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By Manuela Moritz

25 January 2018

All around the world countries are raising the question “How do we prepare our children for the skills they will need in future?”

Many public education systems in the world are undergoing reforms, but the fact that it’s hard to anticipate what the economy will look like in the future also impacts the preparation of students for this global shift. AI and human workforce replacement through robots are two of the most discussed topics nowadays, and naturally public education needs to adapt and better prepare students to face the new paradigms which are coming along with new era of digital economy. Indeed, this shift brings many challenges and we should first take a step back to ask the two following questions: What are these required ‘skills of the future’, and is learning with the support of technology more efficient in developing them or rather counterproductive?

Creativity: is one of the most frequently mentioned human skill, which AI apparently cannot replace. A robot can recognise and analyse existing data and matter, but it cannot have a unique creative mind and imagination with the ability to invent something that does not exist yet. Being creative also includes being able to practice divergent thinking, which is described by the capacity to see numerous possibilities in interpreting and answering a question. This thinking approach is also a form of critical thinking and problem-solving, which also compose part of the must-have list of the, so called, 21st century skills. These three skills can be applied to judgement practices, such as in expected future jobs including technological management, conflict resolution, and negotiation for example.

In the opinion of many technology experts, creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving are must-haves for those who want to engage with and capitalize on technological change.

As most people will probably be dealing with technology at least in their workplace in the near future, isn’t it obvious to start practicing by using tech to support children’s learning in the classroom? It’s not obvious at all for the tech executives of Silicon Valley.

It is a known fact that Silicon Valley tech executives prefer to put their children in schools that don’t use technology. Silicon Valley even hosts its own Waldorf school within its headquarters. It is one of the 160+ Waldorf schools across the United States that shun the use of technology in their curricula.

The parents endorsing this approach question the benefit of computers in facilitating learning and argue that they rather inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and decrease attention spans.

They choose teaching philosophies focused on physical activity and learning through creative, hands-on manual tasks. Alan Eagle (Google director) and many of his colleagues from Silicon Valley are convinced that activities such as knitting and chopping food in fractions are efficient enough to help children in developing problem-solving, patterning, math skills and coordination. As pointed out by numerous articles and studies those are the most needed skills for the future economy. One of the arguments used by Eagle is that it is very easy to learn digital skills, and that therefore there is no need for his children to learn them before they reach the age of seventeen. The research of the last 20 to 30 year has been controversial, because it indicates cause for both optimism and concern depending on different factors, such as content of the technology, context in which it immerses the user, and development stage of the user. The debate around the topic of whether technology in schools leads to better test results or other measurable benefits for child development remains mostly subjective and related to parental personal opinions. A factor leading to this form of positioning might be a lack of scientific quantitative descriptions of forms of technology as opposed to qualitative descriptions based upon surface characteristics, such as a 10 years long study conducted by Apple Computer, Inc. in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) project Apple Computer, Inc. conducted 10 years of data gathering from 1985 to 1995 in collaboration with universities and public schools to investigate the results of teachers and children routinely using technology as a learning support.

In these studies, it was found that a technology-rich classroom allows and leverages a self-paced learning experience for the students and therefore accelerates individual learning outcomes.

Another frequently used qualitative argument is that in traditional teaching (lecturing, working from a textbook, and taking notes, for example), students can easily fall into a passive role. However, when technology is involved, students are more likely to be attentive and engaged in learning due to the fact that they have to click buttons, think out problems, and manipulating tools in order to achieve a goal. Hence, educational technology can improve focus among students and it caters to both students who learn autonomously, as well as to those who like to learn collaboratively.

As a counterpart to that, one of Silicon Valley’s executives states that “learning is a human experience, and technology is a distraction when it comes to reading, doing arithmetic and critical thinking.” Another statement that follows is “No technological tool made by human beings can achieve as much as the interest of a teacher and the trust of the child.”

In a nutshell, what the Silicon Valley parents are avoiding, is that their children’s cognitive abilities get shaped by an interaction with technology before they grasp its full implications.

They claim that their children should only start using tech when they are able to have a deeper understanding of its meaning, functions and impact on people and the world.

It is a strategy to foster their children’s ability to look at the world and technology from a creator’s/innovator’s perspective, approaching it from an outside, non-consumer angle.

What is to conclude from this controversy is that the first step towards improving education as a whole is realizing that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all education’ that will work for every student and that education should be provided in such ways, that it covers the primary need of developing the right skills for children to be ready to deal with complexity.

Technology has a multi-faceted nature, and therefore its impact on child development is extremely complex and multi-sided. Studies have shown that technology does have a set of tools that are able to cause profound transformations in human behavior. Therefore, it is important to define how to purposefully direct this powerful capability to lead to desired outcomes.

Schools should invest more in teacher trainings dedicated to learning how to continuously evaluate the skill development outcomes related to the technology they are using, how much of it each child uses, and for how long.

That is ultimately one of the keys to providing children with a non-excessive amount of technology in their formal education.

References:

Matt Richtel. A Silicon Valley School that doesn’t compute. 2011. From: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html

Daphne Bavelier, C. Shawn Green, Matthew W. G. Dye. Children, wired - for better or for worse. 2010. Neuron. 2010 Sep 9; 67(5): 692–701. From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170902/

Judith Haymore Sandholtz. Teaching with Technology: Creating Student-Centered Classrooms. 1997. Teachers College: New York.

Lorenzo Ravagli. Waldorf education in Silicon Valley. 2012. From: http://www.erziehungskunst.de/en/article/spotlight/waldorf-education-in-silicon-valley/