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

by Joe Clement

If you consider the fact that technology is designed to solve problems for us, it should only be introduced after students have mastered the ability to solve problems on their own. Otherwise, technology works to mask their lack of understanding. For example, if you were to give a student a calculator moments after teaching her multiplication and division, chances are she would stop working through the problems on her own and start depending on the calculator to do the work for her. The calculator would become more of a crutch because her own multiplication and division abilities would never fully be formed. This gap in her understanding would become more apparent later when teachers tried to build on these simpler concepts with more advanced ones, such as algebra or geometry. And eventually, the student would reach a point, much like Madison did, where she struggles with new, more challenging content and concepts.