Better for school kids to spend more time with books and pens than laptops

The soaring promise of technology in the classroom has failed to deliver results while imposing great costs, says the founder of Bloomberg's financial computer system.

- Michael R. Bloomberg

Over the past two decades, school districts in the US have spent billions of taxpayer dollars equipping classrooms with laptops and other devices in hopes of preparing children for a digital future. The result? Students have fallen further behind on the skills they most need to succeed in careers: the three Rs plus a fourth—relationships.

Today, about 90 per cent of schools provide laptops or tablets to their students. Yet as students spend more time than ever on screens, social skills are deteriorating and test scores are near historic lows.

Just 28 per cent of eighth graders are proficient in mathematics and 30 per cent in reading. For 12th graders, the numbers are similarly dismal (24 per cent in maths and 37 per cent in reading, according to the most recently available scores). And US students have also fallen further behind their peers in other countries.

The push for laptops in classrooms came from technologists, think-tanks and government officials, who imagined that the devices would allow for curricula to be tailored around student needs, empowering them to learn at their own pace and raising achievement levels. It hasn't worked.

The push also came from another source: computer manufacturers. However well-intentioned they may be, they have a financial interest in promoting laptops in classrooms and have profited handsomely from it.