Only disconnect: Students need offline learning spaces

Colleen Kinder made her summer writing students go completely offline for four weeks, she writes in the New York Times. They were living in a French village. When they weren't in class or writing, they read books, talked over leisurely dinners, played charades or Ping Pong or basketball, looked at the stars. They slept. On weekends, they explored Bordeaux with paper maps.

They loved the freedom from distraction.

"We owe it to today’s college students to create internet-free spaces, programs, dorms and maybe even entire campuses for students committed to learning with far fewer distractions," writes Kinder. The system was broken before AI. Not only have colleges failed to shield students "from notoriously addictive technologies," we've required them to submit papers via online portals and learn about campus events on Instagram.

In France, students who needed to research something for an essay booked time to use her assistant's laptop, briefly. They wrote on computers, with no WiFI, printed out their work and then experienced free time without "rotting."

All were surprised at their productivity.

Colleges should create "cloisters" for students who want live and work offline, writes Kinder. Those who sign the phone-free pledge could be given flip phones and laptops with only word-processing powers (or, at least, unable to access social media). She imagines "an old-school computer lab where students get a limited number of hours of internet access per week — in and out."

Many students want to be freed from digital distraction, if they can do it in community with others living in the physical world, Kinder writes. Colleges should give them that opportunity.