools have done since the invention of the printing press.

Mantra 10: So you want to take the kids back to the Stone Age? You Luddite!

This is a false choice between being left behind or being some sort of digital savant. The toddlers are tech savvy without school. But they are not thriving and will not thrive if they cannot learn, if they miss major developmental milestones, including emotional regulation, outside play and social learning. No one is saying that a digital tool cannot be useful at an age-appropriate time. But that is not the reality of what is going on. The reality is that we are passively offering up our children to a giant experiment that is making a few people incredibly wealthy and hurting our kids.

Mantra 11: But screens make learning so much more fun!

Gamifying learning is about maximizing users through dopamine hits cloaked in false promises of depth. Screens offer a mindless digital busyness, inhibit deep learning and deep reading.

Online games may be fun, but feeling anxious, having imposter syndrome, being unable to concentrate, memorize, analyze, make connections, or express yourself through writing and conversion, is decidedly NOT fun.

Dopamine hits are how EdTech makes money. The more stimulated children are, the more good feelings they get from clicking something on the screen while “learning”, the more the kids will keep “using”. Social media, video games, Internet scrolling, slot machines, EdTech, it’s all the same entertainment playbook.

When children are deprived of the screen, the game or the app, they feel anxious, bored and irritable, jonesing for their next hit. Reading a book, thinking and class discussions become much more difficult.

The business of games and gambling and porn are increasingly integrating into unified “service” platforms.⁷ The profits are growing exponentially. The dangers to our kids are only thought about after the technology or the app or the algorithm is in their hands, if at all. Our approach as a society has been to throw the kids into this ever-changing world of technology that we understand almost nothing about, and then ineffectively scramble to find “solutions” to the inevitable harms. In no other area of life do we treat our children this way. We don’t allow our children to roam free at night and then figure out ways to make that safer once we have “data”. We don’t allow our kids go to strangers’ houses and then analyse the situation later. It’s incredible how quickly we let our children out into the digital world without waiting to know more, to at least understand the impacts on adults before the children.  Why do we continue to hand over our children to strangers in Silicon Valley, even now? We used to warn children about taking candy from strangers, but now parents don’t even hesitate to accept any sweet little digital offering if it’s wrapped in enticing words like “Progress! Fun!” 

Mantra 12: The experts have it figured out and are protecting our children and we parents should not interfere.

This mantra serves to infantilise parents and silence questions.

Sorry, but no one is driving this bus except those profiting financially: the Education Technology Complex. Everyone else is winging it. 

This transition from print to screen-based learning occurred with no hesitation whatsoever. Think about it. Did you think deeply about the transition from your flip phone to your iPhone? Did you imagine the transition’s impact on your future life? Do you see children achieving more in reading, writing, speaking, and math since the advent of EdTech? Any CEGEP or university professor will tell you how depressing it is to welcome students who are unable to read, think, or write at the tertiary level.

Rather than leaving it to others, parents need to remember that strong relationships between parents and children and between parents and teachers create better learning environments.

Mantra 13: Be calm and reasonable, we can have a place for gadgets/EdTech AND analogue learning.

Why? What need are the gadgets fulfilling? Do the purported benefits outweigh the harms in any way? What exactly is the benefit of the iPad in the classroom? Who asked for 40 extra hours of screen time a week? Why be calm when our children, as a whole, are not thriving?

Mantra 14: Parents and some teachers feel uneasy about using gadgets/EdTech in schools, but what can we do? It’s out of our hands! 

Which brings us to my main question, Why can’t we say no?

Actually, it’s very, very easy to take screens out of schools. You just say no. Pull the plug on the ballooning administrative machine. Buy some textbooks, agendas, pens and paper, and voilà! you’re in business. Sweden just did it. All of the money saved on tech support, endless workshops, consultants, administrators, etc. can easily buy the textbooks. Also, textbooks can be reused year after year! What a concept!

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