This article tries to put the blame on laptops when the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class, whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class, and teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching.
Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen.
Half these issues can be solved by teaching kids how to use technology meaningfully instead of using it as a babysitter.
> the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class
I was a middle school and high school math and science teacher from 1994 through 2019. I watched the advent of internet in schools, then desktop computers in classrooms, and finally smartphones in students' hands.
I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not dealing better with society's issues. "Just teach kids how to use technology", "just ban phones", and "lock down irrelevant websites" is a pretty big ask when the entire industry is focused on getting kids to use these devices, apps, and sites as much as they possibly can.
> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen.
My kids have had Chromebooks for years at school, and their schools have had the devices pretty much fully unlocked. My eldest, who has struggled with ADHD and other mental health issues, was spending his entire day on YouTube and Discord. Accordingly, his grades were terrible. The school's IT said they don't lock it down because, more or less, "by this age, kids should be mature enough to make appropriate decisions about how to use technology." But they did concede that my son should have his account locked down.
Why on earth schools don't start from the perspective of whitelisting YouTube videos/channels, websites, etc., instead of allowing a wholly open web is mind-boggling to me.
I fully endorse making schools entirely phone-free. Get rid of Chromebooks altogether.
> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen.
Sure. Teachers would love to ban cellphones and punish kids who disobey. The problem is, the parents who sit on the school boards as trustees won't let them.
Adding parents to the school system has single-handedly destroyed the North American education system. Why is there no homework? Because parents complain that kids find it too hard or too much. Why is there no discipline? Because parents complain that discipline is making their kids miserable. Why is there so much emphasis on schools to teach practical skills? Because parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach these skills at home, where they belong.
Parents are no experts on education yet they get to decide what teachers do in the classrooms. The law of averages dictates that 50% were below average students themselves. Guess who sits on the school boards? It's not the over-achievers, those people are too busy being successful in their careers.
There's a global competition for talent and our children are falling behind. Now you know why.
>whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class
you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier.
>teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching.
before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!"
if after laptops there is a worse result then it seems to argue that laptops in the hands of bad teachers are worse than books in the hands of bad teachers, at least.
No teacher (or parent) has ever managed to lock down a computer that was in my possession to a level where I wouldn't get distracted by it. You could shut the power off, and I'd still be poking around the hardware. I spent hundreds of hours programming my calculator instead of paying attention in class. Informative? Yes. Distracting to myself and those around me? You bet.
I completely agree with your phone take. There is no level of administrative control that can remove the distraction from the device.
We have overwhelming evidence on how addictive and distracting electronic devices are and zero evidence for wide spread use of electronic devices improving educational outcomes.
The experiments have been done and the results are in and computers in education are a failed experiment.
Classroom ‚management‘ and teens can not be observed at the same time and space.
The problem is that these terns have not had meaningful interactions with technology at home where there roughly a 1:1 relationship parent:kid. Now try to get meaningfulness into kids where the ratio is 1:20+ in a classroom.
And what CC item can you point to for that. Teachers often have to write the actual thing they are teaching as a CC item on the board. Want people to teach tech, go to meetings and make them.
Completely agree. One issue that I never hear mentioned is how disconnected parents become from their child's progress when there are no more paper books. It used to be that you'd progress from start to finish of a book over a term, and a parent could, at a glance, see what you should know and what you're about to learn. Now kids don't get books (which I think would surprise many parents and non-parents alike). Parents literally don't know what their child is learning at any point in time without asking them, and that is unreliable to say the least. Computers in school was supposed to be "an experiment" but everyone has decided, without proof, that it's great and therefore more screens in schools is great. Maybe in the 80's and 90's having computer knowledge was a valid shibboleth for "being smart" but it hasn't been true for 30 years. "Computer knowledge" has displaced "knowledge" in a zero-sum fashion, and it's getting worse.
My son is in the "gifted" program at his school which means they sit him down for 3 extra hours to play the Pokemon rip-off with trivia interspersed called "Prodigy". The public school system is in an unenviable state, being the fulcrum of vast societal forces and disagreements with the highest possible stakes. The districts are terrified of parents starting litigation against the school for any reason, which is why many of them have rules against ALL teacher physical contact with students, including holding the hand of pre-K, K and first graders, including stopping fights. They're supposed to tell the child no, and in the case of fights, distance themselves and call the police. In elementary school, there are no books, no teaching of handwriting, and 30 minutes of recess a day - if they're lucky. If they misbehave, taking away recess is the teacher's recourse.
Plus of course the schools are locked down like prisons, they have "code red" shooter drills once a month, every teacher has a panic button around their neck. No-one walks or rides their bike (at least not in elementary school). All of this is new, all of it is bad, and for some reason no-one seems to notice. I think it's in part that the kids don't know any different, so for them this all seems normal. Those of us having kids recently are shocked at all the changes, shocked that they've happened so quickly, and so silently.
I don't agree with them but many people now say that in 10-20 years computers will become magical thinking machines that can do pretty nearly any cognitive task. At that point I wonder what the point of learning technology will be? Perhaps it would be best to learn about logic and how the world works so you can interact with these magical machines more effectively, and not learn much about how the machines actually work - you won't be tinkering with their insides anyway.
So yeah, if that comes to pass why not go back to paper. Have the kids study science, logic, history, etc and forget about technology, except for the few weird ones who just can't keep away from it.
All tech out is too drastic but I agree it must be severely curtailed. There need to be computer labs and an emphasis on research which shouldn’t go back to asking the librarian for printed material in a library. Research online is supercharged and should not be done away with.
Other than that though, paper textbooks, paper notes, written on premises examinations should all be bought back.
This only works if you can isolate your society from having to compete with others. Like American kids will have to compete with Chinese kids who are learning AI in middle school, and not just “I can write a prompt” AI. But then those kids are also starting to learn calculus while our middle schools claim algebra is too advanced for 8th graders. Sigh.
Bring back the indestructible Apple ][e and put let the kids program in logo (turtle graphics) for 1 or 2 hours per week max. The will not hurt them while society takes a few years to figure out how the introduction of technology in education went so catastrophically bad.
Article didn't explain why tech doesn't work in education. It's biological. We evolved to learn from and interact with other humans, preferably the same group over a long time, so we really get to understand/mirror/like/support each other. Anyone who has tried Duolingo gets this. Drop me in China with Chinese friends and I'll learn 100x faster.
> Article didn't explain why tech doesn't work in education. It's biological. We evolved to learn from and interact with other humans, preferably the same group over a long time
All of this is so far from anything evolution would have selected for that we can pick our favorite argument: 'well humans are unique in our tool use, so we should be encouraging kids to learn new tools instead of explicit teaching (like montessori)' or 'well humans never learned to read until about 100 years ago and computers can read for us so don't teach this new-fangled reading stuff'
It's not a helpful frame. The language thing is totally distinct—that really is an innate human thing among children. So again we can't make useful evolution-based claims about adult language education.
I'm not sure anybody disputes that immersive language learning is the best path to picking up a language. It just isn't very practical for most people.
Even bird watching. I try these apps and nothing sticks. Books ok. But I go for a hour walk with experts talking and I can remember the entire scene of the bird, what it was perched on, its sound, its name, its appearance, its behavior.
I’m not convinced laptops were as big an issue as intentionally sabotaging the US educational system with things like No Child Left Behind and Common Core.
Are Gen-Z folks overseas as screwed as Americans, and is there a correlation between academic performance and classroom laptops?
I don’t know anyone in my life who, given enough time, could recite entire epics like Homer’s The Odyssey the way some of the Ancient Greeks could. But I wouldn’t say modern people are cognitively “less capable” than those Ancient Greeks. Organisms adapt to their environments or perish -- the mind is no different.
Given the current technological landscape, I think we may eventually have to admit that Gen Z and the ones after have adapted to their environments, too. Maybe retaining information is simply less valuable as a skill (like memorizing entire epics) when easy access to a modern Library of Alexandria is right at our fingertips? Yes, it's painful to think about and uncomfortable on some level. It's probably like how Socrates felt about reading and writing when he described it as, "an elixir not of memory, but of reminding" and that reliance on it will "produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it."
Though, one caveat that is important to mention is that education is not valued on a mass cultural level in this country, comparatively speaking. But that is a discussion for a different time.
I guess my buddies using laptops in electrical engineering 10 years ago also got dumber? Ought to have done programming and CAD with pen and paper.
I wish I had a laptop earlier - or even better, a tablet with a good pen and attachable keyboard. I’m struggling to think of a disadvantage vs dead tree [note]books. Doodle right on the pdf textbook, dump things to remember into some flashcards app, have notes as searchable files / the ability to share them with everybody, or just a calendar of what’s happening when so you’re not surprised by a test that was announced when you blew off school for a day to do stupid teenager things.
The only actual issue is that computers are excellent slaves but terrible masters, and it’s a lot easier to get distracted by doom or tiktok when you got a computer you’re actively using. Yet surely this is solvable? Given how annoyingly locked down the average company-given dev machine is, surely it’s possible to restrict it for students during school time? It should certainly be much easier than to control private smartphones.
When I first started learning C in uni many years ago, we were forced to use vi and command line, despite there being functional IDEs.
The argument then was IDEs cause cognitive offloading and you don't actually learn to the fullest extent. By forcing us to do everything manually helped us understand how the compiler works, how to debug errors, etc.
This is what current systems are doing. There is a good article that explains it much better
I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that the media/content is very visually biased these days, so when our children are exposed to it, they don't use the same parts of the brain that their parents used to use when reading and handwriting text. Visual content is more emotional than written content and doesn't process the same in the brain. If they would still keep laptops but bias it towards text content and still require handwriting and deliberate processes. Maybe it would help a bit. Throwing out technology is not an answer in an advancing world. Smells like "a handmaid's tale" to me.
The issue isn't the laptops, but the proprietary software and the fact that teachers don't know how to use even a desktop on average, so they're even less capable of teaching it.
IF you teach how to use a FLOSS desktop, you're providing what's actually needed in the modern world; if you do Big Tech a favor by using their services in schools, you get a collapse in cognitive ability, which is exactly what happened. People just need to understand this and actually have the will to understand it.
We have no way of knowing the laptops' effect on isolation, so this is just clickbait. For all we know, the generation would have been even less cognitively capable, but for the laptops...
Also we do not know if those kids are better at skills that are more relevant today -- coding, social media marketing, deciding between health insurance and bread.
they failed to account for the fact that very similar effects are happening around the world in places where no investment was made to bring laptops to schools
these kids have smartphones and tablets and they spend countless hours on them, it's not that hard to see the effect this has
It being the first time a generation scored worse surprises me because it has been pretty obvious in the UK at least that the syllabus for children has been systematically and progressively dumbed down for at least the last 30 years.
One concrete example I remember is in sixth form in the UK when I was there, in order to address poor example results in maths, they replaced Core Maths 1-6 with Pure Maths 1-6, the 6 modules of the latter only containing the material from the first 4 modules of the former
Just wait until we start to see the full impact of AI on learning. I suspect the results are going to be so catastrophic that there will actually be attempts to hide it.
eg. See [1] which finds:
"The report shows a rapid change over just five years. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of incoming students whose math skills were below high school level rose nearly thirtyfold and 70% of those students fell below middle school levels. This roughly translates to about one in twelve members of the freshman class."
and
"high school math grades are only very weakly linked to students’ actual math preparation."
There is simply no way you can dangle an automatic homework and assignment solver in front of kids and not absolutely destroy their motivation, desire, and ability to learn.
Totally. We can't really measure the effect on people graduating from college right now but I'm pretty sure the value of the average college education is down since the advent of AI due to mass cheating and professors having to tailor their classes away from things AI can take advantage of. The students who love to learn will still be doing just fine, but the others - I doubt it.
I have a 17 year old High School Junior, so I'm in the depths of the modern education system. Plus I had a brother that was a Professor of Education Technology. Plus, shocking on HN, I'm deep in tech myself.
I have mixed feelings on all this. The education system largely seems a bit better than when I was in school, however the impetus to learn has to be entirely provided by the parent (or innately by the rare student). Socially, it is a big problem because of phones, kids don't interact face-to-face nearly as much, as they can easily escape into the phone world.
But laptops? They seem fine, largely a positive, probably worth the cost? I'm undoubtedly far more aware of what and how my son does in school than my parents were. Teachers seem to use whatever works best, and there are lazy teacher and great teachers. The great ones use tech to great effect. One of my son's worst teachers didn't let them use laptops and did everything with paper, and she was terrible. Tech isn't a magic cure, but neither is paper!
I know my son is a better thinker, more informed, knows much more about life, history and science then I did at his age. If he wants to know something he can dig into it and learn what he wants. I had to bike up to the library and pray they had a decent book on the subject (they rarely did).
All that being said, AI is a big threat, but again, it will be a big differentiator. Those that want to learn we'll accelerate away from those that don't.
In many ways I feel like my son is on the proverbial last chopper out of 'Nam, when it comes to the public school system.
Of course, it also feels like going from the frying pan into the fire with the state of the world, but that's another topic.
By the time I was in high school, we had laptop carts that were rolled out for a few classes (as in a handful of times per year). This was 2004+. We also had computer labs since elementary school. Iirc laptops were used when labs were booked up.
I recall the experience being distracting. Computers are more fun than classes. No matter how much you lock down the machine, a kid will figure a way to make it more interesting than class. Computers can do so much. Children are curious.
I remember sneaking in flash games, ms paint/kidpix, browsing the web and whatever.
Anecdotal.. but i certainly wasn’t the only kid fooling around.
I don’t know what the “right amount” is, but I turned out ok. Though the iPhone was introduced after I graduated high school
I went to schools that had the latest tech for computer labs. Apple Macintosh computers…the colorful ones. Anyway, we had the latest but I did not learn what I wanted to; which was how a computer works. Instead class was just about browsing within the walled garden of the operating system and making videos and typing.
Just because one has the latest tech dos not mean they’ll learn. I learned more on my own with used computers then I did in school. I was able to break things and fix them.
Laptops also didn’t integrate special ed in mainstream classrooms. While it’s the right thing to do for other reasons, the net effect hasn’t been to make all kids experiences or learning better.
[+] [-] telman17|12 days ago|reply
Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen.
Half these issues can be solved by teaching kids how to use technology meaningfully instead of using it as a babysitter.
[+] [-] japhyr|12 days ago|reply
I was a middle school and high school math and science teacher from 1994 through 2019. I watched the advent of internet in schools, then desktop computers in classrooms, and finally smartphones in students' hands.
I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not dealing better with society's issues. "Just teach kids how to use technology", "just ban phones", and "lock down irrelevant websites" is a pretty big ask when the entire industry is focused on getting kids to use these devices, apps, and sites as much as they possibly can.
[+] [-] mynameisash|12 days ago|reply
My kids have had Chromebooks for years at school, and their schools have had the devices pretty much fully unlocked. My eldest, who has struggled with ADHD and other mental health issues, was spending his entire day on YouTube and Discord. Accordingly, his grades were terrible. The school's IT said they don't lock it down because, more or less, "by this age, kids should be mature enough to make appropriate decisions about how to use technology." But they did concede that my son should have his account locked down.
Why on earth schools don't start from the perspective of whitelisting YouTube videos/channels, websites, etc., instead of allowing a wholly open web is mind-boggling to me.
I fully endorse making schools entirely phone-free. Get rid of Chromebooks altogether.
[+] [-] glitchc|12 days ago|reply
Sure. Teachers would love to ban cellphones and punish kids who disobey. The problem is, the parents who sit on the school boards as trustees won't let them.
Adding parents to the school system has single-handedly destroyed the North American education system. Why is there no homework? Because parents complain that kids find it too hard or too much. Why is there no discipline? Because parents complain that discipline is making their kids miserable. Why is there so much emphasis on schools to teach practical skills? Because parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach these skills at home, where they belong.
Parents are no experts on education yet they get to decide what teachers do in the classrooms. The law of averages dictates that 50% were below average students themselves. Guess who sits on the school boards? It's not the over-achievers, those people are too busy being successful in their careers.
There's a global competition for talent and our children are falling behind. Now you know why.
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|12 days ago|reply
you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier.
>teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching.
before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!"
if after laptops there is a worse result then it seems to argue that laptops in the hands of bad teachers are worse than books in the hands of bad teachers, at least.
[+] [-] itishappy|12 days ago|reply
I completely agree with your phone take. There is no level of administrative control that can remove the distraction from the device.
Why would you think laptops are different?
[+] [-] jimbokun|12 days ago|reply
We have overwhelming evidence on how addictive and distracting electronic devices are and zero evidence for wide spread use of electronic devices improving educational outcomes.
The experiments have been done and the results are in and computers in education are a failed experiment.
[+] [-] heisenbit|12 days ago|reply
The problem is that these terns have not had meaningful interactions with technology at home where there roughly a 1:1 relationship parent:kid. Now try to get meaningfulness into kids where the ratio is 1:20+ in a classroom.
[+] [-] DaveCharlieLen|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] DenverR|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] pertymcpert|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 days ago|reply
There is value in being able to automate things, but there is far more value in being able to first to learn how to do stuff yourself.
[+] [-] simpaticoder|12 days ago|reply
My son is in the "gifted" program at his school which means they sit him down for 3 extra hours to play the Pokemon rip-off with trivia interspersed called "Prodigy". The public school system is in an unenviable state, being the fulcrum of vast societal forces and disagreements with the highest possible stakes. The districts are terrified of parents starting litigation against the school for any reason, which is why many of them have rules against ALL teacher physical contact with students, including holding the hand of pre-K, K and first graders, including stopping fights. They're supposed to tell the child no, and in the case of fights, distance themselves and call the police. In elementary school, there are no books, no teaching of handwriting, and 30 minutes of recess a day - if they're lucky. If they misbehave, taking away recess is the teacher's recourse.
Plus of course the schools are locked down like prisons, they have "code red" shooter drills once a month, every teacher has a panic button around their neck. No-one walks or rides their bike (at least not in elementary school). All of this is new, all of it is bad, and for some reason no-one seems to notice. I think it's in part that the kids don't know any different, so for them this all seems normal. Those of us having kids recently are shocked at all the changes, shocked that they've happened so quickly, and so silently.
[+] [-] beej71|12 days ago|reply
That'll do something, but making maximally-capable individuals probably ain't it. There's a balance to be struck here.
[+] [-] Morromist|12 days ago|reply
So yeah, if that comes to pass why not go back to paper. Have the kids study science, logic, history, etc and forget about technology, except for the few weird ones who just can't keep away from it.
[+] [-] dyauspitr|12 days ago|reply
Other than that though, paper textbooks, paper notes, written on premises examinations should all be bought back.
[+] [-] dzdt|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] N_Lens|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] gdelfino01|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] Herring|12 days ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U
[+] [-] bonsai_spool|12 days ago|reply
All of this is so far from anything evolution would have selected for that we can pick our favorite argument: 'well humans are unique in our tool use, so we should be encouraging kids to learn new tools instead of explicit teaching (like montessori)' or 'well humans never learned to read until about 100 years ago and computers can read for us so don't teach this new-fangled reading stuff'
It's not a helpful frame. The language thing is totally distinct—that really is an innate human thing among children. So again we can't make useful evolution-based claims about adult language education.
[+] [-] ghaff|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] don-bright|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] NooneAtAll3|12 days ago|reply
"we evolved to remember what happened to us, not to learn history of countries on the opposite side of the planet"
this argument doesn't work. if you want to claim harm - talk about the harm directly. stop hiding behind "evolution" and "biological"
[+] [-] csomar|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|12 days ago|reply
Are Gen-Z folks overseas as screwed as Americans, and is there a correlation between academic performance and classroom laptops?
[+] [-] hirvi74|12 days ago|reply
Given the current technological landscape, I think we may eventually have to admit that Gen Z and the ones after have adapted to their environments, too. Maybe retaining information is simply less valuable as a skill (like memorizing entire epics) when easy access to a modern Library of Alexandria is right at our fingertips? Yes, it's painful to think about and uncomfortable on some level. It's probably like how Socrates felt about reading and writing when he described it as, "an elixir not of memory, but of reminding" and that reliance on it will "produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it."
Though, one caveat that is important to mention is that education is not valued on a mass cultural level in this country, comparatively speaking. But that is a discussion for a different time.
[+] [-] revolvingthrow|12 days ago|reply
I wish I had a laptop earlier - or even better, a tablet with a good pen and attachable keyboard. I’m struggling to think of a disadvantage vs dead tree [note]books. Doodle right on the pdf textbook, dump things to remember into some flashcards app, have notes as searchable files / the ability to share them with everybody, or just a calendar of what’s happening when so you’re not surprised by a test that was announced when you blew off school for a day to do stupid teenager things.
The only actual issue is that computers are excellent slaves but terrible masters, and it’s a lot easier to get distracted by doom or tiktok when you got a computer you’re actively using. Yet surely this is solvable? Given how annoyingly locked down the average company-given dev machine is, surely it’s possible to restrict it for students during school time? It should certainly be much easier than to control private smartphones.
[+] [-] EagnaIonat|12 days ago|reply
The argument then was IDEs cause cognitive offloading and you don't actually learn to the fullest extent. By forcing us to do everything manually helped us understand how the compiler works, how to debug errors, etc.
This is what current systems are doing. There is a good article that explains it much better
https://papers.cnl.salk.edu/PDFs/Memory%20Paradox_%20Why%20O...
> Oakley, B., Johnston, M., Chen, K.-Z., Jung, E., & Sejnowski, T. (2025).
> “The Memory Paradox:
> Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI.” In The Artificial Intelligence Revolution:
> Challenges and Opportunities (Springer Nature, forthcoming).
[+] [-] dwedge|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] pertymcpert|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] srean|12 days ago|reply
Veritasium's video: "Effort is the Algorithm".
The world is full of heavy objects but how many of us are ripped ? -- Derek Muller
[+] [-] auntlydiahere|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] kkfx|12 days ago|reply
IF you teach how to use a FLOSS desktop, you're providing what's actually needed in the modern world; if you do Big Tech a favor by using their services in schools, you get a collapse in cognitive ability, which is exactly what happened. People just need to understand this and actually have the will to understand it.
[+] [-] spaqin|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] montroser|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] muyuu|12 days ago|reply
these kids have smartphones and tablets and they spend countless hours on them, it's not that hard to see the effect this has
[+] [-] carefree-bob|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] dwedge|12 days ago|reply
One concrete example I remember is in sixth form in the UK when I was there, in order to address poor example results in maths, they replaced Core Maths 1-6 with Pure Maths 1-6, the 6 modules of the latter only containing the material from the first 4 modules of the former
[+] [-] nsainsbury|12 days ago|reply
eg. See [1] which finds: "The report shows a rapid change over just five years. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of incoming students whose math skills were below high school level rose nearly thirtyfold and 70% of those students fell below middle school levels. This roughly translates to about one in twelve members of the freshman class."
and
"high school math grades are only very weakly linked to students’ actual math preparation."
There is simply no way you can dangle an automatic homework and assignment solver in front of kids and not absolutely destroy their motivation, desire, and ability to learn.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/annaesakismith/2025/12/11/uc-sa...
[+] [-] Morromist|12 days ago|reply
[+] [-] gilbetron|12 days ago|reply
I have mixed feelings on all this. The education system largely seems a bit better than when I was in school, however the impetus to learn has to be entirely provided by the parent (or innately by the rare student). Socially, it is a big problem because of phones, kids don't interact face-to-face nearly as much, as they can easily escape into the phone world.
But laptops? They seem fine, largely a positive, probably worth the cost? I'm undoubtedly far more aware of what and how my son does in school than my parents were. Teachers seem to use whatever works best, and there are lazy teacher and great teachers. The great ones use tech to great effect. One of my son's worst teachers didn't let them use laptops and did everything with paper, and she was terrible. Tech isn't a magic cure, but neither is paper!
I know my son is a better thinker, more informed, knows much more about life, history and science then I did at his age. If he wants to know something he can dig into it and learn what he wants. I had to bike up to the library and pray they had a decent book on the subject (they rarely did).
All that being said, AI is a big threat, but again, it will be a big differentiator. Those that want to learn we'll accelerate away from those that don't.
In many ways I feel like my son is on the proverbial last chopper out of 'Nam, when it comes to the public school system.
Of course, it also feels like going from the frying pan into the fire with the state of the world, but that's another topic.
[+] [-] YesBox|12 days ago|reply
I recall the experience being distracting. Computers are more fun than classes. No matter how much you lock down the machine, a kid will figure a way to make it more interesting than class. Computers can do so much. Children are curious.
I remember sneaking in flash games, ms paint/kidpix, browsing the web and whatever.
Anecdotal.. but i certainly wasn’t the only kid fooling around.
I don’t know what the “right amount” is, but I turned out ok. Though the iPhone was introduced after I graduated high school
[+] [-] throwawaypath|2 days ago|reply
[+] [-] grim_io|12 days ago|reply
Unless they are specifically needed, they should not be used for basic education.
Don't force kids to wade through a thousand layers of abstraction just to write down a word or to draw a circle.
[+] [-] slicktux|12 days ago|reply
Just because one has the latest tech dos not mean they’ll learn. I learned more on my own with used computers then I did in school. I was able to break things and fix them.
[+] [-] moi2388|12 days ago|reply
“ Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one”
The percentage of immigrants or non-native English speakers is also increasing in the US (and in the EU).
Since these groups historically also scored lower, one would expect the general scores at least partially lowered due to this.
Also add in Covid with two years of interrupted lessons and work-from-home, I wouldn’t be so quick to blame this solely on laptops.
[+] [-] bentt|12 days ago|reply
Laptops also didn’t integrate special ed in mainstream classrooms. While it’s the right thing to do for other reasons, the net effect hasn’t been to make all kids experiences or learning better.