The middle schooler had been begging to opt out, citing headaches from the Chromebook screen and a dislike of the AI chatbot recently integrated into it.
Parents across the country are taking steps to stop their children from using school-issued Chromebooks and iPads, citing concerns about distractions and access to inappropriate content that they fear hampers their kids’ education.
I think we all know what is wrong today…
There will be parents that give a shit about how their kids learn to learn, and there will be others that dgaf, or at least bot enough of one, to keep their kids from just mashing the easy button and using “cheats” like AI. Unfortunately plenty of the latter will get management positions.
I’ve opted out of the school Chromebooks for my kids because they have computers running real GNU at home. We should all be outraged that schools are pushing a locked-down surveillance/content consumption-only platform, as opposed to something like a Raspberry Pi that actually empowers kids to have real computer literacy.
From the article:
She also started a parent group with 75 members that’s asking the district to allow students to keep Chromebooks at school rather than take them home.
Seems like such a good idea to leave that at the school. I had a relative who was a teacher, she rarely ever assigned homework. She always said it was her job to teach them in those 6 hours, and the rest of the day was theirs. She did have a weekend workshop for kids that needed tutoring, and after class hours, but in general, leave school at school and be a kid.
I wish my teachers had that attitude. I got sent home with hours of homework almost every day. I particularly remember my raging bitch of an 8th grade math teacher who would assign 100s of problems a night and give you zero points if you didn’t do all of them. My mom even backed me up on arguing about that shit. If I couldn’t get it done during my study period and lunch hour I didn’t do it. I had better things to do with my time after school.
Dunno if NBC is repositioning, pushing a tendency, or both, but glad to see the indication that parents are taking the role that should never stopped being theirs.
My first year teaching I was encouraged to do everything on the chromebooks, because the district wanted to save on printing costs.
If you have 100+ students, and are limited to 500 pages/month (I could print 500 more, but had to purchase my own paper…), you have to use the laptops.
Also, when parents and students increasingly treat attendance as a suggestion, keeping up with paper assignments is hellish. There were days I showed up with 1/3 or more of my class missing - with online class work, I at least could say “the work is available online.”
The technology is a problem, but it’s a problem that’s arisen because class sizes are out of control and admin has zero idea what is going on in the classroom. It’s a bandage that’s been left on so long the skin is starting to get infected around it.
What the fuck is it with schools being stingy with printed paper. At scale its less than a cent a sheet
Teachers where I live are constantly asking for donations of basic school supplies, snacks, tissues, and cleaning supplies for classrooms. It is incredibly disheartening.
They also have to be paying for the software that tracks how many prints you use. It’s fucking stupid, and it’s just one of a million little ways that they make sure to punish anyone stupid enough to teach.
I ended up buying my own printer. Printing alone got me to the maximum $300 of classroom expenses I was allowed to write off on taxes.
So you save 100 in taxes and pay 500 in printing costs… You’re down 400 for supplying your employer. Lol
Unfortunately not only a problem in schools. Where I work at there’s already a pay per use system that bills the department, with an entire system with separate codes to identify where you belong financially. Now they’re debating adding a fee for the ability to print.
Execs know teachers are doing it because of internal drive to teach and not for the pay and they take advantage of it in absolutely every way they can.
If teachers want useful posters on the wall, gotta pay for it. If teachers want students to not have to share a worksheet 3:1, teachers will pay for it. It’s incredible not only how much they do for free, but how much they pay out of pocket for the “privilege”
Yeah. The system in the US works on exploiting, crushing, and discarding young teachers. Almost none of the other teachers I met while teaching are still in the profession. You are expected to martyr yourself for the job - I usually didn’t get to eat lunch, because I was busy. I stopped drinking water, because I ended up pissing myself one day when I couldn’t get to the restroom.
It still amazes me that laptops are still the cutting edge tech for schools.
General purpose computers have always had major problems with students getting distracted and going off topic, and are a never ending source of tech issues; particular when locked down in a way that still fails to address the previous issues, but makes them fail more often.
Admin is concerned about paper costs? Get every student an Eink reader. Schools are a big enough market to justify specoalized Eink readers that support classroom management style features (e.g. pushing a reading to student in the room).
Don’t want to deal with hand written essays. I was using a digital typewriter as a middle school student 20 years ago.
It’s like requing laptops for every math class because we don’t want to force students to do all their calculations by hand. But that’s not the choice: we have calculators! Even when we let them use calculators, we have a choice of what calculator to give them. We have 4 function calculators, scientific calculators, graphing calculators, symbolic calculators. And we can pick what tool we give students based on the needs of the particular lesson.
It sounds like there should be a platform designed for school. IT can block access to all resources except the platform. Kids log-in to www.my-school.platform.edu and immediately have an answer for:
- what’s the curriculum for today
- what was yesterdays homework
- what was yesterdays lesson
- what tests are coming up
- what’s my personal attendance
- what’s for lunch today
- …
Then there’s not any room for misusing, misunderstanding, or missing-out. Ideally, I’d think a good platform should empower teachers to handle their difficult workload more easily…
Should also have a Teachers view, an Admin view, …
There are multiple such platforms - Canvas, ClassDojo, InfiniteCampus. Heck, you can even go with the free and open source Moodle. Most of these also integrate with useful online tools, like Desmos (graphing calculator) and PHeT (science simulations.)
This can help with workload, because you can often set up things like multiple choice quizzes that grade themselves (but how often should that be your primary way of assessing students?)
The problem is that some skills simply need to be learned with pen and paper. I have taught and tutored chemistry for years - balancing equations and stoichiometry are skills that you can’t really learn on a computer.
There’s also evidence that computer based notetaking is less effective - that students remember less.
That makes a lot of sense. I think there’s plenty of research to back up your claim about writing helping memory, too. I used to try to remember things better by (1) writing it down, (2) reading it aloud, (3) thinking about the next level up.
Number 3 is probably less useful outside fields where you’re constantly trying to “scale” systems… but in any case, it’s a thought experiment that happens to be really good at exposing the boundaries of concepts. Like… “okay, I built one server… now, what if I needed to manage a farm of 1000? What issues then become more pronounced?”
Out of curiosity, do any of these platforms try to marry itself with paper workflows? Maybe stuff like:
- teachers can submit a printable paper doc
- students can print it out as needed, submit the finished result
- students can take pictures of their handwritten notes and store them in a digital journal
- platform comes with handwriting analysis, full-text-search, … all that jazz?
I’m old enough such that when I was at primary school (this is years 5-11 for non UKians) there was a computer. Not in every class, no. A computer, on a wheeled trolley that could be moved around. Well actually I think there were probably three. Because there were three floors and no-one was going to move that trolley up and down the stairs. But still it definitely was not one per class.
It was barely used. In fact, the teachers didn’t really know HOW to use it. They actually just let me go at it, because I did know how to work it.
In secondary school (11-15/16), things were somewhat different in that there were slightly more modern computers, most classes had one and there was a dedicated room where there was a classroom number of computers available. This was where we were taught “ICT” which, was essentially showing how to use word processors and spreadsheet software. Again teachers of the time were quite far behind and I’m not exaggerating here, I used to help the teacher, teach this class. But there was no programming, or any advanced use. It was very basic tasks with specific software. All of our written work, even for this class was written with a pen, in an exercise book.
Now, budgets were still terrible. I can be pretty sure about this because I remember that because we DID still do everything on paper, photocopies were handed around the room. Oh they weren’t any flash laser photocopy (well sometimes in secondary school it was). No, these was the kind with the fuzzy purple ink that was hand rolled to make a copy. But we got by.
Now, there’s no doubt we live in a digital world and computing must be taught because we do everything on a phone or computer now and people need to know how to do it. But, there’s still surely a good reason to be doing work in exercise books with a pen and paper? Everything cannot be on a computer.
… it’s a problem that’s arisen because class sizes are out of control …
If I may ask, just how large are the classes today?
For reference, in 1980, my 10th grade English class (Mrs. Chase, she was awesome) had 36 students.
That was average for my school at the time.
The BIG classes like general US History (taught by Mr. Conway, who was wildly popular) had 40+ kids.
Mr Conway also kept a real honest to goodness stocks in his class room, so anyone that misbehaved had two options… into the stocks for the class or off to the assistant Vice Prinicpal’s office and spend a day in ISS. (in school suspension)
There would ALWAYS be one jackass Junior in each class that would opt for the stocks, at the start of every year and then NO one EVER caused a beef in Mr. Conway’s classes - or really ANY of the government studies (US History, Civics, Social Studies) deparement classes… Hearing about who chose the stocks and the rumors usually scared the underclassmen shitless, so they rarely ever piped up… except for the really stupid smartasses that always tried to test how far they could go…
The most I dealt with was around 36. I had around 28 chairs.
However, the feeder middle school had class sizes of 60+. There were literal riots, with multiple teachers injured, that the district covered up.
Stocks would absolutely not be allowed. I had a student that spent fifteen minutes screaming and cussing me out, straight to my face in front of a principle. When she said “I wish I wasn’t in your class” and I said “me too” - I got in trouble. (She was mad because I wrote her up for literally just walking into my classroom to sell snacks. She didn’t attend classes, she just did whatever she wanted.)
Unbelievable…
The more I see about education nowadays, the more I realize I would not survive it anymore. So many tests and assignments and whatever, students have barely any time left to think or be bored. Everything gets constantly evaluated.
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Other benefits of writing on paper:
- doesn’t get “accidentally” deleted
- doesn’t get “accidentally” copied
- doesn’t get uploaded to a cloud
- isn’t used to train AI
- can’t be edited or redacted by another party after the fact
It also feels good. Especially if you go out and buy a nice pen. And it gives your work a degree of object permanence.
Dogs eat it though. I’ve never heard “the dog ate my Chromebook”.
No but screens crack, they lose the chargers, there are excuses
That’s the one good side effect of AI, it makes people want to move away from technology where it’s not really necessary
also counterproductive, handwriting is better for retention.
Handwriting is better for retention if you are good at writing notes. Not everybody can write fast and legibly and still listen to and comprehend the lecture.
Which is why we practice it. Why we teach it.
My son is 12, ADHD (&others) and in special education. His first semester in middle school last year, he smashed his Chromebook, on purpose, to break it. Hes now only allowed to use a computer for state testing. Luckily, he is in small classrooms with the IEP so nearly all his work is on paper. I refuse to sign the permissionfor computer use and the teachers agree and haven’t faught me on it at all.
He recently told me he didn’t know what barbaric meant. Annoyed, realizing we lost the pocket dictionary some time ago, I went to the bookstore and got the best dictionary they had. I also, saw this:
So I grabbed it. There are lessons and quizzes in it teaching root word definitions. We’ve done a couple lessons now. I have him take notes, writing the word and the definition in his own words, unless it a short definition, then it’s easy. But then, he can use those notes to take the quiz. Ive done this so he can learn to note take. It will only take a few open note quizes to realize the importance of reading them back, and structuring your notes in a way that are useful. It’s all practice, and it needs to start early. My son’s handwriting is shit, absolute garbage. But he’s been writing everything at school since fall of '24, and there has been improvement in spelling, legibility and vocabulary, exponentially in the last couple years.
The whole point of writing is to convey a message. If ones writing isn’t legible, it is lost, and this needs to be understood by students. They can adapt to their needs.
I have ADHD also, I worked very hard at my schoolwork, I wasn’t diagnosed until far after I left school. I used short form I made up myself, and just got better at writing main ideas down. The schools… Are so dumbed down today, even in gen ed. These (middle school) teachers are not giving hour lectures expecting these kids to take proper notes. But,that doesn’t mean kids can’t get better with practice.
My son’s writing is garbage, so I have him write more. Being bad at something isn’t an excuse to give up. Being he is in special edu, and I can’t goddamn go to work (I’m so ready to go back to work omg) I spend a lot of energy stuffing as much education I can into him at home in support of the teachers’ efforts.
If an artist is bad a drawing hands, they could, in theory, never draw a hand in their work. OR, they can draw all the goddamn hands until they are satisfied and learned how to do it comfortably. Idk. “They can’t write fast and legibly” is just not an excuse for the average student IMO, because notetaking is a skill that is learned.
The fine motor control that comes of handwriting is critical if he likes to tinker or discovers any sort of work/hobby that requires manual dexterity.
Keep pushing on that, also, get a book on how to print like you’re writing the dialogue in a comic book or how to print like an architect making a blueprint. If he can work out the shapes and spacing, he can develop his own legible style in time and move on to a fusion-style cursive with those print shapes… It realy does make a difference in note-taking.
My dad was a design draftsman and taught me how to do that block print that I’d see on blueprints, and I have a super easy to read cursive based on that now.
Great tips. I love the Dogman series because it shows kids folks with ADHD can do cool things too. Anytime we can work a special interest in, it is helpful
Maybe as we advance, today we are still at the basics.
Like, this is what I’m working with. He is in Special Edu, and this is the improvement. It’s terrible, but we continue. Cursive helped me a bit, especially the fusion style you mention. I’m glad I’ve found this book. I have him write (and rewrite) a lot over the years, (this is not his best work at all) but I’ve pulled the ideas out my bum honestly. I’m glad this book has structure. We can do 15-20 mins, or a half a lesson, at a time so he doesn’t get overwhelmed and he can feel empowered to write. He spelled generosity almost right the first go, and hearing him being proud of that was, so cool.
Block printing is a cool skill, I wish I could do it. It’s the step you take after learning to write legibly, how to write beautifully. I’ll be happy to get him in the lines lol thats truly a useful skill your father taught you :)
It’s more important for me (for my son) to understand vocabulary because its a precursor for critical thinking and even emotional regulation. You can’t talk about why youre mad, or how your feeling if you dont have the vocabulary to do so. I’m just sneaking writing and note taking skills into it vocabulary lessons. Root word understanding grant you access to the whole language. That is so important imo
Other conditions exist. I have auditory processing disorder and one part of it is an involuntary disabling of my audio processing when my brain is trying to focus on something, particularly anything else to do with language like note-taking. My ears will “hear” but my brain won’t.
It wasn’t completely debilitating, but it made certain kinds of classes inordinately difficult for me. Discussion based classes were a nightmare for me, and no amount of practice could change how my brain works. So instead I pursued STEM where the notes are math and I could work ahead and tune in if I got stuck.
That being said, handwritten notes are still definitely the way to go in math!
I also have auditory processing disorder. It sucks. Why I always liked teachers who wrote on the board as they lectured, I’d even read the chapter from the book instead of listening to the teacher. Thats great you found what worked for you! You found what worked and became successful despite your struggles! That’s resiliency!
Good on those parents for advocating for their kids’ wishes!
When even the students are stressed and overwhelmed by the enshittification, that should be a glaring sign that something has to change. Humans need a break from the always-on, endless stream of digital information, especially that young.
In sixth grade we got to go use the computer in the teacher’s lounge to print out a topic from encarta. At secondary school we had to sign a set of rules for using the computer lab. At uni we had a proper user agreement with the IT department. Mostly because we had multiuser systems, e-mail and webhosting at our disposal.
My kid is still a few years from starting school. I’m hesitant to sign any Google EULA on her behalf.
If I was given a laptop in middle school or elementary school, I’d have gotten absolutely nothing done. We dicked around with the computers when we could use them once a week or so, let alone daily.
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I think you replied to the wrong post.
Oops yes
