Could it be that reading achievement is declining because we decentered it from the curriculum and replaced with screens and all manner of technology?
I’ve been reading James Marriot’s new book “The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society” and he attempts to make the case that the decline of reading—deep, thoughtful reading—is caused by the proliferation of the smartphone and screens and the addictive, accompanying amount of time culturally that individuals spend on those devices.
Just look around on a crowded subway, and see all the faces glued to screens he says. Once these people were reading books and newspapers; now they are scrolling through endless, mindnumbing videos on Instagram and TikTok.
Perhaps, in education, from the time computers appeared, we have listened to Big Tech marketing all too well and placed technology at the center of all we do in education, and now, should we really be surprised that the kinds of reading that is transformative and deep is done less because we have pushed students to spend more and more time in classrooms on devices? Have we been complicit in selling our kids out to be constant consumers of mindless digital content?
As an educator, who experienced this big tech push to centralize technology as both participant and, now regretably, advocate, I only wish we had been more reflective and critical. But all technologies have an irresistable glow that lures one to their promise and wiles, sometimes without taking time to ask the tough question: What will be the consequences of this technology if students use it? If I use it? What will these technologies do to us?
Marriott points out that “ability to read long and complex texts was once widespread skill.” Now, it is at risk because the time it takes to really dig into reading is being replaced with the constant scrolling and clicking of screens.
This should give every educator pause and force a rethinking of the role in which we have placed technology in the classroom. We should be much more thoughtful and willing to do things that decenter it from our teaching and our students’ learning.
Alas, many Ed Tech advocates and school technology consults have the same attitude of “gun rights advocates” and are almost of the mindset that screens must be pried from their “cold, dead hands” before they wil acknowledge that technology can possibly be a problem. Just maybe out dogmatic faith in its possibilites is a problem too.
I started teaching at the dawn of the classroom PC and the internet, and I would say it has always been a struggle to get students to engage in deep, thoughtful reading, especially of complex texts. (Teaching the “Odyssey” to ninth graders was a challenge before smartphones I will admit.)
But, we can’t take off the table that maybe the central place of screens in teaching and learning is something we can critically examine.
The issue with screens occurs when one from refuses to let go of a “faith-based-like-belief in the transformative power of screens” and even acknowledge there might be problems we need to consider and address.
Consequently, it should never be the screens we defend; it should be our students minds, their reading, their learning, and their intellectual development. Just maybe we’ve put too much faith in the technology.
