circles + triangles of a classroom

Habits are the compound interest of improvement or sabotaging behavior. We dictate how we build these loops.

In a conversation with a founder in the San Francisco education market, she stated that more schools are repping students to create bad habits at scale vs. good habits. Here’s a scenario from a classroom.

Teacher: Students if x is divided by 4 and equals to, what’s the value of x?

Students: Reach over to their calculators and type the equation into their calculator.

Current education is creating cycles of dependency between technology and students. If students have a question, they immediately reach into their pocket, point their phone to their face to log in, tap their search engine, and write the question. In some cases, their using apps like Socratic, Photomath, and other image recognition softwares to instantly receive an answer to a complex question.

In scenario 1 we’re seeing that students can’t answer basic algebra problems without the use of a calculator. In another use case at the same school students are unable to type out email messages without the use of the auto-correct feature. These habits of dependency with technology create an aggregation of diminishing returns where students are satisfied in the short-term because they can retrieve the answer at speed; but are harming themselves in the long-term.

We’re coddling too many students and rewarding them for answers despite their lack of work. Any time a student wants an answer, they can ask the teacher, type into google, etc, and receive it within 5–10 seconds of the initial thought for assistance. The real world has these tools but at the velocity that the workforce is evolving, the rate at which employees have to make decisions, perform mental math, etc, we’re creating an overly technologically dependent society wherein these students won’t be able to live without these devices, causing utter disfunction in the long-term.

Students are dis-engaged when they don’t have their devices because they’re cognitively naked. Their technology is the catalyst that connects the neurons together and without it, students sit in a classroom unaware of the concepts being reviewed.

The short-term mindset of here’s the answer, the grade, the homework, the technology is overwhelmingly inhibiting student potential and human capital development and we’re creating mass swats of populations where students…