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Tech in the Classroom: A History of Hype and Hysteria
From calculators to ChatGPT, the introduction of new technology into schools has long inspired frenzied discourse: Will it revolutionize the system or rot kids’ brains? It often does neither.
In 1975, teachers fretted that handheld calculators would undermine students’ capacity to “handle basic skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic,” according to a report in The New York Times. The cyclical nature of these alarmist reactions “reveals the kind of cognitive biases and psychology” behind fears of change, says Louis Anslow, who heads up the archive. Adoption by schools: Students were quick to jump on the generative AI train: In 2023, a year after its release, about 13 percent of teens in the US used ChatGPT for schoolwork-related purposes.
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