Protecting Children From Digital Classrooms

0:00 Speaker 1 Save our children. Lynnswarriors dot org and Lynn Shaw is heading up that organization, And well, Lynn, give us a fill in, how are we saving our kids this week?

0:13 Speaker 2 Good morning, John. Unbelievable, but it’s already back to school time, which means back to screens. But I want to ask, and parents across America are contacting us at the Warriors and they’re asking who is really teaching our children this year?

0:28 Because look back to school, John, We know it once meant for all of us. You know, the notebooks, the pencils, the textbooks, at a teacher, physical teacher standing a um, being at the front of the classroom. But today you know what it means, John, It means laptops, tablets, chromebooks, these adaptive learning platforms, digital programs, algorithms. It’s a whole

0:51 new ballgame out there. But there’s something called ed tech. And we had the Warriors last week took a poll and among the hall we took of one thousand people, ninety seven percent responded. This is across America. They’re responded, they don’t know what ed tech means. It’s education technology and everyone needs to know that it is now embedded

1:14 in all the schools across America. So look, we can all agree technology used properly with some guardrails, can help a teacher identify where a child is struggling, provide some additional ideas and practice materials, and make these resources. Because it’s online available right immediately, you don’t have to go to textbooks and libraries and all that stuff. But parents,

1:37 parents right now want to know, and this is the good news. They’re asking a very fundamental question. And this is what we’re hearing. When did technology stop being a useful tool for teachers and start becoming the teacher itself.

1:51 So what I want to point out to everybody, and I’m sounding the alarm, there is a widely used program across America called I Ready, developed by a company called Curriculum Associates and John it’s used K through twelve. That’s like all our kids through kindergarten through high school. And it uses these assessments, computerized assessments, and then it says, okay,

2:14 this child needs this individualized plan for reading and for math. The company says it’s creating more of a personalized program. This will empower our kids. But you know what it does anything. But again, we want to get back to teachers teaching the classroom. Remember this is not a person, this ilready program, This is tech. There’s no empathy there,

2:36 there’s no feeling. What if a child’s like on the brink between two different things, which way will this go? Again? It’s more or less a machine. So look, we’re asking questions about screen time, student engagement, privacy, data collection, all this computerized stuff, john testing in the classrooms, and whether schools are becoming overly dependent on software. And they are.

2:57 But here’s the thing about I ready. Everybody needs to know. Usually when parents the kids go back to school, they sign off the first few days of school. You know these sheets like my child can use this program, that program, Google, Gemini, all this, and they do sign off on I ready. Okay, because everybody’s doing it right, Here’s the thing. I ready

3:17 has been accused, now accused allegedly. There is a class action lawsuit right now with a lot of parents that they’ve been taking the children’s data. We don’t know where all this information is going about our kids, but they’ve been taking it and then they’ve been selling it to third parties, so they’ve been distributing who knows what about

3:33 our kids. So people have to understand what exactly is this ed tech. It’s this just enormous collection of digital products used in the classroom right now. And again, we want everybody to be aware of what’s going on. We want people to, you know, understand, it’s not just this company I Ready, there’s different companies as well. I ready

3:54 is the top of the list. But this is the thing. Children already live in, this world of ours filled with the phones. We talk about it every week here on the catch around table.

4:04 Speaker 1 At what age are you supposed to give your kid an iPhone or that?

4:10 Speaker 2 Okay, there’s something John called parental autonomy. It is up to the parents. So we can’t say, give an iPhone. There’s no definite answer. What we can say from studies and all we do. Delay is the way. Why does somebody before eighth grade need an iPhone? But I can’t And you can’t tell a parent when to do it.

4:28 It’s up to them. Here’s the thing, though, John, there are phones, there are different companies. I don’t get anything from it. It’s called bark like the dog bark. There’s something called gab gabb. It looks like your child has an iPhone, but the iPhone only allows you know, texting or calling mom and dad like you pre program it.

4:48 Because a lot of kids tend to have these mental health problems if all their friends have a phone and they don’t. So that’s being said, but we can’t. We can’t tell a parent when to get a phone. Except every airplane I’m on, I see a five year olds sitting on an iPad. We suggest delay is the way.

5:04 We do have a well documented youth mental health problem. So why do we have to indulge them at these young young ages when their brains are just developing. I don’t know. The studies are like, your brain’s not developed till you’re twenty six, but can a computer. So they’re deluged right in this world of online. So let’s get

5:24 them in the classrooms, you know, back to and there is a push across America. We’ve got the pencil to paper John started by parents. It’s an underground movement sweeping the country. I wish everybody would talk about this. Where you have a right when you go in that classroom, you know you’re respectfully. Every parent needs to get in there,

5:40 go to the class meetings, go to the board meetings in your town and say what are you doing about technology in the classrooms. What can we expect what kind of screen time? You have every right to ask for a textbook. You have every right to say, we would like our assignments in a package. That’s the pencil to

5:56 paper where you get your package of assignments for the week, for the month, an actual textbook like we had, John. But a lot of schools will say, no, everybody’s using technology. We don’t do that. That is against the law. You have every right and it’s being done. And what the feedback we’re getting is once some brave family starts this,

6:16 other kids are thinking, oh, this is kind of cool now like old fashion, I’m getting a textbook. Oh I’m getting a package of papers. I’m off the phone. So we want to we want to promote this and say this is the way to go, Like there’s there’s no new news, John under the sun. We got to go

6:30 back to actual physical teachers. For the most part. We’re not getting rid of technology. We’re pro innovation, pro tech here, but we want the teacher in the classroom to assess the child more than the machine than the technology. So again, this I Ready program allegedly a class action lawsuit they’ve been selling off children’s information. Where is it going? We know,

6:52 AI scraping of the internet. Yeah, John, we are at a.

6:56 Speaker 1 Time, but thank you for your input and thank you for making us all aware of it. And let’s catch up again real soon.

7:04 Speaker 2 Sure John, thank you so much