CRP's Blog

As much as parents, teachers and students hate to admit it, the new school year is just around the corner. Each new year it seems there are more changes being made to tried and true teaching methods. Students now have access to multiple screens in the classroom and use Twitter, YouTube, chat rooms and Google Docs to complete tasks during the school day. We are now seeing how heavy technology in the classroom has effected students’ cognitive abilities. Personal smart phones and tablets are not just added distractions in the classroom; even the ones mandated by the teachers are displacing traditional learning and cognition methods to damaging effects.

Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber by Joe Clement and Matt Miles lifts the veil on what’s really going on—think distracted kids with poor problem-solving skills and little intellectual curiosity—and how parents and educators can counteract it.

Teachers Joe Clement and Matt Miles offer parents a look at how technology has been steadily integrated into schools and how school boards are now relying far too heavily on educational tech, including corporate sponsorships. Screen Schooled exposes the limitations and hypocrisy behind the short-sighted benefits of heavy technology use by kids and teens and offers straightforward solutions to these issues. According to Clement and Miles, schools and educators have the responsibility to instill in their pupils basic critical thinking, empathy, and interpersonal skills without the aid of technology. Laying these foundational skills can make children thrive in a world outside of school—even a heavily digital one.

Matt and Joe talked with us about the presence of technology in today’s classroom.

How long have you each been teaching? Which grades?

Matt has been teaching for over 10 years. He has taught world history, geography, government, political science, and psychology in a variety of classroom settings in everything from 9th grade ESOL and special education to 12th grade advanced placement.

Joe has been teaching for 23 years. He has taught 11 different courses to students in grades 9 through 12. He has taught special education, ESOL, honors and advanced placement courses.

What inspired you to write Screen Schooled? What were you observing in the classroom that made you want to address this problem?

​Fads and fashions have always come and gone. However, children’s entertainment rarely changed the essence of childhood, that is until smartphones came along. Seemingly overnight, as children became increasingly entranced by their electronic screens, they became more disengaged from class, us teachers, and even each other. As their attention dwindled, so too did the quality of their work. Students became incapable of deeper or creative thought. We were seeing students struggle to make basic connections and think beyond anything concrete. We both see that the content, concepts and skills we now teach to our most advanced students are more basic than what we were able to teach our “regular” or “average” students a decade ago. We wanted to know what was behind the shift. Nearly all of our reading suggested the increase in screen time was largely to blame. We saw our school, like many across the world, ramping up efforts to get kids on screens for more and more of the day. This didn’t seem right. In talking with parents, we realized that many people outside education have no idea what goes on from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm—and not just about this issue. We realized that we cannot have this critical conversation as a society until people know what is going on. The book was an attempt to let people in.

What was the writing process like? How did you collaborate to decide what to include in Screen Schooled?

​​After spending a lifetime working with children, the changes in young people brought on by screen-based technology seemed obvious to both of us. We lived with these changes every day while we tried desperately to deal with them in an attempt to educate our students. Modern struggles with students and their technology dominated discussions in faculty meetings and teacher lounges. We simply categorized these changes into the main areas of knowledge retention, focus, critical thinking and social skills. After that, the book seemed to write itself, each of us focusing on areas that fit our own background.  

Today the average is 10 electronic connected devices per household. What can parents do to help their children learn to focus and avoid the distraction of electronic devices at home?

The biggest problem with modern screens is that they are both extremely useful and wonderfully entertaining. An abstinence only policy ​has been made all but impossible by schools who are now doing things like only providing online textbooks and requiring assignments to be submitted digitally. Therefore, students need access to devices for school, yet they struggle to avoid the more amusing sides of technology (gaming, social media, entertainment, pornography, etc.). Start by not buying your children unnecessary devices. Buy paper books instead of e-readers for example, and what is a tablet even for? Also, when kids have friends over to play or hang out (especially younger kids) do what you can to provide opportunities for screen-free activities. Have the entire family keep their phones on a charging station in a central location like the kitchen or the mudroom. Don’t allow them to have devices while they’re alone in their rooms. Have them do their homework in the family room or the kitchen table while you’re around so you can help them stay on task. Then block off an hour or two a night where they can use their devices for entertainment. After all, they need to unwind too.

In Screen Schooled, you touch on how technology use has led to a decrease in cognitive skills in young people today. How can parents and educators improve students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills?

​We liken smartphones and screens to the over-anxious, know-it-all student who blurts out the answer to the teacher’s question before anyone has a chance to think about it. By providing easily obtained answers to any conceivable question, ​young people have grown to over-rely on these devices to do their thinking for them. But the aim of education can’t be to simply learn how to use Google to answer every question for them. Schools’ educational missions need to be to give students a base of knowledge so that they can critically and creatively think, problem solve and function intellectually in a variety of life’s circumstances. Unfortunately, learning is hard and requires a lot of work. Remove the technological aids and short cuts and allow your students a chance to struggle.

Without trying to summarize the entire book in one paragraph, what advice can you give parents looking to take steps to demand change?

Educational policy makers are always interested in hearing what the parents/tax payers/voters in their district have to say. Reach out to school boards, superintendents and principals to let them know your stance on technology. Further, most schools (if not all) have some sort of opt-out policy for device usage. Some require device usage in school but allow you to opt out of bringing one home. That varies from school to school, but it is definitely worth considering opting kids out of screen-based learning and programs. If enough parents start opting kids out, or at least asking questions and presenting information they have learned, policy makers will have no choice but to take notice.

What do you predict will happen in the future for public education? Do you think that schools will continue to implement more technology, or do you think we will return to simpler teaching methods?

Most educational technology pitches begin with the same claim, “There have been no changes to education in this country since the industrial age.” Any teacher will tell you this notion is laughable. Educational fads come and go with great regularity. Some stick but most die away. The ones that don’t make it tend to have one common dominator: they neglect the fundamentals of how children learn. Rather, they focus on some glitzy new unsubstantiated idea that’s trendy and cool. The educational technology movement fits firmly into this category. Its focus is on “how to incorporate” more technology into classrooms rather than the more important question of “should we?” Schools will eventually come back around to tried and true methods of teaching because they are what works—but only after they’ve wasted billions of dollars on devices that work more to impede learning than to aid it. That said, there is a fairly new fad that goes along with the ed-tech movement: the “flipped classroom.” This is where the student, at home, engages with some online resource (typically a video clip of some sort) through which the teacher provides instruction. During class, then, students do problems and ask questions that the teacher clarifies. This movement has problems on many levels. If you ask or read about the flipped classroom, you’ll likely be told it is wonderful because it “gives kids a chance to be in charge of their learning.” That is simply too much responsibility for a child. Can you imagine being 11 years old and being told that you’re in charge of your learning? Can you imagine turning education over to your 14-year-old son or daughter? Ideas like this sound great until you realize we’re talking about children. Children are not little adults. They are children. Their brains are not yet fully formed. Until they are, the adults need to be the guiding force in education. The ed-tech movement in general, and flipped classrooms in particular, seem to forget this basic idea.

Screen Schooled will be officially published on October 1, and is available wherever books and e-books are sold.

[Preorder it now $16]  [Request a review copy]