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Education news and trends
NEA Urges Action on Threats Against Educators
Educators across the country have bee exposed to a steady stream of threats, harassment, and disinformation disseminated
and highlighted on social media platforms.
This disturbing trend began with false information over COVID-19 safety protocols, then intensified with threats surrounding critical race theory over the summer. In September, so-called TikTok “challenges” urged students to first vandalize school property and then to “slap” a teacher.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in October that in response to “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against educators, he was directing the FBI as to address the growing problem.
And in a letter to the CEO’s of Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter, NEA President Becky Pringle urged the companies to “make a public pledge to students, educators, and their families to regulate lies and fix your algorithms to put public safety over profits.”
“Our nation’s educators are still working through a pandemic after two years, Pringle wrote. “We’re all exhausted, stressed, and stretched so thin it feels like we’ll crumble—and now we’re facing growing violence fueled by corporations with no oversight and no accountability to the communities they harm.”
Physical Activity Decreased Significantly
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that young people engage in at least 60 minutes of physical activity daily, ideally outdoors. It’s no surprise that during the early stages of the pandemic, young people found it difficult or were less inclined to meet that goal.
According to a survey by JAVA Open Network, only one in five children and teens engaged in at least 60 minutes of physical activity in October and November 2020. And nearly 1 in 10 said that they had zero days with 60 or more minutes. At the same time, the respondents said they spent four hours per day on mobile devices, computers, or gaming systems.
“Promoting physical activity and limiting screen time may both be important targets of promoting children’s mental health during and after the COVID-19 pandemic,” study coauthor Dr. Pooja Tandon told United Press International.
A separate CDC study, released in September, found that weight gain among children accelerated during the pandemic, with the
share of obese children and teens increasing from 19 percent prepandemic to 22 percent nationally.
Widespread Acceptance of SEL
According to a study released in October, America’s educators overwhelmingly understand the value of social and emotional learning (SEL). The “2021 Social and Emotional Learning Report” found that more educators are now aware of SEL and believe it’s greatly beneficial for students. In 2018, 83 percent of educators were familiar with SEL. By 2021, that number had risen to 94 percent.
The survey also found that:
- 87 percent believe SEL is important i helping children navigate today’s world.
- Educators believe SEL will help reduce behavioral problems, such as bullying (95%), lack of motivation (94%), safety-related issues (93%), and poor student-teacher relationships (91%).
- 91 percent say it will help improve grades.
- 95 percent said it will help reduce emotional distress.
The Legacy of the First ‘Teaching Machines’
Long before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began championing and bankrolling online personalized learning in 2016, there was B.F. Skinner. A behavioral psychologist in the 1950s, Skinner invented a “teaching machine”— a mechanical device designed to automate and individualize instruction so that students could learn at their own pace. Before Skinner, there was Sidney Pressey, psychology professor at Ohio State University and standardized testing pioneer, who created a “machine for intelligence testing” in the late 1920s.
A new book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, recounts how these and other early “innovations” failed to live up to their hype. And yet, as author Audrey Watters writes, the Pressey and Skinner machines have been hugely influential, serving as an early trial run in the push to embed computerized teaching and learning in every school.
What is it about the story of Pressey, Skinner, and other early advocates of computerized instruction that resonates today?
Audrey Watters: When I was writing the book, there was this rather didactic part of me that wanted to end every paragraph with “and this is precisely what is happening today.” So I was interested in correcting this amnesia that we have—either deliberate
or forgotten history—about education technology, in part to show what we see today is really not as new or innovative as some of the proponents would have us believe.
Pressey and Skinner were both convinced that their teaching machines would be game-changers for the education system. Why did they fail to break through?
AW: Entrepreneurs or tech people will come into schools and say, “Look everyone, I’ve got a quick fix-it,” but education is such a complex system. Skinner blamed teachers unions for resisting change, but contrary to the story that gets told, NEA was really
quite supportive of all sorts of innovations in the classroom. In the mid-to-late 20th century, teachers were intrigued about how
new technologies, such as film and radio, could be used in the classroom.
It was actually the business leaders who stood in the way of commercialization of these products, because they didn’t see how they could turn a profit on them.
But there was understandable resistance on the part of teachers to these machines. What were the concerns?
AW: It wasn’t necessarily a fear that the machine was going to replace them. Some liked the idea behind Skinner’s machine—that students were supposed to work at their own pace. Others not so much.
Also, in post-World War II America, teachers were seeing the size of their classes increase. Skinner’s pitch was that it would help them teach a class of 60 rather than a class of 20 or 25. So when they heard that Skinner’s machine would facilitate many, many more students, a lot of teachers said no, thank you.
And anyone—educators in particular—who stood up and said not so fast was quickly branded as “anti-technology” or a Luddite.
AW: I sort of embrace the Luddite, whose story has been misunderstood. The Luddites were weavers and craftspeople who used machines to make cloth. They weren’t against technology. What they were opposed to were the factories in which this kind of mechanization to make cloth was taken out of their hands.
Working with technology when you have control over what you think and what you build and what you do is very different from having your product extracted from you.
Despite technology being so immersed in everyone’s lives and the soaring amount of money spent on ed tech, you still believe the “mechanization” of education is not inevitable?
AW: I hope the book shows that resistance is possible. People have always resisted technologies that they believe are degrading or antithetical to freedom.
People generally get caught up in the gadgets and not the practices. Students aren’t learning more and they aren’t learning more quickly. We’re not going to see any educational breakthroughs through this massive adoption of technology.
So it isn’t a matter of saying no to technology. But let’s say no to practices in the classroom—technological or not—that instead of engaging and supporting students’ agency and autonomy are designed to program instruction and engineer their behavior.
Student Debt Relief on the Horizon?
After hearing from 48,000 NEA members about the failures of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), the Biden administration announced, in October, an overhaul of the broken program.
The changes to PSLF—a government program that is supposed to forgive the student debt of educators and other public-service workers who have served their communities for at least 10 years—will mean about 550,000 borrowers will move significantly closer to student debt forgiveness, including 22,000 who are immediately eligible.
NEA has led a coalition of 200 organizations in demanding that the government keep its promise and fix the program. “This is a welcome step toward keeping the promise of PSLF and cancelling the student debt of every educator who has served their commitment to their communities,” said NEA President Becky Pringle.
The Biden administration should be commended for keeping its promise to educators, said NEA President Becky Pringle. But NEA members also deserve praise: These changes wouldn’t have happened without the activism of NEA members.
