Critical Analysis of Screen Learning Arguments

By Pierce K. Kozlowski

Introduction

With the progression of technology in the modern age, the conversation about offline versus online learning in public education has become increasingly prevalent, and as a result, more relevant. With regard to those who position themselves against the online approach, a great effort has been taken in arguing a case that appeals to “philosophy and science.” And one of the most motivated thinkers in expressing such a case is Dr. Nicholas Tampio, who is a political theorist, education reform activist, and professor at Fordham University. To further explore this subject, we will be analyzing two of the arguments Tampio makes relative to the conclusion he reaches. Now, upon prefacing the discussion at hand, I will do three things: first, I will outline and characterize Tampio’s position toward online learning; second, I will outline my refutations for Tampio’s arguments; and third, I will further develop those refutations in the essay thereafter.

Let us take a closer look at Dr. Nicholas Tampio’s disposition. The article “Look Up From Your Screens” was authored in 2018 by Nicholas Tampio, who asserts in the fifth paragraph that “schools should not . . . place children on computers for even more of their days. Instead, schools should provide children with rich experiences that engage their entire bodies.” The disposition of Tampio is wholly against screen learning and any movement towards it, and this is made most clear in paragraph thirty-one, in which the author candidly states that the “drift toward screen learning is only inevitable if people do nothing to stop it. So let’s stop it.” While this conclusion can be validly considered, his reasoning to defend said conclusion can be just as validly refuted. Moreover, Tampio makes four major cases to support his conclusion, but we will be looking at only two of them. The first case, from philosophy, and the second, from science.

In laying forth Tampio’s particular persuasion, we now speak of the thesis at hand: while Tampio’s arguments are perfectly sufficient in advocating for more engaging experiences in schools, his arguments are entirely insufficient in demonstrating why screen learning should be removed from schools. To show that this is the case, I will present two refutations in response to two of Tampio’s objections, which are as follow: firstly, while Merleau Ponty’s mind-body theory is appealing, it is easily rivaled by other philosophical theories, and therefore cannot be used to advocate the removal of screen learning without acknowledging the argument’s weaknesses; and secondly, that conflating the negative effects of remote schooling with that of screen learning is both contrary to scientific consensus and a composition fallacy, and therefore fails utterly in demonstrating how this applies to the many other forms of screen learning or to screen learning itself.

The Problem of the Philosophical Argument

Regarding the first case, Tampio appeals to the authority of Merleau-Ponty in explaining the behavior of the body relative to the mind in order to show why schools should have more engaging enrichment activities. Regarding Ponty’s theory, the mind and body are not considered separate, and as a result, the body is where learning takes place. Therefore, by the actions of the body, the mind learns. This is expressed best in paragraphs nine through eleven, where Tampio quoted Ponty saying “I am my body,” and Tampio concludes by saying that “the learning process happens when an embodied mind ‘gears’ into the world.” This is further developed in paragraph twelve, where Tampio adds that “the mind does not reflect and make a conscious decision before the body moves; the body ‘catches’ the movement.” In essence, Tampio is advocating the idea that the mind and body are completely one in their operations, and that forcing children to engage with screen learning disconnects the kinetic and physical elements of how they naturally learn. While this theory is a fascinating and philosophically rich explanation for the nature of human development, it is not provable because it cannot be empirically verified or falsified.

In response to Tampio, I will argue a different theory of the mind and body that is just as unprovable and possible as Merleau-Ponty’s, then I will discuss the significane of this alternative theory in relation to online learning. Upon overviewing our first refutation, I would like to appeal to the great philosopher and Doctor Universalis, St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a Dominican friar and preeminent theologian of the middle ages, and regarded as one of the greatest medieval scholastics of all time. In contradistinction to Ponty, who argued a mind-body unity, Aquinas considered the body as a composite, which consists of matter and form, with the operations of the mind, body, and soul being separate. In defining his major terms, Aquinas says the following: “the soul is defined as the first principle of life of those things which live,” and “the principle of intellectual operation is called the soul” (Aquinas). Therefore, according to Aquinas, the soul is responsible for intellectual activities and gives the body animation. In addition, Aquinas thoroughly articulates in book one of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics that while the body perceives information through the physical senses, it is only because of the soul animating the body that those senses are given operation or the ability to convey new information to the mind (Aquinas). Therefore, in complete opposition to Tampio, the body and mind are not unified in a Pontian fashion, but rather the soul – being the source of intellectual operation – is separate from the body, and acts on the body.

This matters because if we reject Ponty’s theory, we also have to reject the premise that the mind and body function as one when learning. And by accepting Aquinas’s theory, we accept the premise that the activity of learning occurs first in the soul and then in the mind, with the body being the mere physical instrument for sensory perception to take in new information. It then follows, that if we consider online learning with Aquinas’s framework, we would then say that the child does actually learn by the mind alone, and not by the mind and body together as Tampio suggested. This is problematic, because while Tampio believed that children learn better through physical experience as a result of their Pontian nature, if someone were to quote and accept the opinion of a contrary philosopher on this matter, Tampio’s argument would be immediately destabilized and its legitimacy lessened.

To be clear, Tampio was certainly not wrong to quote Ponty, and he was certainly right to argue that children learn more effectively when they’re fully engaged. However, he should have relied on empirical studies and relevant literature to show why children benefit from engaged learning rather than the authority of a theory that, while beautifully sophisticated, is still empirically unprovable. Therefore, the weakness of his argument – found in the subjectivity of its premise – is what undermines the credibility of his conclusion. Therefore, I refute Tampio on his first point for two reasons. First, while Tampio was not wrong to advocate for a Pontian mind-body cooperation in human learning, it does not mean that his point of screen learning in relation to his theory was dispositively satisfied, or that it was sufficiently dealt with (and as already shown, it could never be satisfied or dealt with in this way due to the subjective nature of the argument). And second, while an argument that appeals to an academic study could sufficiently account for his claim that children are naturally engaged learners, arguments from philosophical theories would not work due to the different conclusions that could be reached depending on the premise of the theory. Hence, Tampio’s philosophical argument neither explains why nor supports the idea that schools should be moving away from methods of screen learning.

The Problem of the Scientific Argument

Let’s consider his scientific argument. Tampio argues that remote learning should be removed from schools for the reason that it hurts the development of how children form bonds and interact socially, and that in-person interaction is necessary for the interpersonal building of trust and empathy. Relying on the expertise of author Marcus Holmes and neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, Tampio suggests in paragraph eighteen that screen learning “does not easily enable children to form human relationships that are crucial to a satisfying educational experience.” Tampio further develops this idea with particular emphasis in paragraph twenty-three, in which he cites sociologist Randall Collins and concludes that “communicating from a distance does ‘not provide the same physical and emotional connection’ as bodily coparticipation.” Therefore, because remote schooling has been shown to significantly impede healthy social development, according to Tampio, online screen learning as a whole must be dispatched in favor of an engaging hands-on curriculum.

Based on the foregoing, the case can be made that Tampio, perhaps inadvertently, commits a fallacy of composition. This is because, to show why schools should move away from e-learning, he elides the effects of remote learning, and assumes that this must also be true of all screen learning too. In opposition to Tampio, other scientific literature has found the contrary to be true. According to researchers Douglas Downey and Benjamin Gibbs, who published a study in 2020 in the American Journal of Sociology, it was found that the social skills of children who grew up in 2010 were identical to children who grew up in 1998. Downey strikingly concluded that “There’s very little evidence that screen exposure was problematic for the growth of social skills” (Downey). Therefore, while it is true that too much remote schooling can have negative ramifications on a child’s development, the same is not true of the much broader domain of screen learning or screen usage as a whole.

To understand how Tampio’s argument commits a fallacy of composition, we need to define the fallacy itself. This fallacy is when someone reduces the properties of the whole to the sum of its parts, and then falsely infers something as true about the whole based on a part. An example would be to say that since a brick weighs one pound, then a house made of bricks must weigh one pound also (Goodman). Tampio makes a similar blunder. In paragraph seventeen, he argues how screen learning fails to provide a socially “satisfying educational experience” for children, only to then conflate the effects of screen learning with that of remote schooling just one short paragraph later. Essentially, Tampio committed a composition fallacy because he reduced the whole domain of screen learning to the singular subject of remote schooling, and falsely inferred that anything negative regarding remote schooling is some kind of referendum on the entirety of screen learning. However, this is easily refuted when both terms are defined. While remote schooling falls under the umbrella of screen learning, the terms cannot be used synonymously because they do not signify the same thing: screen learning is using technology to learn through passive or interactive forms of media, while remote schooling is specifically hosting school classes over the computer. Tampio can be reasonably refuted on this point for two reasons: one, because he incorrectly conflated two very distinct concepts as the same; and second, by conflating those concepts, he unintentionally contradicted the findings of scientific literature on the topic, and as a natural consequence, committed a fallacy in the process. While Tampio argues the negative effects of remote learning well, and why a school should perhaps consider avoiding remote schooling, he still has not demonstrated how this more broadly applies to screen learning, or how this shows why schools should move away from screen learning.

Conclusion

After treating of the two main points, let's conclude. The refutations I’ve put forward were designed to critically anaylze the philosophical and scientific arguments Tampio made, and how effectively they supported his claim that schools should move away from screen learning. Regarding his philosophical argument, he appealed to the authority of Ponty to explain the learning process in young children, defending the position that children learn through real-world experiences. However, anyone who posits a contrary theory from an alternative philosopher would undercut the integrity of Tampio’s argument, and for that reason, even if his position was correct, it cannot be empirically tested and, therefore, I would argue that his reasoning does not explain why schools should leave behind screen learning. Concerning the scientific argument, Tampio logically errs when he conflates the terms remote schooling with screen learning, and he conflates the negative side effects of the former with that of the latter. Not only was this a logical fallacy, but this resulted in his position contradicting empirical findings on the effects of screen learning. This argument did not demonstrate, but persuasively argued why remote schooling should possibly be reconsidered, but like the former argument, it does not shows why screen learning specifically should be removed. Tampio also touched on two other points – one concerning his personal experience on the farm, and the other referencing a case study into what teens think of screen using – but this paper did not consider those arguments, nor does anything said on the discussed arguments reflect on the arguments which were not discussed. In summation, then, it is reasonable to assert while Tampio makes an otherwise very readable and eloquent case speaking against screen learning, his philosophical and scientific arguments – upon critical examination – were not as persuasive in supporting his thesis. This does not mean that the conclusions Tampio had were wrong necessarily, so much that they were just not argued with the strongest reasoning or evidence. For this reason, I believe that Dr. Nicholas Tampio, based on the two discussed arguments, and considering his efforts to undermine the legitimacy of online learning and all other potential benefits therein, he does not succeed in explaining why it should be dropped by public education in either an intellectually honest or scholarly way.

References

Downey, Douglas B., and Benjamin G. Gibbs. “Kids These Days: Are Face-to-Face Social Skills among American Children Declining?” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 125, no. 4, 2020, pp. 1030–1083., doi:10.1086/707985.

Fathers of the English Dominican Province, translator. “Part. 1, Question. 75, Articles. 1-7.” Summa Theologica, by St. Thomas Aquinas, Coyote Canyon Press, Claremont, CA, 2018, pp. 179–182.

Goodman, Michael F. First Logic. University Press of America, 1993.

Rowan, John P., translator. “History of Metaphysical Inquiry: The Dignity and Object of This Science.” Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, by St. Thomas Aquinas, Dumb Ox Books, 1961, pp. 2–12.

Tampio, Nicholas. “Look Up From Your Screen.” Aeon Magazine, 2 August 2018, aeon.co/essays/children-learn-best-when-engaged-in-the-living-world-not-on-screens.