"Out of the education trap": Why digitalization is not a panacea

There is a lot of discussion about digitalization in schools. From "digitalization in schools is not happening fast enough" to problematic class chats and a ban on cell phones, it's all there. At the same time, some dilapidated school buildings lack the most basic things. But as is so often the case, the keyword here is "digitalization".

We spoke to social scientist and economist Tim Engartner about why we should refrain from doing so for the time being. He is a professor of social sciences with a focus on "economic education" at the University of Cologne and recently published the book "Raus aus der Bildungsfalle". In it, he describes the downsides of digitization attempts in schools and why digitization is not a cure for an ailing school system.

I'm sure you've also heard the discussion about the ban on cell phones in schools. What do you think about this?

Children need clear rules. And I don't believe that we have to be constantly available. That can also be stressful. A study in the USA found that American young people only meet up in real life, i.e. analog, half as often as they did ten years ago. The use of messengers and social media channels has replaced face-to-face encounters and a large part of the problems – not only in the USA – also arise from these filter bubble developments that we can observe via social media.

Nevertheless, do students' grades seem to be improving?

In 2006, not even one in a hundred school leavers received a grade of 1.0; by 2023, it was one in 25. While this is well-intentioned, it helps neither the students nor the system as a whole. There is clear evidence that the grades awarded also depend on other factors that have nothing to do with the students' performance, such as their parents' background. At the same time, high school graduates lose up to one school year on the way to the Abitur due to missed classes. In addition, school classes are often too large. As a result, teachers often have too little time to shape pupils.

It is often said that we can only counteract the "teacher shortage" problem with digitalization. You also mention the boom in private tutoring services and apps in your book. Can't they also help?

In principle, yes. Of course, we can't do without the digitalization of education due to the digitalization of our living environments. We can go along step by step. With a computer, targeted, individual support is possible –, for example in English or similar. The proportion of speaking time per pupil is very low, especially in large school classes. Each pupil then has a maximum of one minute of speaking time – provided that the conversation is conducted well. It is therefore important that there are programs that can compensate for this imbalance a little.

At the same time, Saxony-Anhalt has the "4 plus 1 model", which means that classes are not held on the fifth day of the week and children learn at home on digital devices. This is often forgotten: Learning is always a social process and the social-communicative impoverishment we are experiencing is an unhealthy process. Even our students only stare at their cell phones in the canteen. That's not a good development. The increasing use of digital devices is also accompanied by a deterioration in literacy and numeracy skills.

The lack of books at home cannot be compensated for by the increasing number of learning apps that are being installed on cell phones. This does not mean that you can watch the occasional YouTube clip – such as explanatory videos from MrWissen2go. There is no question about that. But it's not just about learning Habermas' discourse theory or Kant's Categorical Imperative via YouTube clips. Teaching and learning is about action, about understanding and grasping. You have to read text and bite through it.

The attention span for reading has fallen dramatically, not only for children and young people, but also for us adults. The popularity of the short video platform TikTok, which is banned in some countries and is at least the subject of much debate in this country, demonstrates its importance.

When students are handed texts these days, it is an imposition for them if it is longer than five pages. Texts are being read on paper less and less often, yet this is important. The Swedish Karolinska Institute has determined that it is more helpful to learn with texts on paper. Such texts are better memorized than texts read on digital devices. The distraction elements are huge. If you let the children go online, you don't know whether they are really on the learning platform or whether they are doing something else.

But that doesn't mean you can't introduce computer science as a compulsory subject?

You can of course say that in an information society, computer science is an obvious compulsory subject. But what about a compulsory subject in education, a compulsory subject in communication, a compulsory subject in technology or a compulsory subject in law? It can be observed that there is a prioritization of certain educational policy content shaped by path dependencies. And yes, the digitalization of the educational world could also be countered by introducing computer science as a compulsory subject, although I'm not convinced that everyone has to be able to program when they leave school.

We have a problem with reading, writing and arithmetic. Some can't even produce a simple sentence. "Come on, let's eat, grandpa". In this sentence, the second comma is crucial for the grandfather's life expectancy. But many don't know that. Many children no longer know very banal phrases. If people no longer know what it means to hoist the flag, weigh anchor and await launching, this is not only problematic for sailors, but also a sign of the lack of linguistic education in our society. As a result, it is increasingly losing its central means of communication.

Every year, 50,000 children leave secondary school without any qualifications. Every fifth child leaves elementary school without mastering minimum standards in arithmetic, reading or writing. reading or writing. These are undoubtedly dramatic conditions. I am surprised that this has not yet been recognized. The linguistic misery then continues at universities. I rarely receive error-free emails from my students.

But surely ChatGPT can help?

Yes, it can. Such AI-controlled systems can undoubtedly help with lesson preparation. Teachers can design tasks with different levels of difficulty, for example. At the same time, systems of this kind distract pupils from acquiring knowledge independently. The neuronal networks in children and young people still have to develop through regular activation. "Knowledge is power" has been the headline of the Brockhaus for years. There is definitely something to these words, which originally came from the philosopher Francis Bacon. It's helpful if you don't always have to google things first and are dependent if the knowledge is no longer available for whatever reason.

Speaking of dependencies: In your book, you also talk about the big tech companies Apple, Microsoft and co. In this context in particular, wouldn't it be a good idea for children to learn how to use open source alternatives and inexpensive hardware such as the Raspberry Pi in computer science lessons?

Unfortunately, this is not currently being discussed. It would definitely be an opportunity to address the topic of digitality in computer science. However, this must definitely be free of branding and also free of charge. On the other hand, the digital devices that are currently finding their way into our everyday school life are increasingly undermining the freedom of teaching and learning materials.

There are various things that need to be kept in mind. The first is that the money from the Digital Pact for Schools is being used to finance the purchase of hardware and software from the big tech companies, in particular Microsoft and Apple. This is currently creating monopoly-like, or rather oligopoly-like, structures. This means that in the long term, we are becoming dependent on these tech companies. And regardless of how you assess this politically, you have to know that this will cost a lot of money over the coming decades.

At the same time, we have to lament the chronic underfunding of schools: leaking roofs, draughty windows, filthy toilets. In Cologne, some pupils now pay a toilet fee of 20 euros at the beginning of the school year so that the cleaning staff can regularly clean the toilets so that they can use them. Over 50 percent of pupils avoid going to the toilet during school hours because the toilets are so dirty.

In terms of gross domestic product, we only spent 4.4 percent on education last year. This puts us closer to the EU's bottom performer, Romania, than to the leader, Sweden. If we want to catch up as an "education republic", it is imperative that we spend more money. This is all the more true as we are already spending considerable amounts on software and hardware, but the maintenance of digital devices will also be a financial challenge in the long term. No fewer parents currently have to purchase iPads themselves. This is not only very cost-intensive, but also completely out of the question if we want to become a successful educational nation. The education vouchers that are supposed to compensate for this are nowhere near enough for people who receive social benefits.

Are the priorities then being set incorrectly?

Yes, Winfried Kretschmann recently called for the second foreign language to be abolished because he believes that AI-supported tools are sufficient. Why a former teacher would declare digitalization to be a panacea is beyond me. We are also creating lobby platforms with the technology platforms. In other words, Apple and Microsoft are using these channels in a very targeted way. The big players, i.e. private content providers such as company-owned or affiliated foundations. They specifically use the digital channel and give teachers access to learning content that all too often does not meet scientific quality criteria, for example, does not follow the principle of controversy.

So opinion-forming is also affected by this?

Yes. In 2019, I carried out a study for the Otto Brenner Foundation on how DAX-listed companies are teaching. Two thirds of the 30 DAX companies at the time still produce teaching materials, and these are often relatively tendentious and manipulative. Among other things, you can calculate the size of the trunk of a Mercedes or trace the front apron of a BMW. There's a chocolate fantasy trip from Rittersport and so on.

I have nothing against perimeter advertising in stadiums where children play sport. But I don't like something like Planspiel Börse from the German Savings Banks Giro Association. It has nothing to do with reality. You don't achieve investment success on the stock market after ten weeks, as they suggest. There are many other examples. Schools don't have to be neutral, but they do have to represent interests in a balanced way and take plurality and controversy into account.

In this respect, I am very critical when it comes to feeding in teaching materials via private content providers. Microsoft has created large platforms with Teams, where you can also refuse grades and so on.

Did the coronavirus crisis open the door to all of this?

Many things were simply accepted. It's as if a script had been written for the implementation of digital strategies for the benefit of tech companies. The Covid-19 pandemic was of course a real driver for the digitalization of the educational world. Communication via Zoom was previously prohibited at most universities. After coronavirus, it was suddenly allowed. The countless tablets that were purchased during the pandemic were worth their weight in gold for companies in terms of early brand loyalty and image polishing. Consumer research has shown that you only need to spend a quarter of the advertising budget on children to achieve the same advertising impact as on adults. Apple and Microsoft are not the only ones to have tapped into an attractive market.

Are there any schools that you consider to be role models?

Yes, there are a whole series of well-equipped private schools, among others, whose existence can of course be criticized in principle. In many cases, they simply have everything that a school in the best of all worlds should have –, from the school's own swimming pool to musical instruments for every child and theater halls where the children gain self-confidence while rehearsing their plays. We know what we need to do for good teaching. Much is undisputed. And yet we get lost in small-scale reform debates in order to see the big picture. The Bosch Foundation regularly honors schools with the German School Award. These are schools with charisma that rightly attract attention nationwide.

That shows: There are some excellent schools in Germany. Unfortunately, however, they are not representative of the system as a whole. For example, we know from educational research that the architecture of a school building inevitably has an impact on learning behavior. This means, for example, that an attractively designed building – with music rooms that are also accessible to pupils during free periods or even offer a recording studio. Being immortalized on their own recording naturally gives children an enormous amount of self-confidence. Some excellent schools also offer public speaking courses where children learn to speak in front of a larger audience.

My teachers also had a big influence on me back then and enabled us to do a lot, which they obviously enjoyed doing. Does the motivation of the teachers play a role?

It definitely does. It's not without reason that a central slogan is: "It's the teacher that counts." At the same time, we all have different formative experiences in our educational biography. That's why there are strong contrasts between those who say, "School has to go back to the way it was when I went to school" and those who say, "We have to completely rethink school", like Richard David Precht. The latter are often those who have had predominantly negative experiences of school. We are moving more and more towards privatization. The meta-study "Visible Learning" clearly shows that it's the teacher that counts, not IT.

There are very different teachers and their motivation is also very different. One reason for this may be that there is no feedback culture at all among teachers. Some only take feedback from pupils or parents on board to a limited extent. On the other hand, not all teachers are sufficiently capable of criticism. As a rule, they have a head start in terms of knowledge, which naturally shapes them, i.e. they always have a structural superiority over the learning group.

At the same time, there is no clear understanding of what characterizes "good teaching". Some want to learn as much as possible, others want to get as good grades as possible. Some find vocabulary tests outdated, others find them just right. And then there are no development opportunities for the really clever ones. In Singapore, for example, the top-performing learners in a year receive additional support, which means that tutoring is not only aimed at the weakest learners, but also at those who are particularly committed. You can see it however you like, but the approach is interesting in that it encourages pupils to make an effort in order to receive extracurricular support. In Germany, on the other hand, every fourth child receives extra tuition. If we do not finally recognize this as a sign of poverty, we will not be able to free ourselves from educational poverty.

(mack)