this is about banning existing technology for material in teaching.
> We have tonnes of evidence in kids with versus without devices
that is a blanket statement, wrt to device time (i assume without you specifying), and is not what is being discussed in this article, and more of the fear mongering that leads to these outcomes
It’s a very clear trend line that isn’t disproven with individual counter-examples. (Poor communities don’t have the student-teacher ratios to enforce bans, for one.)
> many have "banned" personal devices, but that isn't really meaningful for this discussion
How isn’t banning harmful, novel devices not meaningful to a discussion about another novel technology being pushed into classrooms by the same people who pushed the devices?
> this is about banning existing technology for material in teaching
…devices are existing technology.
> that is a blanket statement, wrt to device time
I’m making an analogy. Lots of parents unwittingly compromised their kids because they were afraid if they didn’t have a phone in elementary school they’d get left behind. There was limited evidence of benefits in a sea of FOMO. The situation with AI looks similar, down to the people arguing for putting AI in classrooms.
It is absolutely not Luddite to note that pretty much no technological revolution privileged elementary-school aged kids who had exposure over those who did not. That divergence starts manifesting in the teenage years, after basic cognitive functions like information absorption and processing and self-motivated curiosity have set in.
When? Which decade between 1970 and today?
Show me the study or tell me the keywords to look up, because I cannot reveal what you are hinting at.
The best data illustrating the point are for home internet access on educational outcomes.
In early development, we see a negative effect [1]. Young kids with more home internet do worse than those with less of it. In middle and high school, that effect reverses [2]. (There are better studies on this in the EU.)
Bill Gates absolutely benefited from having a terminal at his high school when others didn’t. There are lots of similar examples across America and history. I know of no similar anecdotes for any technology when it comes to young kids since we banned child labor. (If you start laboring at 8, yes, getting familiar with and locked into the tools of your trade at 5 will advantage you.)
The burden of proof in early education should not be on parents and policymakers to prove harm. It should be on proponents of novel tools and methods to prove benefits.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3614074
that first paper is on academic outcomes in uraguay, with a particular set of testing that i am not familiar with. if you could fill me in, that would be great.
i am also not following how they arrived at this:
'We find no statistically significant effect of FTTH exposure on children spending more than one hour per day in front of a screen – the threshold recommended by health institutions – nor on caregivers' acceptance of using screens to entertain children without supervision. We interpret this as insufficient evidence to confirm the direct channel with our data, rather than as evidence that it is not operating: our measures of screen time have significant limitations, and we cannot rule out that direct exposure is also playing a role.'
but i can't see the whole paper from where i am at the moment.
the other paper looks more like a magazine article, but i will try to take a look at it.