In 2002, Maine became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then-governor Angus King saw the program as a way to put the internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information.
By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students.
King’s initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter-century and numerous evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one King intended. Rather than empowering the generation with access to more knowledge, the technology had the opposite effect.
The dark ages didn’t begin because the library of Alexandria fell, but because it was allowed to fall.
This is fundamentally our fault
I say we’re already in a modern dark age, not because of lack of knowledge to pass around but the omnipresent nature of it now a days with so much being fabrications. We started giving kids access to tech as their mind developed and we’re seeing it has highly negative consequences on unfettered use.
The dark ages are dark only because things weren’t being written down, so historians don’t know what happened. It’s not because people were dumber or something.
…yeah? That’s what I’m saying? The dark ages began because literacy wasn’t important and was allowed to decay, like what’s happening now.
What makes you think literacy wasn’t important and that it decayed?
What are you getting at? Am I arguing with a really badly programmed bot or something?
I don’t understand what your point is here? The dark ages exist because literacy wasn’t important to daily life. That’s why they’re dark
The same thing looks to be happening again as literacy and reading comprehension are on the decline. I think I made my points pretty clear. What exactly is yours? Or are you proving my point about the decline of reading comprehension through demonstration as live art or something?
You should talk to a historian. That’s simply not true. The dark ages are dark because of the prejudices of an Italian who thought that the time after the fall of the Roman empire was “dark”.