🐴 Screens have taken over classrooms

Students now spend nearly 100 minutes a day on school-issued devices — and some are pushing back. Plus: The one book that calms the biggest fear parents have about nontraditional education.

Author

Charlie Deist
April 30, 2025

Join us Tuesday, May 13 at 12:30pm MT for a 45-minute live Q&A launch of Open Education: How to Reimagine Learning, Ignite Curiosity, and Prepare Your Kids for Success.

IN THIS EDITION:

🍎 Why the smartest families focus on outcomes, not tribes
🍎 WSJ reveals how tech is devouring school time
🍎 The #1 book that puts open education parents’ minds at ease

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💡 THOUGHT

BEYOND SIDES

The wisest families don’t pick sides — they pick what works. Public, private, hybrid, homeschool, unschool... There’s no right tribe. Only right fit.

📊 TREND

SCREENS ARE NOW THE DEFAULT IN US CLASSROOMS

New reporting from The Wall Street Journal shows the average student spends 98 minutes daily on school devices. In 6th grade, it’s over 2 hours and 20 minutes — more than a third of the school day.

Some students are fed up:

“I don’t like my eyes glued to a screen. I lose focus.” — Aubrey, 8th grade
“Even at lunch, there’s no socializing.” — David, high school junior

Many schools rushed into tech post-COVID. Few asked if they should.

🛠️ TOOL

THE BOOK THAT CALMS PARENTS' BIGGEST FEAR

By Isaac Morehouse, CEO of OpenEd

Every day I talk to parents who love the idea of opening up their kids' education, but are so worried about them being "on track" and measuring up against whatever (sometimes arbitrary) standard is deemed "normal." That's the biggest fear.

Whenever I start mentioning research and anecdotes from the book Free to Learn by Dr. Peter Gray, it blows their minds.

If you've never read this book, it's a mainstay for helping ease parents' fears about whether kids can learn without so much structure. It's on the more radical "Sudbury Valley" or "Unschool" end of the spectrum, but it's pretty great in just helping shift mindset.

If kids who literally had no formal instruction whatsoever can learn reading and math, then surely your kid who is doing a twice-a-week co-op can!

You don't need to unschool to gain some needed perspective on the fact that your kids might do well with a little less structure and a little more breathing room.

📖 QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Children come into the world burning to learn and genetically programmed with extraordinary capacities for learning. They are little learning machines. Within their first four years or so they absorb an unfathomable amount of information and skills without any instruction."

— Dr. Peter Gray, Free to Learn

That’s all for this week!

– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)

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