How the laptop revolution destroyed public education

A guest editorial published at The Blaze. Click this link to go to the website: https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/how-the-laptop-revolution-destroyed-public-education?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dlvr.it_fb_conservative-review&tpcc=social_fb-post

The Chromebook turned class into a constant battle with distraction, and students learned to game the system faster than schools could patch it.

A recent Fortune magazine article made waves with a grim admission: After more than $30 billion spent flooding classrooms with laptops and tablets, standardized scores keep sliding. Worse, neuroscientists now link more classroom screen time to lower performance. The device meant to modernize learning may be helping to unmake it.

Schools rushed into a technological revolution without asking the most basic question: What does this do to a child’s mind? Many teachers saw the answer firsthand and in real time. Administrators and “experts” ignored them because the fad sounded like “progress.”

I taught history and civics in Florida public schools as the laptop trend took hold. Computers had sat in classrooms since my own childhood, but they played a supporting role. A few desktops in the back helped with research. A computer lab handled bigger projects. Most learning still happened on paper with books, notes, and conversation.

Then the Chromebook arrived: cheap, durable, limited, and perfect for one thing — living inside a web browser. Suddenly a district could put a machine not just in every room but in the hands of every student.