As students and teachers return to Vernon Parish classrooms for the 2026-27 school year, they will begin under a new superintendent with good hands.

And I experienced the leadership of that superintendent years ago when he was a principal at a Louisiana public school.

Mr Joey Bartz has declared two main first initiatives involving virtue items we’ve explored here from time to time. One goal is to reduce student screen time by 35 percent this year, followed by another 15 percent next year. The school district will also assign an experienced mentor to every teacher whose career has spanned three years or fewer, which should provide young educators with wise counsel during, what can be, a uniquely difficult stage of their careers.

Those two on the vision board share a crucial lesson: Much of education depends on human relationships and, I’ll add, an emphasis on right order.

Today we’ll take a closer look at one of those initiatives.

When I used to teach Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” one of its most compelling lessons concerned the danger of mistaking representations for reality, particularly once filtered through an electronic screen. The prisoners in the cave know the world only through shadows projected before them, never seeing the larger movements behind them responsible for producing those shadows. It’s like playing with your hand and making it look like a dog on the wall—imagine thinking the shape and shadow there was the reality and never being introduced to the fingers.

It was one of many reasons I had my students put their phones on a table when they walked in. It was a tangible, visible reminder that they were to leave behind both them and everything associated with them for the next hour.

Yes, technology can be a remarkably efficient and illustrative complement for a good teacher; the problem, like anything worthwhile, is when it is leaned on too much. It should remain only that—an accessory, a mere tool under the teacher’s diligent direction. When the whole classroom environment is based on the buzz of electronics, that so often don’t work, or are not sufficiently charged, or are not brought to class at all, the entire lesson process is stunted. Moreover, when young souls spend much of the school day moving from one device and program to another, their attention becomes increasingly fragmented, not to mention shortened, while teachers don’t give themselves a real chance to evaluate whether genuine understanding is sweeping the classroom.

Conservatives typically discuss education through the national controversies surrounding curriculum and ideology, and we gauge success on the number; just take Louisiana moving up to 38th now as an example. And there is plenty being taught in American classrooms that warrants opposition. Still, a classroom can frame material, with great intrigue no doubt, in front of a young person, whilst simultaneously destroying that child’s ability to process the material itself. If restoration of the mind beyond 38th is the goal, and it should be, we will have to develop that mind’s capacity to receive the truth along with the truth itself.

Winning a battle or two in the culture wars and not being 48th or 49th this year isn’t inherently a bad thing, but if those higher LEAP scores and that jump in national ranking aren’t producing more sound thinking human beings, then what’s the point? Improvement in education also requires teaching that can never be quantified, the quieter grunt work of cultivating a young person’s attention and creating classrooms in which seasoned adults—well-formed themselves—can once again teach students directly.

The spectacle, or the shadows on the wall, begins with a simple habit. I can remember when this habit arose almost thirty years ago now when technology was just taking off in the classroom. What a young person, or just any human being in general, repeatedly absorbs trains them in the way of what should garner their attention, not to mention that the electronic tool in front of them shapes their understanding of reality itself. If a computer is the go-between for every lesson and discussion, the soul learns something far larger than the day’s assignment—and it isn’t good. Young people learn, without using the exact language of course, that the machine is an extension of the mind, perhaps even the soul, and its presence should be expected everywhere.

And if it isn’t there, something is wrong. It is why you’ll hear people flinch at a person reading a book in the park, but think nothing of every single family member at a restaurant table reading something on their phones.

That takes training. That takes indoctrination.

A screen can certainly communicate something true and useful, but a life spent receiving nearly everything through it can gradually make the shadow experience—the lesser experience—feel more real than direct observation, critical thought, and human conversation.

I am thus reminded of Psalms 38 and 118 and a Saint Robert Bellarmine commentary on it. “Man walks and passes through life in the image, not in the reality of things, having before him on his journey, not the realities, but the images and the shadows.”

The two Psalms read as follows. Think “spectacle” for “vanity”:

“And indeed all things are vanity: every man living. Surely man passeth as an image: yea, and he is disquieted in vain… And now what is my hope? is it not the Lord? and my substance is with thee” (Ps 38:6–8).

“Turn away my eyes that they may not behold vanity: quicken me in thy way” (Ps 118:37).

The one describes the condition, man passing among images and shadows, becoming disquieted by them. The latter supplies the prayer of escape: “Turn away my eyes.”

Joey Bartz, while perhaps not consciously moving in the direction of the Bible, is most certainly working in its spirit here.

The habit, cultivated for three decades in our society, has infected students beyond the classroom. Now adults, they have been trained for the larger culture in which politics, religion, sports, friendship, and even suffering are frequently experienced as online content. The popular image or post—with the most likes and loves and comments—feels like the authority, while repetition over and over again feels like truth, while only widespread visibility on the screen can prove any sort of legitimacy whatsoever.

Up is down and down is up, and that must be fixed in a functioning society.

Bartz’s goal is therefore larger than an administrative reduction in screen time, and it is larger than just a developer of attention spans. Fewer hours on computers will not automatically produce deeper thinkers, no, but they will give teachers more room to teach young people how to cultivate their minds over time without a machine constantly buzzing between them and reality. After thirty years of training young people to expect the electronic go-between everywhere, restoring the proper order between mind and tool would be significant progress, and we applaud Bartz for going for it.

Thank you for reading The Hayride!