Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen.

Half these issues can be solved by teaching kids how to use technology meaningfully instead of using it as a babysitter.

There is value in being able to automate things, but there is far more value in being able to first to learn how to do stuff yourself.

I have mixed feelings on all this. The education system largely seems a bit better than when I was in school, however the impetus to learn has to be entirely provided by the parent (or innately by the rare student). Socially, it is a big problem because of phones, kids don't interact face-to-face nearly as much, as they can easily escape into the phone world.

But laptops? They seem fine, largely a positive, probably worth the cost? I'm undoubtedly far more aware of what and how my son does in school than my parents were. Teachers seem to use whatever works best, and there are lazy teacher and great teachers. The great ones use tech to great effect. One of my son's worst teachers didn't let them use laptops and did everything with paper, and she was terrible. Tech isn't a magic cure, but neither is paper!

I know my son is a better thinker, more informed, knows much more about life, history and science then I did at his age. If he wants to know something he can dig into it and learn what he wants. I had to bike up to the library and pray they had a decent book on the subject (they rarely did).

All that being said, AI is a big threat, but again, it will be a big differentiator. Those that want to learn we'll accelerate away from those that don't.

In many ways I feel like my son is on the proverbial last chopper out of 'Nam, when it comes to the public school system.

Of course, it also feels like going from the frying pan into the fire with the state of the world, but that's another topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd-_VDYit3U

Are Gen-Z folks overseas as screwed as Americans, and is there a correlation between academic performance and classroom laptops?

I wish I had a laptop earlier - or even better, a tablet with a good pen and attachable keyboard. I’m struggling to think of a disadvantage vs dead tree [note]books. Doodle right on the pdf textbook, dump things to remember into some flashcards app, have notes as searchable files / the ability to share them with everybody, or just a calendar of what’s happening when so you’re not surprised by a test that was announced when you blew off school for a day to do stupid teenager things.

The only actual issue is that computers are excellent slaves but terrible masters, and it’s a lot easier to get distracted by doom or tiktok when you got a computer you’re actively using. Yet surely this is solvable? Given how annoyingly locked down the average company-given dev machine is, surely it’s possible to restrict it for students during school time? It should certainly be much easier than to control private smartphones.

Some are causes and the rest results but nobody knows which ones: the egg made the chicken or the chicken the egg?

One concrete example I remember is in sixth form in the UK when I was there, in order to address poor example results in maths, they replaced Core Maths 1-6 with Pure Maths 1-6, the 6 modules of the latter only containing the material from the first 4 modules of the former

Veritasium's video: "Effort is the Algorithm".

The world is full of heavy objects but how many of us are ripped ? -- Derek Muller

Unless they are specifically needed, they should not be used for basic education.

Don't force kids to wade through a thousand layers of abstraction just to write down a word or to draw a circle.

eg. See [1] which finds: "The report shows a rapid change over just five years. Between 2020 and 2025, the number of incoming students whose math skills were below high school level rose nearly thirtyfold and 70% of those students fell below middle school levels. This roughly translates to about one in twelve members of the freshman class."

and

"high school math grades are only very weakly linked to students’ actual math preparation."

There is simply no way you can dangle an automatic homework and assignment solver in front of kids and not absolutely destroy their motivation, desire, and ability to learn.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/annaesakismith/2025/12/11/uc-sa...

I recall the experience being distracting. Computers are more fun than classes. No matter how much you lock down the machine, a kid will figure a way to make it more interesting than class. Computers can do so much. Children are curious.

I remember sneaking in flash games, ms paint/kidpix, browsing the web and whatever.

Anecdotal.. but i certainly wasn’t the only kid fooling around.

I don’t know what the “right amount” is, but I turned out ok. Though the iPhone was introduced after I graduated high school

Laptops also didn’t integrate special ed in mainstream classrooms. While it’s the right thing to do for other reasons, the net effect hasn’t been to make all kids experiences or learning better.

Just because one has the latest tech dos not mean they’ll learn. I learned more on my own with used computers then I did in school. I was able to break things and fix them.

Funny how the people that didn't listen also seemed to make a ton of money off the whole thing.

Kids are growing up in a different world than we did. They need different skills, and probably a different cognition. Teaching them to deal with rapid attention shifts is probably going to equip them better for their actual lives than trying to make them focus on one subject for hours.

IF you teach how to use a FLOSS desktop, you're providing what's actually needed in the modern world; if you do Big Tech a favor by using their services in schools, you get a collapse in cognitive ability, which is exactly what happened. People just need to understand this and actually have the will to understand it.

Given the current technological landscape, I think we may eventually have to admit that Gen Z and the ones after have adapted to their environments, too. Maybe retaining information is simply less valuable as a skill (like memorizing entire epics) when easy access to a modern Library of Alexandria is right at our fingertips? Yes, it's painful to think about and uncomfortable on some level. It's probably like how Socrates felt about reading and writing when he described it as, "an elixir not of memory, but of reminding" and that reliance on it will "produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it."

Though, one caveat that is important to mention is that education is not valued on a mass cultural level in this country, comparatively speaking. But that is a discussion for a different time.

“ Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one”

The percentage of immigrants or non-native English speakers is also increasing in the US (and in the EU).

Since these groups historically also scored lower, one would expect the general scores at least partially lowered due to this.

Also add in Covid with two years of interrupted lessons and work-from-home, I wouldn’t be so quick to blame this solely on laptops.

Gen Z first generation since 1800's with lower cognitive performance

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947424