I've made the comment before that all the schools really need is a classroom, desks and chairs, a chalkboard, and a teacher. Pen & notepaper helps.
The rest is just useless fluff.
Note that Caltech was exactly that. A prof, a chalkboard, a lecture hall. I learned more in 2 weeks with that than a year of high school. I've suggested to college students that they'll learn better if they leave their laptops in the dorm. And I say this as a computer professional.
You need much more than that for a good education. While I do agree that smart devices are not necessary, you still need a lot of extra materials for most subjects. You need various kinds of maps for geography and history, you need many images of animals and plants for biology, you need teaching manuals for every subject, you need various books for literature to read poems and prose, you need various materials for arts and crafts. Not to mention when you get to advanced subjects you need a heck of a lot more, at least for practice.
Having many of these materials in a digital format on a smart device can help a lot in terms of cost and availability. It's not critical, and I very much understand the downsides of having an always-connected device that kids are used to play with, but it's also not at all 0 cost to go entirely to paper.
I'm sure your time in math classes at Caltech that were only chalkboard and notes was extremely productive. But some lectures require more materials (you can't have a good lecture on Alexander's conquests without a map of what he actually conquered), and a full education requires much more than lectures. You're not going to be a good EE student if you can't model a circuit in Spice or draw one in some *CAD.
> You need much more than that for a good education.
No, not really. At Caltech, about half had a textbook, but the textbook was not referred to during lecture, and what was taught tended to diverge from the textbook.
> maps
The prof would freehand the salient aspects of a map and any other drawings required.
> literature
I never took any literature classes, as I saw no value in them. Even so, I cannot see the utility of a textbook during class.
> You're not going to be a good EE student if you can't model a circuit in Spice or draw one in some *CAD.
I had to laugh. None of that was available in the 70s.
I drew circuits freehand on paper. OMG. There were labs available for students building circuits, where the rubber really met the road.
I was not majoring in EE, I just enjoyed the classes. But the EEs Caltech turned out were all first class engineers. Taught by lectures with a blackboard and chalk.
Quantum physics was taught the same way. Not even a textbook.
The engineering work I did on the 757 was pen and paper, with a calculator as a crutch.
The most damning evidence against all these materials is that there is zero evidence of any improvement in K-12 results in the last 50 years, and things just seem to be getting worse.
The rest is just useless fluff.
Note that Caltech was exactly that. A prof, a chalkboard, a lecture hall. I learned more in 2 weeks with that than a year of high school. I've suggested to college students that they'll learn better if they leave their laptops in the dorm. And I say this as a computer professional.