Let’s take a trip down memory lane and remember our fondest childhood memories. Maybe you imagine camping trips with your family or building summer lemonade stands or maybe even something as simple as adventures to your local library. Today’s generation, however, will remember their childhood differently. The highlights of their young years will be buying the latest video game system or beating the next level of a game.

Face it, technology is taking over our precious youth, and today’s schools do nothing more than encourage it. When school districts begin to provide their young students, specifically elementary schoolers, with new technology tools for learning, kids are losing the chance to learn about the rest of the world.

At NA, almost every classroom at the elementary, middle, and high schools is outfitted with a smart board for teaching. In elementary school, students are given Apple iPads that they carry with them until finishing eighth grade. These iPads come with a school-issued charger, and kids are required to purchase their own set of earbuds to use with the iPad.

Additionally, almost all of North Allegheny’s coursework is now completed with the use of a digital device, either through the websites Blackboard or the Google Suite. Every child from 6th through12th grade has their very own NA Gmail account.

With all of this in mind, it’s easy to see that seemingly every facet of today’s early childhood education is dictated by technology. Virtual reality promises to reduce field trips to the bare minimum, class periods outdoors are unnecessary when online simulations are ready at hand, and real-life conversations have become too burdensome when digital discussion  is just a tap of a key away.

Where this matters- we’re no longer experiencing the real world, and it starts at a young age. When kids spend their entire school day inside a dark classroom working silently on a number of different screens, they’re taught that this is what life is. The capability to communicate with each other and have deep, heartfelt conversations is something innately human and we’re losing our touch on it. Similarly, the schools’ technology epidemic drastically reduces our desire to explore our environment and go on adventures. The entire education experience becomes centered around the internet.

Once we hit adulthood, life sadly becomes too busy to just run around the park with our friends or have a sing-a-long or take a walk at sunset with our dogs. When we’re kids we have this kind of free-time to experience everything life has to offer, to live our richest, care-free life.

Schools around the world need to stow the laptops and abandon the online assignments and instead turn to a far more important and enriching style of education. They need to provide kids with access to the planet around them, and then just stop and let them embrace it.