Linda Darling-Hammond: “Children need to be taught how to deal with cell phones, not just take them away”

American professor Linda Darling-Hammond in a photo provided.

Linda Darling-Hammond (Cleveland, Ohio, age 72), president of the California Board of Education since 2019, has spent a lifetime speaking, writing, studying and teaching about education.

A professor at Stanford University and educational advisor during Barack Obama's 2008 and Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaigns, she has written numerous books and articles on educational policy and believes that teaching is now at an inflection point.

For the academic, who attends EL PAÍS by video call, the students of the new generations need less memorization and more support, exams where they can apply what they know and tools so that they learn from anywhere.

Question:

In 2015, during a talk at Stanford about the evolution of teaching, you said that “education must respond to the demands of the era in which it finds itself.”

What era are we in now?

Answer:

In the explosion of knowledge, technological expansion and massive changes in the world.

And of course, with artificial intelligence becoming even more common and with more automation, the jobs that people will have to do and the knowledge they will need will be very different.

An example that I often mention is that between 1999 and 2003, more new knowledge was created in the world than in all of history prior to that period.

Knowledge now doubles faster every year, so the old idea of ​​a curriculum that students can learn year after year and then be ready for the world has become completely obsolete.

Q:

What should this “new” education be like?

A:

Children and adults need to continually learn for themselves, because there will always be new knowledge to understand, combine, evaluate, analyze, synthesize and apply.

Additionally, we are experiencing massive changes in the economy and climate, requiring the use of technology for both work and learning.

With increasingly frequent weather events affecting school attendance, education must go beyond the physical confines of traditional classrooms.

Technology becomes a vital means of ensuring that students, even when they cannot attend school, can continue to learn online and connect with their peers and teachers.

Q:

While this changes, access to higher education in many countries remains focused on common tests, such as the EBAU or the

A-Leves

in the United Kingdom.

A:

During the pandemic, many tests could not be performed due to the closure of testing centers.

In the United States, we have had a test for many years called the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) that allowed admission to college.

80% of colleges abandoned the SAT during the pandemic, either making it optional or indicating that they didn't care at all.

Now they are using other things to admit students to the university.

Q:

For example?

A:

The International Baccalaureate program, which is in 125 countries, where the evaluation is a combination of research work and collaborative projects.

When you complete that type of program and perform well on those assessments, which are much more practical, it's a good indicator of your ability to do college work.

In the United States, there is the Advanced Placement program, which has been doing these types of tests and courses in high schools and now they are adding projects to their courses and assessments.

Maybe in the past, when people didn't have books to turn to or Google to consult, they had to memorize a lot of things, but that's not the most useful mode of learning now.

Q:

Are these types of evaluations what the educational system of the future should aspire to?

A:

The most productive assessments really give you a sense of what kids can do with their knowledge, not just knowing things and choosing one answer out of five on a multiple-choice test.

If we are going to have assessments, they need to become more authentic, performance-based, and rely much less on memorization.

Maybe in the past, when people didn't have books to turn to or Google to consult, they had to memorize a lot of things, but that's not the most useful mode of learning now.

What we need is to help young people learn to inquire and apply their knowledge in real life.

Q:

In Spain it is not possible, but in the United States and other countries parents can choose whether to enroll their children in school or educate them at home.

What is your view on homeschooling?

A:

Homeschooling is on the rise in the United States, and I think it's because we need to move away from the factory school model we inherited from a hundred years ago.

These schools are very rigid, bureaucratic, hierarchical, and are not designed to be highly individualized or to satisfy students.

Homeschooling is, in part, a reaction from people who think their children are getting lost in the factory model, and that they need to do something different for them.

We have fabulous teachers and principals working to adapt to today's demands, but we need to redesign the model.

Q:

What kind of redesign?

A:

For example, smaller schools with 300 or 400 students, not 2,000.

Designed with a teaching team that surrounds students, plans around them, offers interdisciplinary instruction and has time for that planning.

That students participate in advisory programs for four years, where they have a teacher who stays with them and is in charge of social and emotional learning, monitors their academic performance and is in contact with parents.

In those environments, children are thriving, whereas in factory model schools, they often are not.

Insisting on returning to “normal” is making things worse

Q:

The last PISA report was published in 2023 and in a large number of countries the score decreased compared to previous years.

A:

The pandemic was traumatic and it was traumatic in many ways.

Not just that kids were out of physical school, but they were online and learning in different ways.

Families were traumatized, children were losing parents and grandparents, there was economic disruption.

We are in a period of time where, again, schools cannot function like they used to.

And there are two different impulses.

Some have said: let's take advantage of what we have learned in the pandemic, the ways in which we use technologies, in which we begin to change learning.

Others say let's go back to normal, and they want schools to go back to exactly how they were in 2019. That's not going to work.

Insisting on returning to “normal” is making things worse.

Q:

Is being at the

top

of the PISA report equivalent to having a better educational system?

A:

It says something [about that country's system].

PISA assessments are better than other assessments because they are a little more progressive and try to assess things like collaboration, problem solving, and application of knowledge.

They tell us something about [educational] quality within a country, for example how well most students do.

There are also other things that are happening that have nothing to do with the education system.

If you have poverty and the children don't have enough to eat or a place to live, the education system can't cure it.

And there are low PISA scores associated with those social conditions.

That's not the schools' fault.

When people look at these types of ratings, they have to take it with a grain of salt and say, “Well, what else would we need to ask to understand what's going on?”

Q:

One of the current challenges, you mentioned, is new technologies.

In Spain, one of the main debates in this regard is whether or not mobile phones should be banned in schools.

A:

Part of the pressure to ban phones is twofold: kids are on their phones and not paying attention;

and social media, which is so destructive to students.

Frankly, I don't think banning the phone will reduce the amount of distraction.

Children need to be taught to deal with these things, not just take them away.

There is some usefulness in setting some limits on phone use at times in school, but also perhaps not ignoring them completely and helping children learn to use them.

We have to learn to deal with it instead of just saying: let's suppress it.

Q:

What is your vision of ideal education in the next 15 years?

A:

One in which schools are more personalized, with integrated supports for students, which focus on social, emotional and academic development, so that students can be empowered learners who use and access knowledge and know how to apply it in all the challenging situations that will be part of your world.