I’ve been a substitute high school teacher for all of
two weeks, but I’ve been able to sub in five different schools during this
time. Subs don’t do much, I’ll admit, so while I babysit students as they’re
working on whatever the regular teacher left for them to do, I’ve observed some
common problems centered around technology.
Two of the schools I sub in provides each student with
a laptop. Yes, they can do their classwork online, but in City High School
(names have been changed to protect my job), the teacher has no control over
what the students are doing on their laptops during class. I roamed the rooms,
observing plenty of kids on YouTube and Facebook, their assignments forgotten.
In contrast, the Charter High School provides the teachers with a nice app on
their desk top computers which shows what site is up each student’s laptop. It
was easy to redirect the ones who weren’t on task. Far from providing its
students with the latest technology, I believe City High School has opened a
Pandora’s Box, foisting more distractions on an already distracted student
body.
Let’s talk about cell phones. Every student has one.
Even very young kids in elementary school have cell phones. If they’re allowed
to have them out, the students are completely distracted the entire class.
Teachers ask them to put their phones away, but it rarely happens because the
phone is far more interesting than whatever is being taught. If I were a
full-time teacher, I’d put a shoe caddy by the door and have the students place
their phones in assigned pockets at the beginning of class. If they got bored,
say after taking a test and waiting for the rest of the class to finish, I’d
require them to bring a book. Yes, books! I rarely saw a student pull out a
paperback to read when they were finished with classwork. I usually sub in
English -- you know, literature? -- yet no more than two students in any class
pulled out a book instead of their phone.
My own children thought I was mean when I said they
couldn’t have a cell phone until they could pay for the monthly plan
themselves. Poor things didn’t have phones until they were old enough to have
jobs. Consequently, I have adult children who’ve figured out that their cells
are tools, not entertainment. They use them sparingly, as needed, and two of my
sons don’t see the need to have a cell phone at all. Not to say that I’m an
exemplary parent on this issue because my sons spend way too much time on video
games -- but at least this is something they can only do at home, not in a
classroom.
Young people who are in college now are the first
generation to be ‘plugged in.’ Their lives are centered around their devices.
Is this access to all the information the world has to offer via Google a good
thing? I would say no, and this is my opinion: Having a device in hand every
waking moment of the day has given us a generation unable to think for
themselves. On the news we are seeing college students protest capitalism as
they take selfies with their iPhones, yet they fail to see the irony. They
believe whatever they read on social media because they have no ability to
apply logic, believing that emotion trumps reason when it comes to the law and
social policy, unable to envision the disastrous consequences of governing by
emotion. And it’s not just that they are unable to apply logic, they are unable
to focus because they’re accustomed to being entertained. They are unable to
converse at the dinner table because the text messages, Instagram posts, and
Facebook comments are far more interesting than their family members. I’m
seeing this in the high schools I sub in. The ‘plugged in’ generation is so
distracted that they aren’t learning much in the classroom.
On a different but related note, I have to throw in a
thought about technology and my job as a substitute. The school system I work
for employs its substitute teachers through a hiring agency. After a long
application process and training, I gave them a list of the schools I preferred
and the hiring service had me buy an app for my SmartPhone to accept positions
as they became available. Within a week of missing alerts on this app, it
became clear to me why the hiring agency had such a high turnover rate for
subs: frustration. The subs must compete for positions like Uber drivers. I
could only secure a position if the phone was in my hand, open to the app, at
the right moment. If it took me more than three seconds to press ‘accept’ (no
time to even read what subject I’d be teaching), someone else had the job. My
husband put the app on his iPhone so we could improve my odds of securing
regular work. What makes the agency’s job easier makes it frustrating for
substitute teachers. I just wanted to share this tidbit because it shows how
some technology can work against its own self-interest.
I’m not anti-technology (hey, I write science fiction)
but I’m beginning to realize that more access to technology isn’t necessarily a
good thing. Technology is a distraction in schools, and I believe teachers and
parents need to monitor how much screen time students have. I don’t think a third-grader
needs a cell phone, not even to call mommy in case of an emergency. No third-grader
is going to be walking home alone in in the dark, necessitating the use of a
cell for an emergency call. Nope, that third grader is going to use the iPhone
you gave him or her to play games and access who-knows-what on the internet
when he or she should be paying attention in class. Some schools even have a
‘bring your own device’ day -- what a terrible idea. How about ‘bring a book
day’ instead? I recommend no cell phones during class, no phones at the dinner
table, no phones while driving, no phones after bedtime -- plug them in to recharge elsewhere in the
house -- limit computer and video game time to less than an hour a day or never
on weekdays. Let’s close Pandora’s Box and raise children who like to read and use
technology as a tool when it’s needed, not as the sole focus of their lives.
Kids need books, not gadgets. A child who reads will
grow up to be a child who thinks for himself. It’s frightening to see how
little the ‘plugged in’ generation thinks logically, particularly how little
they know about history. “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat
it.” ~Edmund Burke. This is especially troubling when you hear college students
extolling the virtues of socialism, but that’s another blog post for another
day.
