8th Grade Editorials 2023

Mr. Jockers

N/A

ILA

April 6, 2023

Google Classroom’s Got to Go

In the millennium’s first two decades, the number of internet-accessing U.S households grew from 7 to 120 million. Simultaneously, the values Americans once honored plummeted.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll shows the percentage of people considering patriotism “very important” dropped from 70 percent, in 1998, to 38 percent, in 2022; likewise for religion (62 to 39 percent), starting a family (54 to 30 percent), and, community involvement (47 to 27 percent). 

The concurrent rise of the internet and fall of foundational American values may be coincidental. But probably not. As longtime UConn biology professor Thomas Crivello recently told incoming freshmen: “History will view the internet as the best and worst thing to happen to humanity.”

The same for public education.

As a teacher, I’ve seen the internet help. Students can research topics independently and collaboratively create engaging presentations. But it’s hurt, too, and our reliance on technology must be reigned in following our wholehearted dependence upon it during covid.

Tech platforms providing opportunities online once relegated to the classroom, like Edmodo, started in the late 2000s, and then Google revamped the idea, offering Google Classroom to districts already using complementary platforms like Gmail and Drive. Thus, when covid closed school, Google Classroom became the default classroom substitute, and myriad tech programs rode its coattails.

But the pandemic is over, yet many online-learning methods remain. My son, for example, still watches Edpuzzles for his eighth-grade Spanish class. Why? Has all this tech helped?

No, according to results from the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “nation’s report card,” which shows fourth- and eighth-graders scoring the lowest in math and reading in 20 years, with skills dropping precipitously since 2019. 

Aside from its questionable assistance, educational technology contributes to a monumental societal problem: childrens’ exorbitant screentime. Author and psychologist Jean Twenge’s research team recently reported teenagers spend 10 hours per day online.

In a poll, a quarter of my eighth-graders report spending up to seven hours a day on their smartphone; half watch TV and/or play video games for at least another two. In school, half use school-issued Chromebooks for another two to four hours.

Schools cannot support this unhealthy habit as well as burden parents with more devices to monitor. Half of the 15 most-visited websites globally are social media and adult sites whose content is undoubtedly contributing to the explosion in teenage suicide, depression and anxiety which the White House deemed an “unprecedented mental health crisis” in June. 

In school, we must relinquish the technology whose omnipresence has not coincided with improved learning and mental health. CNBC reports Gen Z is leading a resurgence of Nokia dumbphones. 

The kids are screaming for help. Are adults listening? 

Word Count: 450