With no official guidance available, the school were drawing on out-of-date research from a questionable source, playing it simple and safe. Desperate parents had been asking the school for help, in one extreme case crying in the Head’s office because their child was utterly obsessed with their tablet, resulting in full-blown tantrums if it was removed. To my surprise, the school agreed with a lot of what my letter said, but assured me that they had good reasons for taking their approach.
This helped me define and formalise a process I had been doing in my head – hunting for apps and activities I thought would benefit my child while avoiding things that might be harmful, and restricting access to those that were basically vacuous (see also recommendations from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Common Sense Media).
GOOGLE KILLED SQUIDOO TV
From my own experience and a bit of research, I ended up with a basic content checklist: In essence, my argument was that parents should be encouraged to think about the content – what the child is actually doing on the tablet is leagues more important than arbitrary lengths of time spent doing it. Thankfully, the school welcomed my feedback, and invited me in to talk to them about it. I started researching the issue, and wrote a response. What I was reading did not align with my own experiences as a mother of a two-year-old, who seemed to be getting huge learning value from a carefully monitored iPad. The alarmist portrayal of tablet usage as a damaging indulgence reminded me of a poster warning people about junk food – but surely it’s possible to create a balanced technology diet? The flyer went on to say that tablets were ‘dangerous’ – and that an arbitrary amount of time spent on them was the difference between ‘enough’ and ‘too much’. OK, I thought, maybe they’ve got their reasons. Something about literature shouting at me like a 1940s propaganda poster makes me feel like a naughty child – this is not a good start. I was surprised by the level of outrage I felt when handed a flyer from my local primary school screaming in huge, underlined capitals: ‘ LET’S PUT DOWN THAT TABLET!’ School tells parents ‘PUT DOWN THAT TABLET!’: One mum fights back It is high time for parents to get better than this out-of-touch and out-dated advice. As Mimi Ito wrote recently, ‘the idea that screens are bad for kids has gotten deeply entrenched’, so much so that schools give these messages out to parents without checking to see if there really is evidence for some of their claims. Parents can help to differentiate between neutral, beneficial or problematic uses of digital media, especially while the mainstream media is giving out mixed messages about the impact that digital media can have on children’s learning, mental and physical health. It illustrates why schools need to give evidence-based advice to parents, rather than simply telling them to ‘turn it off’. This post recounts Beth’s exchange with the school, and why she felt she had to respond.
Instead of the expected warnings about forgotten PE kits last year, though, one mother discovered a flyer from her child’s school exhorting parents to tell their kids to ‘PUT DOWN THAT TABLET!’ Concerned about the negative tone, and lack of balance, mum and researcher ‘Beth’ (who wants to remain anonymous) wrote a detailed response to the school. With the start of the school year, backpacks will be filled with notes home to parents.
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