...spend a few bucks on fountain pens.

Now that that's been firmly established that kids spend the majority of time goofing off on their computers, will anything change?

It certainly seems as if the theoretical advantages of computers in education (interactive visualization, self-quizzing drills, instant grading) are more than outweighed by their actual disadvantages (distraction, discouraging deep thought, removing the knowledge internalization supplied by hand-writing notes), especially in a group setting. This is to say nothing of generative "AI", which will make all the old disadvantages look positively rosy by comparison

For scoring 97th and 99th percentiles on standardized tests....turns out they are just the best of a bad batch. *sigh*

These devices are designed from the ground up to hide as much as possible the inner workings of the OS, programming and all that, specially the tablets.

They're pretty much the complete opposite of what you need to have kids learn the "working around" skills you need to be actually good at computers.

A few years back every child in the public schools in our town got a Chromebook. My now 10 year old got one in 2nd grade, but in 3rd grade everyone had to hand them in again. Also, somewritten exams are without computers in high school again now. In short: computers and screens are bad for learning (in the lower classes at least).

Like how does the thought process even work for how a laptop will make a kid learn better. It's not as much weight to physically carry. That is literally the only advantage. On the other hand laptops are infinitely more distracting and cost the schools more in computer hardware and licensing costs (they can use a book for literally decades with no additional cost).

Maybe, just maybe, it isn't the device, but the testing methodology?

Standardize testing in the USA has always been total bullshit "everyone must fit this exact mold or else you're an absolute failure" mentality. Now we have a generation of people who learned different skills other than the default assumed ones, and they're viewed as failures for it.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2026/0... [nytimes.com]

Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/mississippi-schools-transformation.html

Why would they dig into computing? There is an app for everything these days.

They also got rid of all the classes that would help them, that older students had.

Typing? Gone.

How to use excel / office? Gone.

How to navigate a computer? Also gone.

It all comes down to the "Myth of the digital native" because kids grew up with tech, they were assumed to know all about it.

I'm pretty good at computers now, but I started with typing classes, with classes on programming, classes on networking, classes on navigation. My parents couldn't teach me that stuff, they didn't know anything. And I know many of my peers, despite growing up with computers, didn't know more than how to navigate to a website.

Tablets are even worse, since they lock everything down. A few hours of courses, not even a full semester worth and they'd do way better.

This all coincided with No Child Left Behind, which ruined reading education.

So the drop correlated with laptops, what else does it correlate? How about personal smart phone revolution and people (students AND teachers) getting connected to internet/social media 24/7? It also correlates with global warming. Heck, it probably correlates with US national debt rising too. Correlation does not prove causation on its own. Where is the proof that the laptops cause this drop in scores?

I mean, that is what public education aims for. The dumbing down of the future voters.

I'm wondering if it is less the computers as opposed to using the computers the right way. I remember a lot of pedagogic accessories and gadgets used over the years, be if flash cards, teaching machines, or the SRA boxes used to teach reading aptitude.

I wonder how this will be done. Most private companies are not interested in teaching; they want to sell stuff, and don't really care if it makes a better, more educated student than what was beforehand. I'd almost say this has to be an org or NGO for it to

u can't replace 100 IQ americans with 70-85 IQ foreigners and expect them to score as well. kind of insane that we're ignoring that IQ is heritable.

I saw much of this roll out first hand and predicted it wouldn't end well for most students, schools and communities. Some schools even cannibalized their own student population, teachers and finances to present a single, successful, high achieving school/program to game state reporting and lure back parents who sent their kids elsewhere.

1. The personal computer revolution of the 80s and 90s was real and a bunch of motivated individuals interested in it made a lot of cool things and a lot of money.

2. The f

Software is not up to the task of teaching, maybe AI will do this someday. Sadly, IMHO, the computer as *TOOL* for the average person never really happened because software companies did not see this as profitable path. Sure a spreadsheet can help a student in science class keep track of results, but doing so did not *really* add value to the instruction. Word processor in English class? Again, not much value except to educate the student about the software. Nowadays there is value in a cell phone as a

Children and teens don't get digitally competent by handing them electronic gadgets. They get competent by learning the difference between a value and a variable, what conditions are and what a loop is.

And covered that up buy overfunding some districts using property taxes while also ignoring the fact that modern schools do still need computers which is an entirely new expense.

One other thing we benefited from hugely was that teaching especially below grade 9 was something women would do for a little extra money. That doesn't cut it anymore because we pay people so terribly that their husband cannot be a primary breadwinner. So you can't get away with paying a teacher $16 an hour in 2025. They can't

It's the school issued device that's the problem?

It's totally not the lax standards and the meh attitude to work that's permeated down to the kids from their millenial teachers. It's definitely the gizmo, the doodad, or the distraction that done it.

I've got a first grader in a rich boston suburb school. Yesterday was a snow day because it was blizzard conditions. Today was a snow day on account of it was too fucking hard to clear the foot of snow that stopped last night by this morning apparently. Tomorrow

understanding the difference between causation and correlation, perchance? Or is that just the tossers who did this work?

if spending on laptops was the only thing they did, gen z would be... if not fine, more fine than they are. But they didn't just splurge on laptops. They fucked up the whole curriculum at once, replacing math with bullshit, english with bullshit, breaking the core of education. everyone who advocated for new ways to teach shit has turned out to be wrong, BADLY wrong. Criminal levels of arrogance and wilful blindness.

The rest of us who told them they were wrong - predictably wrong - think jail is an appr

I'm sure educators of all people were appropriately cautious in this experiment and only applied the experimental variable to a limited number of students. It would be insane and irresponsible to perform an experiment on the entire population at once, so I'm sure that's not what happened.

I'm sure our teachers are all well versed in the scientific method and experimental controls, so I'm confident that only a small number of students were impacted.

/heavysarcasm

Training one's mind and brain is hard, just as exercise and physical labour is hard.

If we have the option of some kind of labour saving device, our instinct is to take it.

It takes an uncommon degree of discipline, especially amongst children, in order not to yield to this desire for ease.

one of my issues with giving tablets and laptops to everyone is that none of the schools are actually teaching typing as a prereq. why are you giving students assignments that involve typed reports, when they were never formally taught to type? like here's a pen and a paper to write me something...but you don't know how to write...

I was involved in an European distance-education project 25 years ago. All they did was focus on tech and nothing on how to actually teach with a screen. The few people with distance education experience got tired of pointing out that this is much harder to do than regular education. And the same applies to non-remote teaching using computers.

Hence I am entirely unsurprised. Getting kids computers is 10% of what you need to do for this to work.

I'm in Ontario, Canada, but we have the same overall effect from handing out notebooks to all the students. We gave them computers, told them it should accelerate their ability to learn, told them they could multitask, and provided no supports, no training, no lessons, bad software, worse in person instruction, and broken courses, then wondered what happened.

The kids didn't need computers, pens and paper didn't stop working, what stopped was the education system. Both of my daughters never learned curs

So they gave every kid a distraction machine and are now surprised kids are distracted? If text books came with a new comic book in the middle of it every day, we wouldn't have paid attention in class either.