Learning management systems are bad for K-12
Plus: Becoming boring, line drawing, and more
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here are this week’s five items for you.
1. A take I haven’t written elsewhere
Learning management systems are bad for K-12
The last two weeks of August and first two weeks of September are always a time in which editors say to one another, Well, we could do something on education. And in the age of ChatGPT, it seems at least 30 percent of that something must be angst about students cheating on their homework using generative AI.
A recent significant contribution to the genre, at The Atlantic, recommends English teachers focus on reading skills more than writing:
[H]eading into the first full school year under our new robot overlords, I find myself feeling surprisingly buoyant. Much of what English teachers have been expected to do for decades—make students write essays—is no longer useful. Goodbye and good riddance.
But AI cannot tear apart what makes teaching meaningful and potentially life-changing to students: the communal experience of being in a classroom. Starting this year, the center of gravity in my classroom is not teaching writing as an “essential skill” that all students need to master; it’s teaching reading.
Last year, I predicted that ChatGPT would mark the end of high-school English. Instead, we might already be witnessing its rebirth.
Greater attention to reading skills is a good thing. But it may come as no surprise that I do not think we should toss away essay writing this easily.
Most people will never be professional writers, nor should they try to be. Yet being able to communicate at length, with reasonable coherence, in text is a valuable skill for adult life and most jobs, including jobs that are not white collar.
Happily, it is still wholly possible to guarantee that student writing is not AI-generated, and even the least tech-savvy teachers and most underfunded schools can afford this simple solution: Make kids write with their hands. If you want to be extra sure, make them do it while you look at them in the classroom.
The Atlantic essay works its way to something like this recommendation, describing a plan in which students will “respond to prompts in a spiral notebook; after a couple of weeks, they’ll take that writing and turn it into something to submit.” It’s sandwiched between a lot of critique of “the academic essay,” the description of which1 sounds like basic persuasive writing that high school students should, in fact, practice. But still, credit where it’s due: In my observation, most articles on this subject never reach this obvious proposal.
I suspect that’s significantly because of the new ubiquity of the online learning management system (LMS). Originally designed for higher education, the LMS became commonplace in American public schools during the pandemic and shows no sign of ceding any territory claimed. Here are some poll results on the subject from Education Week this time last year:
This graph was shared in an article subsection titled, “There’s no going back.”
That’s worrisome if true, because learning management systems are bad and unnecessary in K-12 contexts. I know they have their conveniences—I used one in grad school and see their value for adult students, especially those doing asynchronous distance learning around full-time jobs. But they change foundational assumptions about how primary and secondary education functions, and they do so in a deleterious way.
Look at that graph above. Only “devices” gets an outright majority, but with the possible (but unlikely) exception of “educational games,” everything on the list happens on a device. Most of it would take place within an LMS.
I’ve mentioned here before that I wanted to report a piece about smartphones in schools. My theory was that there are a lot of official bans on nonacademic phone use in schools but also a lot of teachers not only permitting but functionally requiring personal smartphone use in class or to complete homework.
After interviewing a number of teachers, though, I’m not sure the piece will move forward. My theory isn’t disproved, per se. It’s just that this kind of small-scale, off-books phone policy is nearly irrelevant once a school adopts an LMS.
For with an LMS in place, no matter how much cell phones are “banned,” smartphones—with an internet connection that can come with you to soccer practice and ballet and every other after-school activity—will forever be the homework tool of choice. Device use will always be the default. It will be so much the default that you’ll forget you can prevent AI cheating with a pencil.
2. What I'm reading this week
on the obligations of communal life and the delayed consequences of rejecting them while you are young and strong:
Personal freedom is great for the young, fit, and eccentric, not only because it permits them to ‘live their best lives,’ but also because it allows them to create wealth. [...]
But there is a trade off. At a societal level, we can be rich, or we can be communitarian. I don’t think we can be both—at least, not for long. The Baby Boomers came closest to enjoying both simultaneously, but only because they were born during an ideological changing of the guard. They enjoyed the high trust, family-centric culture cultivated by their parents and grandparents, and then got to enjoy the youthful rejection of all of that culture’s downsides. [...]
I have bad news on this front: … You cannot promote a culture of optionality, and then also expect people to choose you when you become a dull and onerous option. You cannot buy solitude when it suits you, and then try and buy back company when it does not, because company of the sincere and intimate kind cannot be bought. [...]
It’s fun to prioritise optionality when you’re young. But all of us, eventually, will become the old, sick, boring option.
Read the rest here.
3. A recommendation
“Shadow on the sun,” by Sam Kriss for The Lamp Magazine earlier this year. It’s a long read about a sprawling Florida retirement community and themes related to the Perry essay above. Settle in for half an hour and go on a wild ride.
4. Recent work
In this house we believe creeds are for church, not politics | Christianity Today
The China paradox | Defense Priorities (newsletter)
short list due to book reviews coming soon! I have a (probably too ambitious, perhaps in need of modification) plan to do four in the next six weeks
5. Miscellaneous
These line drawing videos are my new favorite thing to watch.
“First you make a claim, then you provide evidence for that claim, then you explain how that evidence does indeed support your claim … ”
The LMS/Smartphone connection is something I hadn’t considered, but makes a ton of sense. Even if it doesn’t make a dent in AI use or the greater learning infrastructure being mediated by devices, do you still think there’s value with banning smart phones w/r/y social media and other learning distractions? It may not be the magic cure all, but it might still make a worthwhile difference