Poisons and Loaded Guns

/rant on

A NYT opinion piece by Jessica Grose called “Get Tech Out of the Classroom Before It’s Too Late” (link behind a paywall) came to my attention when Alan Jacobs blogged about it (both from a couple days ago). Typical of crap journalism, the article opens with contextual anecdotes to provide connection to real life, mentions and links to numerous other articles and studies to support its statements of the obvious arguments, and ends with banal, inactionable recommendations what to do next. The template is predictable and easy to cast aside considering that, in the case of tech in the classroom, it’s already too late: tech is embedded so deeply that dislodging it now requires Herculean effort no one wants to contemplate or undertake. Here is the dumb recommendation from the end of the article:

We need to reframe the entire conversation around tech in schools because it’s far from clear that we’re getting the results we want as a society and because parents are in a defensive crouch, afraid to appear anti-progress or unwilling to prepare the next generation for the future … If we don’t hit pause now and try to roll back some of the excesses, we’ll be doing our children — and society — a profound disservice.

Are you kidding me? We need to talk about …? Roll back some excesses? A profound disservice? The state of K–12 education is a shambles precisely because (one reason among many) it’s been coopted by tech companies that managed over the course of decades to sell their snake oil (program learning, computer-assisted instruction, distance and remote learning, online courses, etc.) to educators and administrators who ought to know better but are nonetheless lured by sales pitches (and one presumes, kickbacks and technocratic control over large tech budgets). Parents are only slightly less culpable in their willingness to allow erosion of educational standards (slowly, then all at once as the saying goes) that have transformed primary and secondary education into a sacrifice zone. Higher ed. has fared no better for different reasons, perhaps (an entirely different rant).

Alan Jacobs iterates numerous ways that everyone knows tech in schools is a disaster. His most forceful statement is this:

Everyone knows that the big Silicon Valley companies do not care how much damage they do to society or the environment; they care only about what Mark Zuckerberg likes to call DOMINATION. [emphasis added]

Adding my comments to the heap — not that anyone will pay me any attention, either — if a young child, whose natural impulse in explorer mode is to put things in the mouth to test and ingest, were to get hold of, say, rat poison or drain cleaner from under the kitchen sink, any parent would leap into action to keep the kid from swallowing the poison. Maybe the kid has sufficient maturity to recognize that certain common household dangers (heavy furniture, electrical sockets, knives, etc.) are not to be messed with. However, kids are not trusted or empowered to assess those dangers. Tech in the home and classroom is poison to children, deranging and (arguably) ruining them for life (varying degrees of damage over large populations, obviously). Yet unlike household poisons that are either removed from the childhood environment or locked away out of reach by responsible parents, irresponsible parents put the damned devices in their kids’ hands, usually to keep them occupied. During my childhood, it was the TV, which in hindsight was far less damaging to development because we kids would eventually tire of laying on the floor in front of the boob tube TV, get bored, and go outside to play. The infinite scroll and FOMO has apparently defeated the fatigue factor so that users keep going and going until sleep finally comes. Yeah, I know that childhood curiosity and attention-seeking are like unquenchable fires — emergencies that must be addressed immediately at all cost — at least until the child is plopped in front of the TV or handed an Internet-enabled tablet. Doesn’t matter. It’s the parents’ job to keep poison out of their kids’ hands and mouths, to keep them alive. Failure to do so is criminal negligence.

If an older child, whose natural impulse in explorer mode is to examine and test various objects, tools, and ideas, gets hold of, say, a loaded gun not properly secured by a responsible parent or caregiver, the gun owner would leap into action to keep the kid from firing the gun and potentially injuring or killing someone. Maybe the kid has the maturity to recognize the loaded gun is not a toy or maybe the kid acts in imitation of shoot-em-up TV shows and movies everyone sees. Again, results vary widely across large populations. However, kids are not trusted to make potentially life-and-death decisions with loaded guns. The Internet and its lures (wholesome, prurient, educational, entertainment, doesn’t matter) is the equivalent of a loaded gun. It’s the parents’ job to keep the loaded gun from their kids, to keep them alive. Failure to do so is negligence. Firing it (the loaded gun is the Internet, dummy) at or into the minds of youth does damage, yet parents and educators who already know this can’t bring themselves to take away the damned weapon for reasons that — let me put this bluntly — are insane.

The 21st century has thus become another occasion (multiple earlier episodes) for society to go mad. Everyone knows this; just look around at what goes on in neighborhoods on up to nation states. Alan Jacobs chalks it up to “a deficiency of will and a malformation of desire.” I’m more inclined toward Iain McGilchrist’s description of the usurpation of the Master by the Emissary (the right and left brain hemispheres, respectively). Madness is by no means limited to children in explorer mode, though they are being sacrificed at the scale of entire generations. Other vulnerable populations (prisoners, warfighters, the poor and homeless, etc.) are similarly sacrificed because of deficiencies of will, malformations of desire, and/or inability to address giant social problems effectively. I guess we “need to reframe the entire conversation.” Sure, that’s the ticket.

/rant off