“If you want to guide your children away from the hypnotic and probably less-than-beneficial effects of the shoot-’em-down combat computer games so popular these days, look into some of the educational games that have recently become available. A number of these are quite good, and, perhaps surprisingly, they are capable of becoming, for many youngsters, as enthralling as their war-game counterparts.” –New York Times, December 13, 1983
“Are you looking to give your children a leg up in school this year? A visit to a store specializing in computer software may be one of your best moves…From early-learning programs for preschoolers to advanced calculus, foreign language and test-preparation titles for high schools and colleges, there’s a CD-ROM package designed to help improve almost any student’s performance.” – Chicago Tribune, August 26, 1996
Over the past 30 years, millions, if not billions, of dollars have been made convincing parents and schools that the latest technological fad is the key to educating students. With each wave of education technology (a.k.a. EdTech), parents clamor to give their children “the best” by buying such technology for their home and/or pressuring their children’s school to use it in the classroom. The New York Times article cited above was discussing “edutainment,” i.e., the educational game craze of the 1980s and early 1990s, and the Chicago Tribune article cited above was describing the “revolutionary” educational CD-ROM mania. After a few years, when the frenzy died down, each of these technologies faded into the past having made little if any educational impact. The primary impacts of these technologies were enriching EdTech entrepreneurs and giving academics (as opposed to teachers and principals, i.e., practitioners) in the education field something to publish papers and studies about to keep their publication résumé current.
Today, as in the past, the business world is fully aware of the financial opportunity that EdTech presents. For example, when Newscorp purchased Wireless Generation, an EdTech company that had won large contracts with the New York City public school system, Newscorp said, “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone.” IBM has also gotten into the act, stating, “The good news is that advances in education technology—analytics, early warning systems to identify at-risk students, cloud computing—can help our systems refresh outdated infrastructures with new functionality.” (see http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/education_technology/ideas/).
The major textbook companies are moving to an all-digital world as well, with the attendant lower per-unit costs and attractive profit margins. These corporations know there are billions to be made off of EdTech, and they, like hundreds of other companies, have put their sales and marketing machines to work to convince schools and parents that education can’t happen today without technology. And yes, the educational academics are once again publishing papers and studies on EdTech.
While it is possible that the current generation of EdTech will prove to be more educationally valuable than those of the past, the onus is on its proponents to prove it.
Some parents are convinced that kids today are different than generations past and are inherently incapable of having an attention span of any significant length. As such, their argument goes, our children can only be reached and educated using technology; how can we expect our children to learn the “old” way when at home they’re bombarded with immersive multimedia experiences that provide instant gratification? If on the bus to school they are impatiently switching from one iPhone or Android app to the next, how can we expect them to sit still and listen to a teacher educate them?
It may be true that many kids have short attention spans today, but in most cases that is not an inborn limitation; it is the result of what we, parents, do at home. It is very easy to passively parent by allowing our children, starting at a young age, to spend large amounts of time staring at screens, be it the TV, iPad, computer, iPod, etc. We can give elementary school children an iPhone, an iPod Touch, etc., and they will stay out of our way and be entertained and occupied. Maybe we can even convince ourselves that we need to take this approach in order to free up our time for important things. However, our children pay a very big price for this passive parenting in the form of short attention spans. How can we expect our children to sit in shul and daven, to learn Torah for extended periods of time, or to take the time to notice how other people are feeling, if we’ve given them large doses of screen-provided instant gratification at home? How do we expect our children to study for exams in medical school, to patiently engage in long business negotiations, to debug a tricky program, to meticulously pore over the books of a client they are auditing, etc., if they have been raised and educated using immersive media that provide instant gratification?
Being a parent can result in tremendous nachas, but first and foremost being a parent is a tremendous responsibility. Rather than pressure our schools to adopt the latest fads in EdTech which may, like the EdTech fads of the past, not add significant educational value over traditional teaching methods, let’s allow the educational practitioners to decide what to adopt in school while we, as parents, focus on improving our homes and raising our children in a way that best prepares them for having the patience and presence of mind needed to succeed in all aspects of life.
Judah Diament received his MS in Computer Science from NYU and has worked at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center for the past 13 years. The views expressed in this essay are his alone and are not meant to represent IBM.
By Judah Diament
