$30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents • Hacker News Board

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#221

Post by seanicus » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #100

hedora wrote: post #15

I’m not convinced laptops were as big an issue as intentionally sabotaging the US educational system with things like No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Are Gen-Z folks overseas as screwed as Americans, and is there a correlation between academic performance and classroom laptops?

Common core was a thing when my kids were in school, so I “did my research.” A number of states had published their CC standards online, so it was easy to figure out. The standards looked quite similar to what I learned as a kid, give or take a couple of topics. It’s actually quite puzzling to me what the controversy is. It may be a bunch of political hoopla with no underlying substance. On the other hand, I think th…

Any recommendations for how to approach K-12 math teaching? Got some (very) little ones and doing our best but both parents are definitely more humanities-brained

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#222

Post by gilbetron » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

I have a 17 year old High School Junior, so I'm in the depths of the modern education system. Plus I had a brother that was a Professor of Education Technology. Plus, shocking on HN, I'm deep in tech myself.

I have mixed feelings on all this. The education system largely seems a bit better than when I was in school, however the impetus to learn has to be entirely provided by the parent (or innately by the rare student). Socially, it is a big problem because of phones, kids don't interact face-to-face nearly as much, as they can easily escape into the phone world.

But laptops? They seem fine, largely a positive, probably worth the cost? I'm undoubtedly far more aware of what and how my son does in school than my parents were. Teachers seem to use whatever works best, and there are lazy teacher and great teachers. The great ones use tech to great effect. One of my son's worst teachers didn't let them use laptops and did everything with paper, and she was terrible. Tech isn't a magic cure, but neither is paper!

I know my son is a better thinker, more informed, knows much more about life, history and science then I did at his age. If he wants to know something he can dig into it and learn what he wants. I had to bike up to the library and pray they had a decent book on the subject (they rarely did).

All that being said, AI is a big threat, but again, it will be a big differentiator. Those that want to learn we'll accelerate away from those that don't.

In many ways I feel like my son is on the proverbial last chopper out of 'Nam, when it comes to the public school system.

Of course, it also feels like going from the frying pan into the fire with the state of the world, but that's another topic.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#223

Post by eudamoniac » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

japhyr wrote: post #16

telman17 wrote: post #11

This article tries to put the blame on laptops when the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class, whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class, and teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down…

> the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class I was a middle school and high school math and science teacher from 1994 through 2019. I watched the advent of internet in schools, then desktop computers in classrooms, and finally smartphones in students' hands. I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not…

I'm not that old. "Just ban phones" worked perfectly fine when I was in high school in 2010. "Just ban cigarettes" also worked, and no one was smoking in the classroom. It's not a hard problem; the administration just refuses to solve it.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#224

Post by eudamoniac » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

bubblewand wrote: post #59

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier. >teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" if after laptops there is a worse…

> you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier No stats, but it’s extremely real. I know lots of teachers. Parents who flip shit if their kids can’t answer their texts while in class are common. Parents who call their kids in class just to chat are less common, but not as one-in-a-million as you’d think. The attitude you (I’m assuming) and I were raised with, when it comes to school, is less universal than you pe…

I've never understood something about this phenomenon: why does the school care if the parent flips a shit? What power does the parent actually have in a public school? I always thought it would make more sense for the principal/teacher to give the parent the middle finger in this scenario, but is there some reason I'm unaware of for why that is not realistic?

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#225

Post by auntlydiahere » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

I think a lot of the problem comes from the fact that the media/content is very visually biased these days, so when our children are exposed to it, they don't use the same parts of the brain that their parents used to use when reading and handwriting text. Visual content is more emotional than written content and doesn't process the same in the brain. If they would still keep laptops but bias it towards text content and still require handwriting and deliberate processes. Maybe it would help a bit. Throwing out technology is not an answer in an advancing world. Smells like "a handmaid's tale" to me.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#226

Post by lelanthran » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #196

lelanthran wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" Yeah, but when a kid opens a textbook there aren't a bunch of distractions designed by professional scientists to manipulate the user into more engagement. That, alone, is enough for me to wish that study devices (laptops, tablets, whatever) were locked down with only…

are you agreeing with me that laptops are probably worse than the books? Because it seems like your post are is rhetorically structured as a disagreement while reifying my main point. Which is somewhat weird.

> are you agreeing with me that laptops are probably worse than the books? Because it seems like your post are is rhetorically structured as a disagreement while reifying my main point. Which is somewhat weird.

Let me clarify - laptops/phones/tablets are objectively worse than books, because the intended design is to drive engagement, and not (as with books) to present learning material!

The fact that there may be a good teacher, a bad teacher, or no teacher at all is, frankly, irrelevant.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#227

Post by OkayPhysicist » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #202

nativeit wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could pay teachers even half of the median salary for HN users, and then see if outcomes improve?

And when the outcomes don't improve because money isn't magical, we could double the salaries again! And again! Seriously, how do you think that will work? Are you suggesting that the teachers could improve outcomes now, but are holding out as some sort of negotiation leverage? Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network tech…

> Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network technicians and underwater welders because they need that half-median software income?

That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well correlated with being good at any task. When we talk about intellectual tasks, we call this IQ, when we talk about physical feats we call this athleticism, and when we talk about social maneuvering, we call it charisma. And all three of those are positively correlated.

With that in mind, it's not at all unreasonable to believe that somebody who would make a great teacher (or at least a substantially better than average teacher) might have other aptitudes that we choose to reward more, even if they'd be relatively much better at teaching. Right now, you'd have to take a ~$50,000 pay cut to choose to be the highest paid teacher in the median California school district compared to being a median Californian software developer.

It's like any other job. If I'm offering $80,000 a year for software developers in CA, I might find a few talented people overlooked by the rest of the job market, or someone exceptionally stoked to work at my particular company, but I'm far more likely to end up with someone well below mediocrity.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#228

Post by bubblewand » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

eudamoniac wrote: post #224

bubblewand wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier No stats, but it’s extremely real. I know lots of teachers. Parents who flip shit if their kids can’t answer their texts while in class are common. Parents who call their kids in class just to chat are less common, but not as one-in-a-million as you’d think. The attitude you (I’m assuming) and I were raised with, when it comes to school, is less universal than you pe…

I've never understood something about this phenomenon: why does the school care if the parent flips a shit? What power does the parent actually have in a public school? I always thought it would make more sense for the principal/teacher to give the parent the middle finger in this scenario, but is there some reason I'm unaware of for why that is not realistic?

A parent with a certain temperament, which seems to overlap substantially with the sort with stupid expectations and demands, and a lot of time on their hands (which, ditto) can be extremely annoying, raise hell with the media, get the school board involved (some school boards have members who are these kinds of parents, haha) and everybody’s just too busy with actual work to deal with that shit. Enough of it, and they give in just to get them off their backs.

This is why state-level phone bans are so nice, as it keeps these sorts from focusing on school districts, where like five parents can be cause a lot of trouble, and shifts them to focusing on the state level, where a few hundred or a thousand scattered parents with stupid ideas can more easily be ignored and the bar for causing real irritation is a lot higher in terms of time and cost (want to go bother the state legislature, and they’re ignoring your calls? Get ready to travel…)

One super-power of private schools is that they can just tell parents with incompatible ideas of how the school should run to fuck off (and they in-fact do this). Public schools have to deal with them as long as they’re willing to keep poking, which can amount to a surprisingly long time.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#229

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #227

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when the outcomes don't improve because money isn't magical, we could double the salaries again! And again! Seriously, how do you think that will work? Are you suggesting that the teachers could improve outcomes now, but are holding out as some sort of negotiation leverage? Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network tech…

> Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network technicians and underwater welders because they need that half-median software income? That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well corre…

>That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well correlated with being good at any task.

We need, for a nation the size of the United States, millions of teachers. Quite literally. The process that somehow selects not one good (or more literally, very few, just so the pedants don't complain) teacher now, but will select mostly/all good teachers if we were to implement it is 15% raises across the board? 40%? Never mind that doing that could only possibly attract something like 5-10% of personnel change... and I'm supposed to believe this is about increasing the quality of education instead of pandering to a voting bloc that will help you to enact your non-education agenda? No thanks.

>With that in mind, it's not at all unreasonable to believe that somebody who would make a great teacher

Blah blah blah, I've already moved past that. No need to try to make the sale here.

Re: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

#230

Post by OkayPhysicist » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 7:43 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #229

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or that there's some secret corps of millions of super-teachers who could educate the nation's children, but who would rather be network technicians and underwater welders because they need that half-median software income? That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well corre…

>That basically is the suggestion. The world is not an RPG, where being good at one thing necessitates you being bad at everything else. On the contrary, aptitude in one task is pretty well correlated with being good at any task. We need, for a nation the size of the United States, millions of teachers. Quite literally. The process that somehow selects not one good (or more literally, very few , just so the pedants d…

Are people really arguing that there are few good teachers? In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, most people can list a mix of good and bad teachers they had over their educations. The goal is just to increase the proportion of good teachers, and hopefully raise the floor of the how good the worst teachers are.

Increasing pay probably won't raise the ceiling on how good the best teachers are. If they've got that strong a passion for teaching, they're probably already doing it.