In early 2000, Charles Hill, the Director of Technology in Wappingers Central School District in New York where I served as superintendent, knocked on the door of my office and asked if he could show me something he learned about at a recent gathering of technologists in New York City. He came over to my computer, logged onto the internet, and, when the cursor blinked on the screen, typed in the word “Google.”
He then introduced me to something called a “search engine” by typing questions into a box that appeared, questions that I might otherwise need an almanac or encyclopedia to answer. After his 15-minute overview, we both agreed that once this resource was readily available to students and teachers, schooling would never be the same, especially given his understanding of Google’s plan to get the entire Library of Congress available on-line and searchable within a year or so.
Like me, Hill began his career in public education in the early 1970s, long before computers were readily available in schools. It was a time when public education was widely supported, when states were providing ample funds for new facilities, when school boards were eager to try out and support new ideas and a time when the promise of computer technology captured the public’s imagination.
I haven’t seen Charles Hill for several years, but I’m sure he shares my disappointment that 25 years after he gave me his Google demonstration, technology has not transformed schooling in any substantive way. Schools continue to follow the agrarian calendar put in place at the end of the 19th century. Students attend school six-to-seven hours per day, five days a week grouped by age cohorts and ability level, all examples of “efficiencies” put in place in the 1920s. For the past century, if students attended school regularly, behaved well, and earned passing grades that were seldom related to mastery of the content, they would receive a diploma certifying them as capable of entering the work force and living independently as an adult.
In 2025, both Vermont and New Hampshire not only require students to follow this well-worn pathway designed a century ago, their legislatures also enacted laws that will deny students access to a device that is changing the way students and adults learn: the cell phone, a tool that provides a wealth of information and insight at one’s fingertips.
Instead of banning cellphones, Vermont and New Hampshire might look at the Ukraine’s approach to dealing with them. A few weeks ago, an article in The New York Times described how members of the Ukraine’s intelligence agency were educating students to avoid “falling under the influence of Russian operatives” who lured teenagers across the country into actions that undercut their nation’s sovereignty.
Ukrainian agents took on this assignment because the Russian state security agency “targeted Ukrainian teenagers on social media apps like Telegram, TikTok and Discord” offering them “hundreds or even thousands of dollars to do simple tasks: Deliver a package. Take a photograph of a power substation. Spray graffiti.” Once the teens unwittingly agreed to accept money in exchange for these illegal and subversive activities, the Russian state security agency could blackmail them for doing so or blackmail them “for compromising photographs hacked from their phones.”
Unlike their counterparts in the Ukraine, US students are not facing an existential threat from an invading army. But, unless our students learn how to sift through the disinformation that permeates the news feeds and social media on their phones, our democracy will face an existential threat. And, unless our students learn how the algorithms designed to hijack their attention are affecting their relationships with each other and their ability to concentrate, our culture will face an existential threat.
Banning cellphones will not help students, our nation, or our culture. Instead, legislators and school boards should take three actions to undercut the adverse impact of cellphones.
First, they should require instruction in the critical thinking skills needed to separate truth from fiction. This can be done apolitically. For example, by teaching students how advertising works, something George Orwell recognized as problematic well before he wrote “1984,” they can learn to discern the persuasive power of imagery and language.
Critical thinking can also be divorced from politics by emphasizing numeracy skills as well as mathematical skills. Mathematics is “the abstract science of number, quantity, and space”; it measures one’s ability to perform functions involving numbers and symbols. Numeracy, on the other hand, is “the ability to understand and work with numbers”, the application of mathematical skills. Numeracy enables consumers to make wise decisions when making a purchase and helps voters grasp the substantial differences between millions, billions, and trillions.
Second, they should teach students how algorithms work. An algorithm, the set of steps designed to perform a specific objective, is a concept that is not as abstract or mysterious as it sounds. It is like a recipe one follows to bake a cake but, in the case of computers, is often a means of linking datasets to make predictions about what the user likes or dislikes. Once a student gains an understanding algorithms, especially those that underpin addictive websites, it is possible to develop enough self-awareness to avoid the allure of the rabbit holes those sites want you to dive into.
Third, policy makers need to make students and parents aware of how phones and the internet might be helpful to students who struggle on the well-worn pathway that overinflates academic success and downplays practical experience.
The smartphone is already changing the way students and adults learn even if the paradigm of schooling remains fixed. How could schooling be different if they embraced this technology instead of banning it? A future column will offer some ideas.
Wayne Gersen is a retired public school administrator. He lives in Etna.