From the Rector

Dear Parents

 

All that glisters is not gold.

                                         William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

For a number of years now we have watched the digital space in teaching and learning in New Zealand, and for a number of reasons we have been cautious, and not a little wary. Some readers may even have heard me referring to the use of technology in schools as another case of the emperor’s new clothes.

 

Recent research has shown that earlier studies conducted by the OECD, which showed the limitations in the use of technology in classrooms, have proved to be not only accurate, but in many ways rather prescient. When smartphones and social media platforms swept into teens’ lives in the 2010s, education faced a digital revolution. Since then, global test scores in maths, science, and reading have been plummeting. Educational technology has not, it turns out, delivered the academic benefits once promised. It even turns out, gentlemen, that a heat pump or air conditioner has a more positive impact on classroom learning than being glued to your laptop.

 

The researchers found that part of the problem was what they referred to as multitasking – which we all know blokes can’t do anyway. But because so much of what young people do now in front of screens involves jumping from one tab to the next, they are often multitasking. The overwhelming majority of students spend over 80% of their digital time using their digital device to multitask. And multitasking is really bad for learning.

 

“This is why, when using a computer for homework, students typically last fewer than six minutes before engaging with other digital distractions.” When using a laptop during class, the research found, students typically spend 38 minutes off task. “This is why, even when getting paid as part of a research study to focus on a 20-minute computerised lesson, nearly 40 percent of students were unable to stop themselves from multitasking. It’s not that the students of today have abnormally weak constitutions; it’s that they have spent thousands of hours training themselves to use digital devices in a manner guaranteed to impair learning and performance. It’s also that many of the apps being run on those devices were carefully engineered to pull young people away from whatever they were doing.”

Technology, like any other tool, does have its uses in the classroom. One educationalist even said that if these digital devices were only ever used for educational purposes, they could be some of the most important academic inventions ever. But they haven’t been. In Sweden, a return to more traditional methods of teaching was first met with scepticism from educationalists from across Europe, but since that change academic results have increased markedly. The minister of education announced that the government wanted to reverse its decision to make digital devices mandatory in preschools. It plans to go further and to completely end digital learning for children under the age of six. As Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found, “there is clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning.”

 

Some real food for thought there for our education system, and as we look to the future we may more and more return to, and embrace, the past.

 

But for the meantime, and on a completely different note, do enjoy the remainder of 2024 and to all in the Palmerston North Boys’ High School community, may I take this opportunity to wish you all the best for Christmas, and have a Happy New Year.

 

D M Bovey

Rector