It has declined. Kids have way less incentive to even learn to read. They just find the audiobook online, or have the computer read the page to them.

IMO there should be no technology in school classrooms until high school. Kids do not need computers to learn K-8 subject matter.

I disagree, computers are just a tool. Learning basic programming in primary school helps build a foundation for more sophisticated knowledge in high school. It can also help contextualise mathematics.

The problem is abuse of the tool, as you describe. In my primary school, we were taught how to use Microsoft Office by using a workbook the computer teacher licensed to the school. We had some of the best computer resources amongst local schools at the time, yet learnt almost nothing about computers. It took me until university to write a line of code.

This was the big shortcoming of computers in my education too. The kids famously knew more than the adults, but all we really knew how to do over them was use a two button mouse correctly and to browse a gui menu system. There was no one around to actually introduce you to how it all worked. I hope schools are better about that today, but its hard when the sort of expertise you need to quickly iterate off of generational knowledge is able to pull quadruple or more a teachers salary and works someplace willing to pay that much instead.

Where I live the only kids who program are those who are lucky enough to have a teacher interested in robots. They are taught to program robots as a fun activity rather than a part of the curriculum.

I understand your sentiment about the opportunity costs for those with computing knowledge, but it wouldn’t be too hard to require teachers to do a basic computing unit at university. In the same way the best mathematicians are not usually school teachers, yet “regular” teachers seem to perform sufficiently.

They'd just do the test at uni and forget about it 2 weeks later.

I suffer from this too. I can spend all night reading x y or z out of my own interest, but turn it into an assignment, and its like I cannot avoid pushing it to the very last minute possible. Of course I thought it would help by majoring in my interest, but that only made me see the interest as another academic exercise and drove me off it to an extent, and didn't in fact cure me of my academic block.

I think some things are done better now. There's no point in having the math teacher check your arithmetic, a machine can do that. Administrative stuff is also easier these days, things like recording what your homework is and communicating with parents.

But in general, why should we expect much improvement? School is mostly still a bunch of kids sitting around an adult, needing to concentrate. Having a computer means you don't have to lug around as many books, but it doesn't free you from having to read the books and do the exercises.

I'm not sure anyone was expecting a large gain from having the computers in the school to begin with, it's one of these things that happens because it gets cheaper as tech gets cheaper.

> I'm not sure anyone was expecting a large gain from having the computers in the school

They sure did. I remember one huge levy for "Technology in the Classroom". All kinds of magical improvements in learning was the sales pitch.

There was no improvement at all, and all the promises were forgotten.

Did you believe the hype at the time? I was a kid, so all I knew was that the adults knew less about the computers than the kids.