Gadget Overload Is Hurting Our Schools

The problem with teaching to the tech

Adecade ago, I was writing a book that asked why education technology so rarely delivers on its promise, even as innovative educators were urging schools to ensure that every student had a phone and bragging about student writing assignments that incorporated tweets and texts. Of course, as the grim consequences of phones in school became clear, those devotees quietly began plugging virtual reality, TikTok, AI, and other new enthusiasms.

While technology has a useful role to play in schooling (we’ll get to this momentarily), experience has offered much cause for skepticism.

The past decade of school-tech acquisition has yielded equal parts frustration with what’s going on and unbridled enthusiasm for what’s next. “While that last generation of technology disappointed, the new stuff will be a game-changer,” the spasmodic thinking goes. Stanford’s Larry Cuban nailed it two decades ago when he titled his history of education technology “Oversold and Underused.”