Since the advent of the smart phone, interest in acquiring academic skill and knowledge has dwindled.
This is undeniably true.
Kids spend hour upon hour scrolling hits of dopamine and it’s crushed their desire to learn. Even worse, once their phones are put away for class, they go through withdrawal.
They sit antsy and bored. They can’t concentrate. Attending for more than a few minutes is excruciating. Their undeveloped brains unable to enjoy the slowness of natural life.
Learning about the Spanish civil war or quadratic equations feels like being lost in the Sahara compared to the water-park rush of their beloved device. Put a book in their hands and it gets worse.
To adjust, teachers have also changed.
Great literature has been replaced with short articles and excerpts. Lessons are brief and include video, images, and interactive technology. Laptops are rarely out of sight and loosely monitored.
When I first began teaching, I would assign 40-60 math problems for independent practice. Now, a handful is the norm.
Today, students do far more projects, group work, discussion, research, and other, more active forms of learning—which aren’t bad in measured doses. However, they’ve replaced denser and more lasting methods.
This has allowed students to skate by from one grade to the next, and even earn high marks with absurdly poor reading and writing skills.
But what choice do teachers have? If you can’t compete with the lure of the online world, then you’re a dinosaur, right? You risk losing your students completely, even worse misbehavior, and nothing learned.
That’s the argument, anyway.
Here at SCM we have a different view. Instead of shortening and increasing stimulation, we believe in doing the opposite: Slow down, provide great lessons, push the envelop on independent work, and heal their damaged brains.
Yes, it takes exceptionally clear teaching and high-level content knowledge. It takes detailed modeling of behavioral and academic success. It takes gently pushing for more and longer and deeper.
It takes proving to students that great books, strong purpose, responsibility, and the confidence that comes with true academic skill and knowledge is far more meaningful, beautiful, and rewarding than TikTok or Subway Surfers.
No, this doesn’t mean that they’ll stop using their phones. It means that they’ll understand their place. It means that their eyes will open to the world around them.
Students appreciate and do better in a serious academic environment that will challenge them rather than one that capitulates to the jump-cut entertainment world and toxicity of social media.
Yes, even in this day and age.
So I encourage you to be bold and courageous. Take a stand, for them. Tell your students how it’s going to be because it’s best for them and don’t apologize.
Deep down they want it. They crave it. Because it’s far more aligned with our loftiest human desires than the mere biological hormones highjacked by Silicon Valley.
PS – If teaching causes you stress, check out my new book Unstressed: How to Teach Without Worry, Fear, and Anxiety.
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