Beware of silver bullets: Learning takes effort

Don't blame education technology for our education problems, writes "Bellringer" Holly Korbey. Schools need to cut way back on screen time and rethink digital platforms, she writes. "It looks like the time has come to return to real textbooks, paper and pencils, and some photocopied worksheets —at least for the youngest students." But, to improve learning, "Americans need to heal our own addiction -- not to screens but to silver-bullet solutions," she writes.

The anti-tech movement is uniting parents, teachers, school leaders and policy experts, Korbey writes. It's bridging political divides: Moms for Liberty and the Iowa teachers' union are "teaming up to support a bill restricting elementary students’ screen time in school."

She fears going screen-free will be "the next silver bullet." To really improve learning, educators, parents and the public should understand some basics.

For example, learning academics requires effort, Korbey writes. It's not natural.

There's a lot students don't know about math, history, science and so on, she writes. Instead of telling children to think of themselves as scientists or historians (or "scholars" or "geniuses"), schools should "use the knowledge students already possess to make connections to new worlds, to history and science knowledge they wouldn’t be likely to stumble onto while talking to their friends or scrolling TikTok." In short, teach them.

Brains can only do so much at a time, Korbey writes. "Multiple tabs, layers of folders and the constant buzzing of digital notifications, layered on top of what students are supposed to be learning, overwhelms what their brains can pay attention to," she writes. Classroom chaos makes it worse. Explicit and direct teaching -- with a minimum of distractions -- facilitates learning.

Without the need to learn "boring facts" -- just Google it -- students could concentrate focus on creativity and critical thinking, teachers were told. "But that’s not how knowledge works," Korbey writes. "Critical thinking and creativity depend on knowledge being stored in the brain’s long-term memory."

"Research shows that the more students have memorized" the easier it is to learn something new.

Finally, people need lots of practice to improve. "Recalling what’s been learned in different ways, in different order, and under different circumstances" is very helpful. "This means more quizzes and tests, not fewer, and perhaps a little more homework, not less."

A very old idea -- knowledge matters -- is the latest fashion in education, write Daniel Willingham and E.D. Hirsch in Education Next. Best-selling reading curricula all claim to build knowledge. As long time knowledge advocates --  Willingham for 20 years, and Hirsch for 40 -- they're wary. Is it just a passing fad?

For decades, reading instruction "has focused on helping children acquire generic, transferable skills such as finding the main idea of a passage or drawing inferences," they write. Readers didn't need knowledge about the subject matter, skills advocates argued. They could "just look it up."  

They make the case for "how knowledge indispensably supports reading comprehension and critical thinking."

Progressive educators have embraced the Romantics' idea that learning is "a natural unfolding" of the child's spirit, they write. A teacher should be “a guide at the side," nurturing the child, "not a sage on the stage.

That's led to the "belief that children will learn to read by doing a lot of reading, and not necessarily by working through challenging texts that require instruction and help from the teacher," they write. It supports the practice of "selecting books based on the child’s learning and growth, rather than selecting texts as a means of prompting that growth."

Romanticism is great for poetry, "ruinous" for education, Willingham and Hirsch conclude.