Banning Pencils?
In his editorial, A Proposal for Banning Pencils, Doug Johnson deftly describes many schools’ flawed rationale for banning emerging technologies (cell phones, social networking, etc…) using a metaphorical example, banning pencils. He writes:
“When it comes to ‘technology’ use in schools, every responsible educator’s first concerns should be student safety and educational suitability. I am suggesting that we ban one of the most potentially harmful technologies of all—the pencil. We must eliminate them from schools because:
- A student might use a pencil to poke out the eye of another student.
- A student might write a dirty word or, worse yet, a threatening note to another student, with a pencil.
- One student might have a mechanical pencil, making those with wooden ones feel bad.
- The pencil might get stolen.
- Pencils break and need repairing all the time.
- Kids who have pencils might doodle instead of working on their assignments or listening to the teacher.
Oh, sure, kids might actually use a pencil to take notes or compose a paper- but really, what’s the chance of that?”
Doug’s tongue-in-cheek writing highlights a very real issue in educational technology: Educators, whether they are teachers or administrators, often make instructional/policy decisions about including emerging technologies in schools based on the degree to which students can abuse and misuse the tools. According to the article, the consequence of making snap judgements based on “abuse” is that education becomes more irrelevant for students, it fosters an increasingly larger divide between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants,” and it squanders meaningful learning opportunities.
I agree with Doug’s assertion that abuse rationales lead to uninformed choices when it comes to banning certain types of technologies. Yes, schools need to be aware of the pitfalls of new technologies in students’ hands, but the potential harm should not be the driving force that negates a tool’s use. However, considering curricular and pedagogical objectives, examining possible affordances, and recognizing drawbacks with emerging technologies all provide a more robust justification. Certainly, I’m missing quite a few additional key issues.
What are the crucial questions that schools need to ask when considering whether to adopt or ban a controversial piece of technology? How can schools effectively weigh the drawbacks and affordances of emerging technologies when the curricular/pedagogical benefits are often unrecognizable, misunderstood, or unrealized?
Please post your questions and thoughts to this post. Jennifer Roland, editor of ISTE’s The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology, will be reading your comments in preparation for a guest post at http://edfoc.us about this topic on September 25th. Additionally, she and I will pick one comment that reflects considerable thought and insight, and that person will receive a free copy of The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology: Selections from Volumes 31-35.
Jennifer Roland is a writer living in the Portland, Oregon, area. She holds bachelor’s degrees in magazine journalism and political science from the University of Oregon. Her education also focused on history, economics, linguistics, and educational policy and management. Before embarking on her freelance career, she was a staff member at ISTE. Jennifer blogs about ed tech at http://edtechjen.com and about writing at http://jennifer-roland.com/blog.
The Best of Learning & Leading with Technology: Selections from Volumes 31-35
Edited by Jennifer Roland
ISTE’s flagship magazine, Learning & Leading with Technology, is where the organization’s members and industry experts share and discuss the latest and greatest in using technology to enhance education. This collection, assembled by former L&L senior editor Jennifer Roland, includes the very best articles from 2003-2008. Along with the articles as they originally appeared in the magazine, the book includes commentary and context introducing the articles as well as short essays from the original authors, who further discuss the issues and topics of their articles and how they’ve affected the ed tech world.
September 12th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
As a society, if we are putting away the pencil in favor of a more modern approach to facilitating the instructional process, then I believe we need to focus on the following aspects of digital literacy: defining digitial literacy, developing pedagogical best practices, implementing digital literacy standards for content, teach and learning, as well as assessment rubrics. These basic areas should be a given in any educational reform initiative. Identifying and teaching critical thinking skills also plays an essential role in this new paradigm for 21st Century education. Finally, effective leadership at all levels of the process is a necessary ingredient to successfully leverage achievement, regardless of the practice being implemented.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
This is a great question, Willy, and it seems to me the answer (or at least the approach) is quite complex. I was a school teacher for eight years, and the “potential abuse” issue arose at least once, and usually more, during each of those years. In many cases, it was not even directed at technology. Proposed changes to the playground were met with concerns about child safety. Reading incentives were met with the possibility that children could “game” the system just to get the rewards. Shorter lunch breaks were met with worry that children would eat too fast. Longer lunch breaks were met with concern that children would misbehave once they were done eating. And yes, technology was not exempt from the worry worts. Children might break, abuse or get distracted by new gadgets in the classroom. This knee-jerk response among teachers did not emerge with the arrival of digital technologies. In fact, Socrates opposed printed text because he believed it would make students weak minded, since they no longer had to memorize everything.
In my dissertation research, I studied a similar issue, that of student engagement with technology. Like the technology-abuse argument, this has been a concern in education since before the era of the modern school (if we can call it that). One of my findings was that, in general, students were engaged with the technology, but their engagement was manifested in very different ways and for different reasons. The tool was the same for each student, but the way each student used the tool to express knowledge, and the aspects of the tool students liked, varied greatly across the participants.
I think this phenomenon of “diversity of use” applies to teachers as well, although in the context of this discussion maybe we should call it “diversity of resistance.” I recently read a 1990 article from the Washington Post written by Malcolm Gladwell, where he talked about how some professions peak in creativity earlier than in others. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.” This is actually true of physicists, but not of astronomers, who make the greatest contributions, on average, at 45. If in fact there is a similar creative pattern in the teaching profession, then perhaps this might explain some of the resistance to digital tools.
I don’t have any data to support this, but I’m curious about which teachers are resisting these tools. Is it the new teacher who is overwhelmed with the responsibility of managing a class on his or her own and wants to reduce as many distractions as possible? Is it the mid-career teacher who is just beginning to feel like he or she has a handle on things and doesn’t want to upset the balance? Maybe it’s the late-career teacher who just wants to avoid drama until he or she retires? The truth is, it’s probably teachers at every point along the career continuum who are making the “potential for abuse” claims. And if this is true, then a different strategy will be needed to help reduce the uncertainty among each group. As teachers progress through their careers, their areas for needed professional development don’t get reduced; they simply change. New teachers may need help with planning and classroom management, mid-career teachers may need assistance integrating the technology into their existing pedagogies, and late-career teachers may need early retirement (just kidding). Perhaps all they need is to observe someone using technology well, as well as some support with the tools themselves.
In education, we talk a lot about differentiating instruction for students, yet teacher professional development is rarely, if ever, differentiated based on where teachers are in their careers, background with technology or teaching style. Perhaps a place to start is to thoughtfully consider the different reasons for teachers’ resistance to technology and meet them wherever they are.
September 13th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Additional research-based comments, pertinent to this discussion, on the relevance and challenges of New Media Literacy can be accessed via my blog post at http://www.iste-community.org/profiles/blogs/new-media-literacy
September 17th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Willy,
I have not read the other comments as yet, but I took the opportunity of your post and challenge to lay out a few thoughts on process and mindset.
http://thenetwork.typepad.com/architectureofideas/2009/09/that-which-i-do-not-know.html
September 17th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
My thinking about Doug Johnson’s “A Proposal for Banning Pencils” took a frightening turn. I’ve lost sleep over it, and I’m not one to lose sleep. I’m posting as much to “write myself down” as anything else. The problem I have with reductio ad absurdum pieces, when I read them, when I write them and when I speak them, is that whomever they’re directed toward has an easy out. They’re simply able to laugh them off, not take them too seriously, walk away without too much afterthought.
Ban. That’s my problem. Ban. It’s a powerful, frightening concept, packed into such an elementary word. The mentality behind it, most often ignorant and fear-based, has the power to ruin, even end lives. We’re the lucky ones. We don’t have to tolerate its usage too much. But consider the world around us. Consider those struggling against bans imposed upon them. Consider those living with bans against their religion, their sexuality, their will to lead a better life, their very freedom. To piggyback on some of Doug Johnson’s thinking, these are, after all, tools that people might misuse and abuse. If you’re struggling to think of a society in which banning ran amok, and the horrific consequences it’s had on innocent lives, just pause a moment to remember our sad anniversary, just passed.
My best classrooms were always microcosmic democracies. If you take to heart, as I do, Churchill’s view that democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else, then you’ll understand that there’s no perfect, and especially no easy way to govern a classroom. Throw in the great number of disruptive technologies in the hands of our students, and you’ll understand some teachers’, some administrators’ and some districts’ hesitancy toward adopting higher usage of technology.
Still, that’s no excuse. If technology is the horse and the education is the plow, that’s not just putting the plow before the horse, that’s shooting the horse and then wondering why the plow just sits there. The plow’s become irrelevant. Education isn’t a goal, and certainly – as things are – not an awesome goal that we need to keep under wraps, to keep protected in its current form. Education is a tool that needs to be used, worked with, experimented with, worn and torn to the point of breaking. We’ve got technology, and technology is the tool to fix education. So why not use it?
If creating a microcosmic democracy is your job, and you’d like to, say, use your students’ cell phone texting feature to run online polls you’ve created as part of your instruction, what’s wrong with saying to them, “I’ve got this idea to use cell phones in class. It’s all educationally based, so don’t think we’re going to have a cell phone party in here. To make it happen, I’ll clear it with all the people I’ve got to clear it with. What I want you to do is think of a set of guidelines to follow so that once we get them in here, it’s not a complete disaster. Here’s the whiteboard, and here’s the marker. Who’d like to be the scribe?” From my experience, students always seem to hold themselves to more rigorous standards than those I’ve silently framed up beforehand.
Three simple, yet crucial questions that schools need to ask when considering whether to adopt or ban a controversial piece of technology are these: Can the students handle it in a democratic fashion? Can they monitor themselves? Can they adjust when things aren’t working well? It’s the whole checks and balances thing. Schools can weigh neither drawbacks nor benefits if technology isn’t in use. Once it is, the curricular/pedagogical benefits are clearly recognizable, understood, and realized.
Causing my sleep loss, and because I don’t already have enough to read, I picked up Orwell’s 1984 to re-read for the first time in 25 years. Of course, nothing’s changed in the book since then. However, the technological explosion over the past two-and-a-half decades makes Orwell’s frightening narrative more relevant now than ever. Forget digital divides. Forget digital natives and digital immigrants. Forget squandering meaningful learning opportunities. If you’re an educator, please heed my closing admonitions. First, technology is happening whether we’re prepared for it or not. Get current. It doesn’t take much. It’s fun. And second, as educators we’re duty bound to place the tool of technology firmly in the grasp of the masses we teach. If we don’t, it could cease to become a tool in the hands of everyone and quietly become a weapon in the hands of a self-selected few.
September 28th, 2009 at 8:21 am
Congratulations to Curby, winner of the L&L book. Jennifer and I really liked all of the comments!
September 28th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Thanks to all of you for leaving such well-thought-out comments. You gave me plenty of food for thought!
And congratulations to Curby. Please email your address to me at jennifer AT jennifer-roland.com so I can send you your copy of the book. I hope you enjoy it.
October 13th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I agree with Mastrions comment. Banning pencils is ridiculous. if you can’t come to a point with your students that you can trust them to use a technology and you keep taking them all away, you will end up with kids sitting in an empty room listening to you talk and that’s no way to learn. Pencils are a necessity; I personally, love them. Trust is a good way to establish relationship with kids, and I think trusting them with a pencil could be an excellent place to start
October 27th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
[...] written in 2006 and reviewed on the blog, edfocus, just this fall. Mastrion’s response to Banning Pencils? (scroll down to the comments on the post) is enlightening. While I don’t really agree [...]