The sec­ond pro­pos­al with health im­pli­ca­tions that the new Gov­ern­ment has brought back is the “Com­put­er Grant.” This is an at­trac­tive pro­pos­al that just some years ago, few would have op­posed. Af­ter all, every­one seems to be say­ing that the fu­ture of jobs, if not of civil­i­sa­tion, lies some­where in­side the mys­ter­ies of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy.

What on Earth could be wrong with giv­ing school chil­dren com­put­ers? It should make them tech-savvy and that is good, right?

Well, it’s been over 15 years that ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems have been work­ing with com­put­ers, in­clud­ing smart­phones, in class­rooms in dif­fer­ent coun­tries over the world, and the re­sults are not good.

One coun­try, Swe­den, which has one of the most im­pres­sive and suc­cess­ful ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tems, has just banned com­put­ers from its class­rooms. Swe­den be­gan its im­ple­men­ta­tion of free com­put­ers for school chil­dren in 2009. The re­sults have been poor and blamed on the overuse of screens dur­ing school lessons, with stu­dents falling be­hind in core sub­jects.

For ex­am­ple, af­ter years of steady progress to the top of the as­sess­ments, there’s been a steady de­cline in Swe­den’s po­si­tion in the Progress in In­ter­na­tion­al Read­ing Lit­er­a­cy Study (PIRLS) be­tween 2016 and 2021. In 2016, Swedish fourth graders av­er­aged 555 points. In 2021, 544. That’s a re­ver­sal of what was hap­pen­ing be­fore class com­put­ers.

Last Au­gust, Swe­den’s Karolin­s­ka In­sti­tute, a high­ly re­spect­ed med­ical school, de­clared that, “There’s clear sci­en­tif­ic ev­i­dence that dig­i­tal tools im­pair rather than en­hance stu­dent learn­ing. We be­lieve the fo­cus should re­turn to ac­quir­ing knowl­edge through print­ed text­books and teacher ex­per­tise.”

The Swedish gov­ern­ment is so con­cerned that they in­vest­ed 50 mil­lion pounds ster­ling to buy books for schools in 2023 and an­oth­er 50 mil­lion to be spent an­nu­al­ly in 2024 and 2025 to speed up the re­turn of text­books.

It’s not on­ly a Swedish thing. Turns out that the de­cline in test scores since 2021, is hap­pen­ing across dozens of coun­tries that par­tic­i­pate in PISA (Pro­gramme for In­ter­na­tion­al Stu­dent As­sess­ment) and this has been re­lat­ed to the sud­den ap­pear­ance of a com­put­er on every stu­dent’s desk. This has noth­ing to do with the dis­as­ter that screen-re­liant ed­u­ca­tion dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down had on chil­dren’s learn­ing. It re­lates to but an­te­dates that by 10 years.

While com­put­ers cer­tain­ly sup­port aca­d­e­m­ic learn­ing which is cen­tral to ed­u­ca­tion, it is not the on­ly com­po­nent. EdTech needs to sup­port the oth­er pur­pos­es of an ed­u­ca­tion, the so­cio-emo­tion­al and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment as well as learn­ing to live to­geth­er with oth­ers and with tech­nol­o­gy.

It seems the dis­tract­ing ef­fects of a com­put­er on a child’s desk al­most al­ways out­weigh what­ev­er ed­u­ca­tion­al ben­e­fits are promised by adults who do not think or learn like chil­dren. Our minds are al­ready shaped, theirs still need ex­er­cise. Chil­dren do not need smart­phones and com­put­ers and now AI to solve their prob­lems, they need to solve them them­selves, they need to think for them­selves so that they can learn to think crit­i­cal­ly.

Fac­ing dis­com­fort is what shapes minds and char­ac­ters. Chil­dren should not be de­prived of that op­por­tu­ni­ty by putting com­put­ers, phones and AI in their hands while they are sup­posed to be de­vel­op­ing their crit­i­cal think­ing skills.

There seems to be some­thing ex­cep­tion­al about the tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of teach­ing, read­ing and writ­ing which should not be writ­ten off by glossy com­put­er pic­tures or ease of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. It al­so seems that the younger the child the less learn­ing should be about screens and com­put­ers.

There are al­so the un­healthy side ef­fects of overuse of screens. Short-sight­ed­ness has in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly all over the world. In South Ko­rea in 2014, my­opia was found in 52% of young adults. It’s now at 59% and in Seoul, it’s at 96% of 19-year-old men. Sleep pat­terns are al­tered, with the re­sult­ing dis­rup­tion of learn­ing in class and overuse of screen time caus­es over­weight chil­dren.

It al­so caus­es a strange, new phe­nom­e­non, ‘of­fice ar­ro­gance’.

You see it hap­pen­ing with some younger par­ents who grew up with smart­phones. They come in­to the of­fice and are con­vinced, for ex­am­ple, that for­mu­la is as good as breast­milk or that vac­ci­na­tions are un­nec­es­sary. They are not com­ing to dis­cuss their opin­ions. They have done their re­search, mean­ing they have con­sult­ed Google for an hour and they know! Re­search and ex­pe­ri­ence of years, day in day out of seek­ing the truth, means noth­ing to them. Google, or worse, AI, has spo­ken, cho­sen the ref­er­ences they are look­ing for to sup­port their be­liefs, and that’s that.

Tech­nol­o­gy can be use­ful if prop­er­ly used by fa­cil­i­tat­ing ed­u­ca­tion that teach­es and re­vi­talis­es hu­man val­ues, strength­ens hu­man re­la­tion­ships and up­holds hu­man rights.

Com­put­ers are un­doubt­ed­ly use­ful for teach­ing, the old­er the stu­dent the bet­ter, but their place in over­all school learn­ing has yet to be de­fined.