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Wrapped in Lies
The Five Myths That Built EdTech
My daughter was given a tablet in year three (3rd Grade). At the time, I thought she was a little young for so much screen time—but the school assured us this was how kids learn best now, so I went along with it. She’s now in year six (6th Grade), and to be honest, I don’t think she’s ready. Her thinking feels scattered, she struggles with writing, and she has a really hard time staying focused, even on things she used to love. It’s like nothing sticks. I wonder if we made a mistake with the technology, but it all sounded so promising back then.
—Tabitha, Mother of an 11-Year-Old (Australia)
Tabitha’s story is increasingly common. Across the world, parents were promised that digital tools would unlock potential, increase engagement, and make learning fun. Finally, our children would be free to explore the world on their own terms.
But two decades into this digital experiment, the cracks are starting to show. We’ve watched our children grow ever more anxious, distracted, and falsely confident in abilities they’ve yet to truly develop. Many of us have been left asking the same question as Tabitha:
did we make a mistake?
The answer is yes. But our mistake wasn’t in trusting schools or teachers. It was in trusting the seductive promises sold to us by EdTech developers.
Most parents want the same things for their children: to think clearly, read deeply, write persuasively, and develop the habits of mind needed to contribute meaningfully to the wider world. We want kids who are not only curious, but also capable of
acting on that curiosity. And we’ve long understood that this journey begins with a solid education.
When modern technology entered schools in earnest in the early 2000s, it didn’t challenge these values. On the contrary, it claimed to champion them. EdTech positioned itself as the savior of learning, promising to deepen creativity, expand knowledge, and better prepare students for an ever-changing world.
And so we bought in—especially across the West.
In the U.S., 88% of public-school districts now operate one-to-one device programs. In the UK, schools spend over three times more on digital technologies each year than on teacher development. In Australia, there are roughly 450,000 more computers in classrooms than students to use them.
But what if it was all hype? What if EdTech was always destined to harm the very things it promised to improve?
There’s a kid’s party game popular across Europe called
Pass the Parcel. Here’s how it works: A large package wrapped in layer upon layer of decorative paper is passed around a circle of children. Each child peels off one layer, only to reveal . . . another layer. The unwrapping continues, round after round, until one “lucky” child reaches the gift at the center.
I say “lucky” because the prize is almost always a letdown: a flimsy toy car or a cheap plastic ring. What looked big and exciting turns out to be hollow—a trinket hidden beneath layers of glitz.
That’s EdTech in a nutshell.
On the surface, digital tools look impressive and sound transformative. But once you strip away the sleek marketing and persuasive language, you’re often left with something woefully underwhelming—even harmful.
Like any good illusion, EdTech’s power lies in
belief. Over the past three decades, five seductive assumptions have taken hold—ideas that we’ve been led to believe are true, but simply aren’t.
These are the myths that built EdTech:
• Education Is Broken
• Multimedia Enhances Learning
• Free Choice Leads to Better Learning
• Kids Learn Best on Their Own
• Intelligent Tutors Make Kids More Intelligent
We’ve heard these claims echoed for years: by the media, tech gurus, and even by schools themselves. But repetition without scrutiny is how a myth becomes fact.
So, let’s unwrap this parcel, one assumption at a time, and see what’s really sitting at the core of EdTech.
Myth 1: Education Is Broken
Core Misconception:
Traditional schooling is failing, and only EdTech can save it.
This narrative has been repeated so many times in op-eds, on TED stages, and in keynote speeches, that it almost feels self-evident: “schools are outdated and in desperate need of a digital revolution.” But for all its popularity, this claim is heavy on rhetoric and light on evidence—and that’s no accident.
Crisis sells. By portraying schools as archaic and ineffective, EdTech not only justifies its existence, but also manufactures demand. After all, it’s hard to sell a “solution” when no real “problem” exists. But when we step back and look at the broader picture, it’s clear the education “crisis” has largely been manufactured.
By nearly every meaningful international metric, schools are doing just fine. More children have access to education, more are graduating, racial and ethnic disparities are shrinking, gender gaps have closed, bullying is down, and both parents and students continue to report steady levels of educational satisfaction.
Schools may not be perfect—but they aren’t broken. Or at least, they weren’t until Silicon Valley set out to fix them.
Since the early 2000s, two deeply concerning trends have emerged across education: student mental health has sharply declined, and academic performance has significantly dropped across much of the developed world.
But here’s the twist: both of these trends track closely with and can largely be attributed to the growing presence of digital technology in children’s lives. In other words, the very problems most often used to rationalize EdTech in classrooms are, in no small part, being caused by EdTech itself.
If schools are “broken,” then it was the influx of digital tools that broke them.
One especially common variation of this myth is that schools kill creativity. As the argument goes, students spend too much time in school memorizing facts and not enough time thinking freely. Even Scientific American has suggested, “Maybe we should let smartphones call up facts as necessary and let students focus on developing analytical skills.”
But creativity isn’t the opposite of knowledge—rather, it emerges from it.
In 2022, more than half a million fifteen-year-olds across 63 countries sat for two assessments: one testing academic knowledge (math, science, and reading), and the other creative thinking. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Singapore—a country famous for academic rigor—scored highest on the knowledge exam. But what shocked many observers was that they also scored highest on the creativity exam. In fact, across all countries, the correlation between knowledge and creativity was an astonishing 0.92: that’s nearly perfect.
The takeaway is clear: in order for students to think
flexibly, they first need something to think with.
I once worked with a literature teacher who asked her students to write a modern retelling of
Romeo and Juliet. It was immediately clear which students read the play and which hadn’t. Those who had engaged deeply with the text produced clever and nuanced updates: one set on a football field, another in a divided lunchroom. Meanwhile, students who merely skimmed the text or relied on basic summaries fell back to vague clichés about “forbidden love.” Their stories fell flat; not because they lacked creativity, but because they lacked knowledge.
And here’s the key: for knowledge to support creativity, it must be stored in long-term memory. As we’ll explore more deeply in Chapter 6, mere access to information is never enough. Using a computer to “look things up” won’t build creativity any more than staring at a photo of food will satisfy hunger. Until knowledge lives
inside you, it can’t do any meaningful work.
The real danger isn’t that schools are broken. It’s that we’ve been persuaded they are—usually by the very people selling the solution.
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