Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber

by Joe Clement

A study done by the Harvard Graduate School of Education illustrates just how influential strong teacher-student relationships can be. Professor Hunter Gehlbach, an educational psychologist, had both students and their teachers fill out a survey about their likes and dislikes on a wide range of topics. Then, for the experimental group, the researchers would sit down with each student and teacher and go over the things they had in common. The idea being that this would strengthen the relationship between the two. After then tracking the students’ progress in school, they found that the students with the stronger teacher relationships performed significantly better than the students who hadn’t had this simple intervention. The groups with the greatest improvements were African Americans, Latinos, and lower-income students. In fact, it led to an unheard-of 60 percent reduction in the school’s achievement gap.