Keep swimming, friends. This is hard. But it's working.

Losing one battle doesn't mean we aren't winning the war. Stay strong.

Photo by Max Gotts on Unsplash

Dear friends— first, second, third, and curious fish:

This fight is not linear.

We are not just climbing up— we are stumbling over pebbles and boulders, traversing canyons, tripping into rivers and emerging wet and cold and frustrated. Sometimes, we ascend. But more often than not, we’re going backward to go forward (pg. 155 in my book).

This is ok. It is to be expected. And it doesn’t mean we aren’t having an impact. (That’s a lot of negatives…let me rephrase: “We’re having an impact.”)

I’ve been fighting against excessive screen use in school for a long time, so I can offer some perspective on this. I filed my first appeal related to a screen-based science curriculum in 2019, a year before remote learning green-lighted even more tech in schools. Even before that, when my son (now age 17) came home on the first day of kindergarten, tasked with learning “Control-Alt-Delete” to log in to the school computers to take the standardized test before he even knew how to write his name, I was shocked. That was in 2013. Since then, I’ve written a book and a lot of essays on this topic.

For many years, I’ve felt like the crazy one, That Parent, the tin-hatter, the Luddite (though frankly, I take that insult as a compliment. If you haven’t yet read Brian Merchant’s book Blood in the Machine, do so). My friend and fellow fighter, Andy Liddell of the EdTech Law Center, has always said to me: “We’re four years in the future.”

But in the past sixty days I have testified before the United States Senate and spoken to members of UK Parliament about the impact of technology on childhood. People are listening.

Fish friends, the future is here. We are shaping it right now, in all the ways we’re speaking up and out and resisting and testifying. Major news outlets are finally covering screen use in schools and states are passing laws to restrict student phone use at schools.

Things are different.

I hear from so many of you (thank you, please always send me messages, I do try to reply to as many as I can) about your own fights— the increased number of messages I am getting today versus last year alone is an indication that things are different.

You share the wins, but just as often, I hear about the frustrations, too—

• with the parents who say they agree with you and it’s a problem and yes, we should do something but then fail to show up in meaningful ways, leaving you to twist in the wind;

• with the defensive IT person in your district whose entire career depends on the use of EdTech products in schools, but can’t see why this is problematic for children;

• with the school leader who shames you for having the audacity to expect that a teacher would have the time or bandwidth to provide “something different” for your child (rather than seeing how these products are bad for all children or to be curious about what other kinds of support teachers might need or ignoring the fact that children opt out of curricula all the time for religious and health reasons).

  

  Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash

I sometimes forget that a lot of people do not know what we know; do not understand what we understand; do not hear and see what we hear and see. I have to remind myself that for the person I am speaking to, this may be their first time considering that giving a 7-year-old a Chromebook for learning might not actually be good for learning. They may not even know that 7-year-olds are being given Chromebooks in school (this happens far more often than you’d think, especially for older lawmakers who do not have school-aged children).

I always believe in and advocate for replacing judgment with curiosity. This means we start with assuming best intentions and reminding ourselves that the goal is to build our movement, one fish at a time, and that that might mean we have to start at level 0, even if our knowledge and passion are at level 9.

It also means that things will likely progress a lot more slowly than we want them to. I’m sure many of our friends in the fight against social media harms— going on a decade now— would say that every day that has passed in trying to hold social media companies accountable is one day too many, one too many children harmed— but they aren’t giving up either.

The battle for reclaiming our classrooms from EdTech is a newer fight in some ways, but it’s no less important (because EdTech is Big Tech), which is why we must take heart and keep swimming.

So, I want to offer some words of encouragement, that you can return to on those days when you feel defeated and hopeless and alone:

• Find the right allies. Start with the person in your school with whom you have the best relationship— it might be your child’s teacher, but it might also be your school counselor or a specialist. Sometimes it’s a principal. See where there may be cracks. Approach with curiosity.

• Everything you are saying is probably fact-based, important, and true. But it doesn’t mean people are ready to hear it. Don’t lose hope. Keep talking to other parents. Keep asking questions. Keep showing your school leaders (persistently and politely) that just because a company tells a school district they don’t collect data doesn’t mean it is true (96% of EdTech products sell children’s data) or that the district filters are powerful enough to protect students (they aren’t) or that teaching children to “manage” screentime really is a parent’s job (even though they handed your child the Chromebook).

• “No” isn’t an end point for these efforts. It’s an opening salvo. If you’re told “No, you can’t do that” or “No, we won’t accommodate” or “No, you’re wrong,” don’t give up. Your initial response can be: “Thank you for that feedback. I am going to regroup and get back to you” and then find a different way in.

• “No” also goes both ways. If we want to talk about consent, you, too, have a right to say no to data collection, no to privacy violations, no to YouTube access for your under 13-year-old (per federal law), no to excess screentime which is harmful for children. As Andy Liddell always says, “You’re not opting out of curriculum; you are opting out of data mining, privacy risks, internet harms, algorithms, manipulative design, etc.” Parents have not meaningfully consented to any of this and schools cannot consent on behalf of parents.

• Your child is watching you advocate and speak up and That Matters. In many ways, this is the most important thing we are doing, even if the effects of this won’t show for many years. We are modeling for our children that our voice matters and that our advocacy efforts is about what is best for all children.

• Small acts of resistance have a big impact. Not everyone will want to test this theory, but I do wonder what will happen when parents just refuse to take the laptop or iPad when it is distributed. Public schools can’t deny your child access to education for refusing it (and if they do, immediately contact the EdTech Law Center). I know it is hard to oversee classroom screen use, but we can refuse to bring the device home, if that’s what the school requires; refuse to log in if asked; refuse to sign any “tech use agreement” (you’ve probably signed something without even realizing it); refuse to charge it or bring in the charger; refuse to send it back to school the next day. Small acts of resistance. This isn’t about being anti-tech or anti-teacher or anti-education; it is about being pro-child, pro-human relationships, and pro-learning.

• Even if you didn’t get the outcome you wanted from a meeting or conversation, you are still making a difference; you are chipping away; you are bringing daylight to an issue that is so very serious. We aren’t going to win every battle, but we are going to win this war. Things are different.

Being a first fish can be lonely. We are going to encounter a lot of resistance on this path, but I will say it again: Things are different today. People are listening and we have to keep speaking up, because when they’re ready to join us, we want to welcome them into the pool.

There will be days where you feel defeated. I have had those days myself. But one bad day isn’t a loss. It’s just an opportunity to reset and try again tomorrow.

We are on the cusp of change, friends, and very soon tech companies and school leaders will be faced with a lot more parents asking a lot more questions... and they will have to have come up with some different solutions.

Keep swimming-- I’m right here beside you—

emily

Photo by Maurice Sahl on Unsplash