Our First Fish Out Digital Journey
Our First Fish Out Digital Journey
A short story by Patti
I never would have believed it, if I had not seen it. Now I cannot unsee it.
We lived our free-range childhoods in the 1970s. My husband grew up racing through deep woods, cutting down trees to build forts, avoiding house chores by roving on day long bike rides, and catching bee swarms for his hobbyist bee hive, arriving home just in time for dinner.
Our daughter is now twelve. When Julie was five years old, her playmate Ellie, would invite her to play for the afternoon. The mother would park the girls in front of their mammoth black shiny TV screen, perched on the far wall in their tiny living room to watch movie after movie. This was easier for the mother because she was finishing her university degree. We did not own a television so this type of play was disturbing to me.
Eventually I hosted the girls get togethers so we could partake in old fashioned play at the local park, getting wet in the spouting frog water structure, learning to pump our legs on the swings trying to touch the tree tops with our sneakered toes, climbing trees, launching stomp rockets, and playing chase with other kids. I can still see Julie with her tight brown ringlet curls bouncing on her shoulders, dressed in pink princess heels racing little boys back and forth across the grass. At our house the girls would dress in costumes, take wheel barrel rides in the back yard, bake pizzas for dinner, and play hide and seek.
On January of 2020 I observed that Johns Hopkins was keeping a daily global tally of people infected with a new illness. I told my work colleagues that there was a new disease and that this was a problem; my work mates suggested that I was alarmist.
By March we were in the CoVid World Wide Pandemic, the US schools shut down and Julie’s second grade class quickly transitioned the children to remote learning via Zoom classes. Before this the children were not using computers in school, they were experiencing an old fashioned “classical education” with teachers explaining lessons, teaching reading, numbers, and writing. Kids were playing outside in a playground and garden. Although the school did a phenomenal job continuing classes during the Pandemic we needed to shepherd Julie through each session and make sure she participated.
Due to the Pandemic, our move to an international school in Europe was postponed. I retired a few months sooner than we had planned so I could homeschool Julie for third grade. I met with Julie’s teacher via zoom for fifteen minutes a week to obtain a general idea of what the third graders were learning. Julie and I worked diligently on writing, math, reading, and spelling; for exercise we danced to music. We were living in Mariposa, California. Shortly thereafter the Creek Fire started, one of the worst wild fires in US history. The fire ripped through the Sierra Forest for months. Although, we were living thirty miles from the forest fire, the air was filled with grey billowing smoke that hovered a few feet from the house. It was unsafe to breath the air outdoors. This added to the desperation and isolation of the CoVid Pandemic.
A couple of the highlights during this period were the many small green toads that crept around the house, under the base of the siding, and sheltered in the cracks of the driveway. Julie would shriek with laughter and loved to catch them. There was a tiny grape orchard at the back of the house, and a beautiful red fox who would visit the orchard to snack on the champagne grapes. Julie was excited about the Prodigy game and the virtual festivals that were offered with new digital creatures and pets. At this time, I did not realize that she was getting a little dopamine hit with the excitement of the game.
The next clue that I could not see at that time, was when Julie’s teacher in Europe, told me there was a computer spelling game that she should be able to manage on her own. Julie should take control of the game, manage the diagnostic test, and happily answer spelling questions. This is not what happened; I do not think the diagnostic test was ever completed. Julie managed to play the spelling games over and over but perhaps not the spelling. In hindsight it is ludicrous to think an eight-year-old could manage this type of EdTech on her own or in a classroom.
We eventually moved to Portugal during the Pandemic and lived there for the next three and a half years. The beaches are cream colored with blue green clear ocean water. I is cold for swimming but my husband did enjoy some morning swims with some of the school parents We loved meeting many of the parents from Julie’s International school. Half of the parents and students were Portuguese and the other half were interesting people from other parts of Europe and beyond. The hiking was beyond amazing and we participated in a weekly parent hiking group that my husband co-led.
In Julie’s 4th grade year, the school allowed the children to bring cell phones to school. I immediately saw the impact of this poor decision. Children, were on the playground with cell phones in hand, more interested in the digital screen than anything else. It took a year for our activist group of parents to convince the school and the school board to remove the cell phones from the bell-to-bell school day. To me it was a no brainer that cell phones had no place in the school.
By 5th grade we had removed the Prodigy game because there were ways to not answer questions anymore but just play the game. We removed the Epic reader because Julie would drift off with the reader; we discovered that she was not reading anymore but was watching YouTube shows with unsavory content that no parent would want their kid watching. At this point any computer screen use had to be done in a public space within sight of a parent. We imposed more limits. We had 1,500 paper books that we had collected for reading.
By the time Julie was in 6th grade the school had her parked behind a school required computer screen every day for the entire day. There were a couple of teachers who tried to conduct class without the computer; some with a bit of partial success.
In the fall of 6th grade Julie mentioned to me that the screens were very distracting. I met with several of her teachers to discuss focus concerns as I noticed that she was unable to begin assignments, wanted to search everything on the computer, but was unable to do required work in class and complete tasks. She became edgy and dysregulated.
I observed that the school had minimal fire walls so the kids were spending lots of class time off-task, watching YouTube, movies, and playing computer games. We locked down Julie’s computer but there are infinite ways to be off task by reconfiguring the computer settings, looking up hairstyles, cute pictures, and by finding new unblocked AI games. I was participating in a new daily whack-a-mole.
For writing the kids were cutting and pasting into their assignments or using AI. I met with several teachers and parents about this problem.
Some teachers would say, “Oh yes, I will have the kids re-do the assignment,” which never happened.
One teacher told me, “Hey, be glad your kid can cut and paste, you are lucky, my kid cannot even do that.”
Another teacher said, “Well this is their world and they need to navigate it and resist.” I was devastated – how can a ten-year-old resist the computer games that the world’s best engineers have designed specifically for engagement and addiction?
I told Julie not to play games or jump off tests or assignments to do other things on the computer, but the teachers would say, “When you are finished do whatever you like.” The class is full of other children who are playing games, watching videos, and listening to music, my requests were viewed as odd, not with-it, and not the new way that things are done.
The argument that kids need to learn technology at age nine is nonsensical. The systems the kids use today will be nothing like the programs the kids will be using in their jobs in eight to twelve years from now.
One of the worst parts of this new education system (“edutainment”) was that Julie’s classmates no longer wanted to play. Their only idea of play was to have sleepovers with un-monitored free screen use. Most of the parents who did not give their children smart phones by age nine or earlier did give them unfettered access to their school required computer, which is just a big phone. The kids were immersed in uncensored content produced by influencers, YouTubers, gamers, advertisers, and corporations. There was no longer any sense of morals or positive content. Julie would spend lunch time and breaks looking over other kids shoulders to watch Tik-Tok and computer games.
At first, we thought this was just a phenomenon of our current school. Thus, my search for the non-tech, classical school began. We were awakened to this new global education system. I read many books on education, EdTech, screens and kids’ brains and we became informed.
We moved back to California, as home school is not allowed in Portugal. In the US I met with two educational psychologists, an educational attorney, six public school principals, wrote to the Head of the California Board of Education, and to the State Governor, looking for a computer opt out option in our local schools. It does not exist in California without a legal battle – which is not my interest.
Some might think this is not happening in the US but in fact most of the schools in the US have left part of YouTube open, and google is a click away so, the idea that our US kids are protected and focused is false.
Before we adopted the full one-on-one computers for every kid in our schools there was no evidence that kids will learn better with screens. The recent research is to the contrary, EdTech in the schools is not helping kids.
So, eight weeks ago we started our EdTech detox. We are living with a different child now, a joyful child. She is relaxed, reading dozens of books, playing board games and basketball, enjoying time with family, singing in the choir, not talking about being bored, not influenced by media, advertisements, and a dozen kids talking about the latest on Tik-Tok. We will reintroduce family movie night and eventually re-learn an educational intentional experience but for now we are home schooling and learning without technology, unless I present something as a teacher. We are learning the way kids have learned for centuries. We have real text books, paper, pens, and pencils.
This is our story of how we became the first fish out. I continue my search for the Classical School, the schools that are teaching without technology. They do exist, but they are far and few between.
It is my hope that we are on the cusp of an awakening.
The end -
There are many books and articles about EdTech but if I could recommend just a few resources for all parents to read or see I would recommend:
Screen Schooled by Joe Clement and Matt Miles
Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
Logoff and Learn: Healing the Broken Classroom - conference with teachers
Article by Emily Chirken – author Phone Free Schools are Half the Solution
https://thescreentimeconsultant.com/blog/phone-free-school-halfJonathan Haidt NY University Social Psychologist and Andrew Huberman (Stanford Neurobiologist) Interview
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