Technopanic: Don’t panic!

There seems to be a big backlash against technology in various places at the moment. Writer David Brooks has claimed that it is destroying the young; educator Susan Dynarski writes that laptops distract in lectures, both for users and for those around them; an OECD report claims computer use is associated with significantly poorer student performance; and France has just banned mobiles from schools.

These are all claims that need examination, and my guess is that most parents will have had some experience negotiating or arguing with children about screen time. The technology is not neutral for sure; as Marshall McLuhan said we shape our tools; and thereafter our tools shape us. I have no doubt that there are profound changes afoot; but we also know that media reports are skewed to reporting bad news, and nothing sells like threats to children – especially when they can be combined with billionaire tech baddies.

Technology is blamed for many things

Furthermore, the claims are often misplaced or confused and seem to make little or no distinction between using technology well and using technology badly. It’s not hard to see that using fire, or aeroplanes, or electricity in controlled ways was, and still is, a risky business; and it does not help to only cry disaster!

Educator Mike Crowley’s brilliant take-down (please read it) of doom-and-gloom claims is a must read, and is the inspiration for this post. The most important point is that technology is not some technical change we can simply add to our educational systems. Rather, it offers an adaptive change which offers the opportunity to profoundly re-think and improve our educational paradigms. Laptops not so good for lectures? As Seth Godin, whom Crowley quotes with approval, notes: The solution isn’t to ban the laptop from the lecture. It’s time to ban the lecture from the classroom. That is, there is nothing inevitable or necessary about the lecture; it evolved in response to a particular mixture of social, educational, technological and economic circumstances. As these change, we need to reconsider what works and what does not (for what’s it’s worth, I am generally in favour of the right lecture at the right time – but that’s a contingent, not an absolute approval). And it is simply arrogance to think that we have currently found the perfect system. We need to keep looking; and technology offers many new opportunities.

The historical perspective here is illuminating. Jo Ellen Parker, President of the Great Lakes Colleges Association notes that the technology of writing and the book created the modern university… Once there were books [that were] too heavy to cart around, there came to be libraries. Once there were libraries, scholars went to them and settled down so as to be near the texts, and so the idea of schools and campuses were born. This was deeply controversial at the time (and note this is just the handwritten book – we aren’t even at the print press yet!); Plato writes of Socrates’ concern that books allow what we would now call remote learning – that is, learning without a teacher:

Plato: Books will give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.