Daydreaming is what they're doing and it's what the teachers are complaining about: "When you are standing in front of them trying to teach, they’re vacant. They have no ability to tune in… They’re not there."
It's a bit hard to notice because Gioia is a polemicist trying to whip up a crowd, but what he brings up isn't actually complaints about kids using smartphones in the classroom. Rather they're about students being uninterested in the material (or less charitably, perhaps in the teacher's presentation of it), and then he implies very strongly that this must be due to smartphones but doesn't try to argue that case. Instead he gets mad at people who point out that correlation is not causation, claims they're engaging in "sophistry and spin", that's he's "dumbfounded" anyone could possibly disagree with this amazing argument, then immediately goes off on a tangent about AI cheating (a form of sophistry).
Actually, at no point in this article is smartphone usage in the classroom ever brought up as an actual problem. The link is implied to be causal whenever children have any access to "tech" in general, anywhere at all.
It's a bit hard to notice because Gioia is a polemicist trying to whip up a crowd, but what he brings up isn't actually complaints about kids using smartphones in the classroom. Rather they're about students being uninterested in the material (or less charitably, perhaps in the teacher's presentation of it), and then he implies very strongly that this must be due to smartphones but doesn't try to argue that case. Instead he gets mad at people who point out that correlation is not causation, claims they're engaging in "sophistry and spin", that's he's "dumbfounded" anyone could possibly disagree with this amazing argument, then immediately goes off on a tangent about AI cheating (a form of sophistry).
Actually, at no point in this article is smartphone usage in the classroom ever brought up as an actual problem. The link is implied to be causal whenever children have any access to "tech" in general, anywhere at all.