Stop Romanticizing School Before Screens

A recent Gothamist article reports on a bill introduced by Sen. Andrew Gounardes that would push New York classrooms to become more analog and limit technology use in schools. I understand the concern. Too much school tech has been poorly used. We have digital worksheets, screen-based test prep, low-quality apps, privacy issues, surveillance tools, and students clicking through tasks that were not meaningful in the first place.

But “make classrooms analog again” is the wrong answer.

The problem is not that school became too digital. Digital is a scapegoat for the real problem. Too often school was boring, passive, and disconnected long before students had smartphones, laptops, or AI. Technology gave students a place to turn when the classroom was not stimulating or relevant enough. 

I know because I was one of those students. I played the game of school, but I was checked out. Sometimes I was asleep. Usually I was just waiting for class to be over.

There is a myth that students paid attention before screens. Many of us who were in school then might disagree. Like me, students slept in class, daydreamed, stared out windows, doodled, passed notes, and whispered to friends. These actions may feel more human than digital distractions, but they served the same purpose: connection, humor, disengagement, or escape when class was not meaningful enough to hold attention.

This is not a new argument for me. Years ago, in Fix Boring Schools, Not Kids Who Are Bored, I wrote about students who were labeled distracted, hyperactive, or inattentive when the real issue was that school was not engaging them. I had lived that myself. I was labeled as incapable but after extensive testing at UCLA’s Fernald Child Study Center my diagnosis was boredom in school. The resolution having me skip a grade and placing me in a more challenging environment. 

We keep confusing compliance with learning. Sitting still is not engagement. A classroom without phones is not automatically a classroom where students are thinking. The nostalgia is also about achievement. There is a version of this story that suggests students were smarter, stronger readers, better writers, and more successful before they had access to screens. That does not hold up cleanly.

The data does not give us the neat story some want. NAEP long-term trend data shows a more complicated picture. Nine-year-olds in 2025 scored higher in reading and math than students did in the earliest assessments from the 1970s. Thirteen-year-olds in 2025 scored higher in math than in 1973, while reading was not significantly different from 1971. The status dropout rate was 15.0 percent in 1970 and 5.0 percent in 2022. The “students did better before screens” argument needs evidence, not vibes.

For decades, schools operated as if they had a monopoly on information and attention. The teacher had the lesson. The textbook had the content. The teacher’s guide had the correct answers. Students were expected to sit, receive, remember, and repeat.

That world is gone.

Students are no longer limited to the answer in the back of the book. They can access explanations, tutorials, experts, communities, and AI-supported help in seconds. The most valuable person in the room is no longer the one with the answer key. It is the one who helps students ask better questions, evaluate information, connect ideas, solve problems, and create something meaningful with what they learn.

A return to paper is the easy way out for adults, but it is not a serious learning strategy by itself. A worksheet does not become better because it is online. And it does not become better because it is back on paper. If the work is passive or meaningless, the format is not the fix. 

This is what I argued in Reverting to Pen & Paper Won’t Improve Learning. Better Learning Design Will and Laptops Did Not Take Away Their Brains. The School Model Did. The problem was never the device. The problem was the model built around it.

Yes, schools should stop buying every shiny platform a vendor sells. They should address privacy, surveillance, addictive design, and passive screen use. But a pencil is not automatically better than a keyboard. A printed book is not automatically more meaningful than an accessible digital text. A screen-free classroom is not automatically a better classroom.

This matters even more for accessibility. If learning is not digital, it is not fully accessible, translatable, or readable for a student who needs text enlarged, listened to, adjusted, organized, or supported. Exemptions are not the same as inclusion.

The better question is not how many minutes a student looked at a screen. The better question is what the student was doing. Were they doing low level activities such as completing digital worksheets, or were they doing more valuable learning activities such as interviewing someone, producing a podcast, analyzing data, translating materials, publishing writing, building a model, or collaborating beyond the classroom? Different activities have different learning value and that matters more than time on a screen. 

Strong learning models existed long before today’s devices. In 5 Innovative School Models You Might Not Know, I wrote about approaches that put students, interests, strengths, and authentic work at the center. Tools should support that kind of learning.

Bad edtech is a real problem. The answer is not to get rid of all tech. It’s to evaluate the tools. Privacy is a real problem. So improve privacy protections. AI misuse is a problem. So teach AI literacy and responsible use. But don’t pretend paper magically fixes school. 

Children need movement, conversation, play, collaboration, hands-on work, outdoor learning, art, music, reading, writing, and relationships. They also need to learn in a world where technology is real.

The answer is not to “make classrooms analog again.” The better response is to make classrooms meaningful again, with learning worth paying attention to.