Magnus Taylor is a Research Intern at Civitas

The era of technological determinism in the education sector is at last being called into question, although only by some. While many European countries, especially the Nordics who led the charge on ‘Edtech’, are now becoming  digitally minimalist in their classrooms, Britain is still pressing forward with putting more and more technology into our classrooms. As the Civitas report  argues, Britain’s schools should instead be trying to wean themselves off their dependence on technology.

This Labour Government claims to be concerned about the danger screentime poses, especially to children, with it  earlier this year. Yet, when it comes to actual lessons and teaching, the government has fallen for ‘big tech’ claims when it comes to the supposed benefits of ‘Edtech’. The government’s own  Technology in Schools Survey, seems to unquestioningly accept the belief that technology ought to be taken up as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

Civitas’ report, however, does not advocate for a Luddite response. Rather, it calls for ‘analogue schools’. In other words: where technology is indubitably useful, then it should be used; where it is not, it should not.

Not heeding this school of thought, the government survey revealed a disturbing trend of many secondary school leaders launching headlong into the current of AI optimism as it was revealed that 23 per cent plan to  invest in generative AI tools for pupils. Whilst the benefits of AI should be used in areas where it makes an overtly beneficial impact, such as reducing the time teachers spend on administration, its use by students themselves is another matter entirely.

The Civitas report points to a raft of ways in which students using AI as a shortcut can have negative outcomes. Perhaps the most important one is that, by using AI to summarise and simplify text, children will never develop the essential skill of engaging deeply with texts and formulating their own opinions on them.

These issues are not at all helped by the fact that the  government’s advice on AI use in schools, which is now over a year old, does not provide much direction nor any expectations whatsoever. Indeed, the advice effectively  leaves it in the hands of individual school leaderships to try and steer through the tumult brought on by AI.

The concept of ‘analogue schools’, by contrast, would see the use of technology brought down dramatically at school. Of course, computers would still be used in ICT and the sciences, but their necessity in many humanities and the arts is much more questionable, even more so when the types of devices used are similarly questionable.

There has been an uptick in the provision and use of tablets and other such devices by schools. Compared to standard desktops and laptops, the use of these tablet devices is symbolic of the lazy assumption that technology in education is invariably beneficial, and so children must be introduced to technology as early as possible.

The most uncertain of these sorts of arguments follows the lines that using such technology will help children later in their professional lives. This train of thought fails to realise that the vast majority of devices used in the corporate world are not touch-sensitive and that it is far more common to see a standard desktop and laptop in an office than a tablet.

Rather than hoping an abundant time spent with technology across all subjects will breed technological competency in children, it would be better to focus on how the ICT curriculum could be adjusted to make teaching about technology more thoughtful, and possibly more directly applicable to workplace applications.

The school phone ban has also shown that the government is out of its depth when it comes to confronting the problems posed by a digital childhood. Whilst the phone ban is a step in the right direction on the surface, the accompanying government guidance to schools on how to implement the ban does not go far enough to maximise the chances of the ban having positive effects.

This government guidance only briefly dwells on the importance of trying to  engage parents to reinforce the ban at home and discuss why limiting screentime is so important for children. Again, this is a step in the right direction, but again it does not go far enough. As the report argues, formalising this engagement with parents into ‘covenants’ between parent and school, which could include discussions as to when a child first receives a smartphone, would go a long way in making the mobile phone ban more effective.

A reversion to analogue should not be seen as a regression, but rather a return to what is tried and tested. This new report from Civitas recognises the utility of learning from the past to help inform current education policy, echoing an earlier Civitas  calling for a return to Classical Liberal Education.

Adopting a cautious approach at this early stage in the development of AI does not however preclude the wider use of technology in schools in the future. At a time when our control over our own technological creations is seemingly at its weakest, the most prudent course of action would be to end blind adoption, considering when to return to pen and paper teaching and, at what points, we must call upon technology.