Has Technology "Broken" an Education System That Was "Just Fine"?

We’ve gone overboard on devices in the classroom, but that doesn’t mean all will be well if we just get rid of them.

Photo by Vlad Deep on Unsplash

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There are still plenty of boosters of education technology—including, recently, Melania Trump—but it’s impossible to ignore the tsunami of backlash against it. Among the most prominent critics is a teacher-turned-cognitive-scientist named Jared Cooney Horvath.

Unlike many scientists, Horvath doesn’t shy away from making bold claims. His recent testimony before a Senate committee, which has gotten two and a half million views on C-SPAN, is arresting.

“A sad fact our generation has to face is this,” he says. “Our kids are cognitively less capable than we were at their age.” Since the late 1800s, he continues, every generation has outperformed their parents—largely because of more access to education. But that changed around 2010. Why?

The answer, he says, “appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning.” In other words, computers and other digital devices.

Horvath goes into his argument at far greater length in his self-published book, The Digital Delusion, which is set to be re-released by Penguin Random House. He marshals a great deal of evidence, buttressed by over 120 pages of footnotes. He also explains why screens disrupt learning, relying on three “core principles” from cognitive science.

Why Screens Harm Learning

First, he says, digital devices are built for distraction, interfering with the kind of attention necessary for learning to take place. Plus, they’re the same kinds of devices kids use for entertainment—gaming, videos, social media—so their brains default to the kind of multitasking they’re used to engaging in when using those devices. Evidence shows we don’t actually multitask. We switch back and forth between tasks, making us less efficient.

Second, a key factor in learning is an empathetic relationship between the teacher and the student, and it’s impossible develop that kind of relationship with a device. Yes, a student might feel like they’re developing that kind of relationship, especially with generative AI, but that’s an illusion—and a dangerous one.

Third, learning acquired through a digital device is less likely to transfer to other contexts. Because devices generally make tasks easier, students may not be able to apply them in real-world contexts that present more challenges.

Some have accused Horvath of overstating his case. Others have argued that he’s using ed tech as a scapegoat for other more fundamental problems. There’s some truth to those claims, but on balance I feel that Horvath’s message, and sense of urgency, is appropriate.

It’s clear that schools have been investing heavily in ed tech on the basis of very little evidence, and we need a corrective. That doesn’t mean we should ban all technology from schools—not even Horvath is really saying that. But schools do need to be far more thoughtful about adopting it.

Was Everything “Fine” Before Ed Tech?

The danger I see is that Horvath’s message will be interpreted to mean that ed tech has destroyed a system that was previously working well—which is, indeed, what he argues explicitly in his book. In his opening chapter, he lists several “myths” that he says “built” ed tech. Myth #1 is that “education is broken.”

“By nearly every meaningful international metric,” he writes, “schools are doing just fine. … If schools are ‘broken,’ then it was the influx of digital tools that broke them.”

To which I can only say: seriously?

Okay, as someone who has written a book that uses the phrase “America’s broken education system” in its subtitle, maybe I was primed to bristle at “Myth #1.” But the fact is, there are many students for whom America’s education system has not been working for a long time: students from families with low socioeconomic status.

Horvath includes a page and a half of citations to support his claim that schools are doing fine by “nearly every meaningful international metric.” These references cover, among other things, declines in racial and ethnic disparities and gender gaps—but curiously, not socioeconomic status.

In the U.S. at least, socioeconomic gaps had been widening for decades before 2010—the critical year when Horvath says everything started going down the tubes. The introduction of digital devices may have exacerbated those socioeconomic gaps in the U.S., which have widened in recent years, but it certainly didn’t create them.

Similarly, in a post on his Substack, Horvath maintains that the decline in students’ cognitive ability can’t be blamed on curriculum, which he says “is arguably more complex and demanding than at any point in history.”

Again: seriously?

It seems Horvath hasn’t been keeping up with complaints about the dumbing-down of curriculum content and the near absence of whole books in many classrooms, including at the high school level. (Even the anthologies designed to teach reading used to include far more complex text; check out the McGuffey’s Readers of the nineteenth century.)

Horvath notes that passages on the SAT have recently become significantly shorter, attributing that trend to the influence of screens. Maybe. But it almost certainly also reflects the fact that teachers have been relying on brief passages and excerpts because their training and curriculum have led them to focus on teaching comprehension “skills” rather than any particular content.

If you think you’re just teaching skills, it’s going to appear a lot more efficient to use a few paragraphs or a single chapter to do that rather than a whole novel. But the result is students who can’t get through, let alone comprehend, complex, demanding text—even at elite universities.

Problems Go Deeper Than Ed Tech

I’ve been in classrooms that had lots of ed tech where very little learning was taking place, and I’ve been in classrooms with very little ed tech where lots of learning was taking place. But the absence of ed tech doesn’t ensure learning.

Some of the problems that Horvath identifies as being inherent to ed tech can and do occur even without it. Ten years ago, I spent time in a first-grade classroom that boasted a “one-to-one” device policy, meaning every kid had their own iPad. The devices were definitely interfering with students’ ability to pay attention, as Horvath says they will. But so was the general noise level, which wasn’t unusual for an elementary classroom with or without technology. I’ll never forget the tiny girl who, one day, pleaded with her classmates to be quieter because she couldn’t think.

And then there’s the question of transfer of skills. It may be that skills acquired through a device don’t transfer well to the real world, as Horvath argues. But it’s also true that, guided by their training and materials, teachers spend many hours trying to teach skills that don’t really transfer at all. They may, for example, have students practice the supposedly abstract skill of “making inferences” instead of helping them acquire the knowledge and vocabulary that actually enable people to make inferences.

In addition, at least two of the “myths” that Horvath says sustain ed tech certainly existed before ed tech arrived: “Free Choice Leads to Better Learning” and “Kids Learn Best on Their Own.” These beliefs, which conflict with the findings of cognitive science, are deeply embedded in education orthodoxy. They will undoubtedly survive the demise of ed tech, should that occur, unless that orthodoxy changes.

As Holly Korbey has warned on her Substack, we need to beware of silver bullet solutions, including those pointing the finger at screens. Technology can boost rather than impede learning, when used wisely. But to use it wisely, we need to understand both what science says about how learning works and how typical classroom instruction, with or without technology, fails to align with that evidence.