Who can place this quote:
"... your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not that they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."*
I remembered this quote today when I was having a conversation with a friend and we found ourselves pondering this question: how much screen time do our children get each day?
In fact, how much screen time does YOUR child get each day?
I'm asking this not because I'm trying to make you feel guilty about the kids flopping down in front of the tv the moment they walk through the door at the end of their school day, or to make judgements about the games they may be playing on the ipad, x-box or pc in their room right now. No, I'm asking this because I suddenly realised during the conversation I mentioned that I don't know the answer to this question myself.
That is because the amount of tv / computer time that my children get at home each day is, in fact, only one piece of the jigsaw; for 8 hours of every weekday during term time my children are not at home. They are at school, in an educational environment where, more and more, online resources are an integral part of the teaching lexicon.
And that's fine, that's wonderful. There are now ways for teachers to enhance our children's learning experiences to a degree that was never even dreamt of when we - the pre-Internet generation - were at school. Want to know about the recent landing on the comet? It's there in glorious technicolour, tattooed genius engineers and all, at the click of the button. Need to teach your class the life-cycle of whales or the migratory pattern of puffins? Instantly accessible, engaging, and entertaining footage is only the correct search engine term away. Want your class to research the history of the US War of Independence for a project on national autonomy? Well, there's no need to send them to the school library or ask them to turn to the relevant page of their dry and dusty text book any more, is there? You just get your pupils to reach for the nearest handy electronic device (be it school or parent supplied), and ask Dr Google (or the school-approved safe content guaranteed equivalent) to provide the relevant information.
And this is great, this is liberating, this is what the internet does brilliantly.
Except. Scientists frequently tell us that there are limits to the amount of time that a child - with their growing, emerging, fragile brain and all the establishing neural pathways and synapses it consists of - should spend in front of any kind of a screen each day. Guidelines vary with each new study but that's immaterial since how are we, as parents, expected to gauge what actually is a 'safe' amount of time for our children to spend using a laptop or similar at home when we have no idea how much time they have already spent doing the same thing at school?
Sure, the on-screen content they have been looking at in school may have been 'educational' - but does that actually make any difference? Does the part of the brain that deals with cognitive development analyse the information that's coming in from the screen in front of it and make a judgement call on whether or not the length of time the child has been looking it is harmful, saying to itself 'Oh, it's about the lifecycle of an amoeba. That's educational - part of the National Curriculum. No need to worry about that screwing with the formation of my synapses, then'?
So when he got home from school this afternoon I asked my 11 year old son how much time he had spent in front of the computer today. He reckoned 45 minutes in his maths lesson, 45 minutes in foreign language, and 30-45 minutes doing research for a current school project. Unusually there was no writing on computers required for language arts today, so that was it - in school hours. But add on the approximate 30 minutes he spent online this morning before school catching up on homework, and the 30 minutes doing the same thing this evening, and we are at, let's see, more than 3 hours on the computer today.
And that's without any screen-based game time or watching any tv (because we simply didn't have time for that), so I reckon it's actually a light day.
Which leads me to my ultimate question, I suppose. Parents are constantly being asked to take responsibility for the amount of electronic input that their children's brains receive, and I'm happy to do that; I want to do that; it's my job. But is anyone asking schools to factor the same calculations into their lesson plans and to take a similar level of responsibility in safeguarding their pupils' brain development?
Technology is the future. It's the way ahead, an inescapable fact of life. But schools need to work with parents on this whole issue of screen time, because it seems to me that there's a disconnect between what they consider acceptable educational practice and what we at home are expected to allow in terms of safe amounts of access.
*Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park - you can see the fantastic scene where he uses this line here. Vintage Spielberg.
"... your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not that they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."*
I remembered this quote today when I was having a conversation with a friend and we found ourselves pondering this question: how much screen time do our children get each day?
In fact, how much screen time does YOUR child get each day?
I'm asking this not because I'm trying to make you feel guilty about the kids flopping down in front of the tv the moment they walk through the door at the end of their school day, or to make judgements about the games they may be playing on the ipad, x-box or pc in their room right now. No, I'm asking this because I suddenly realised during the conversation I mentioned that I don't know the answer to this question myself.
That is because the amount of tv / computer time that my children get at home each day is, in fact, only one piece of the jigsaw; for 8 hours of every weekday during term time my children are not at home. They are at school, in an educational environment where, more and more, online resources are an integral part of the teaching lexicon.
And that's fine, that's wonderful. There are now ways for teachers to enhance our children's learning experiences to a degree that was never even dreamt of when we - the pre-Internet generation - were at school. Want to know about the recent landing on the comet? It's there in glorious technicolour, tattooed genius engineers and all, at the click of the button. Need to teach your class the life-cycle of whales or the migratory pattern of puffins? Instantly accessible, engaging, and entertaining footage is only the correct search engine term away. Want your class to research the history of the US War of Independence for a project on national autonomy? Well, there's no need to send them to the school library or ask them to turn to the relevant page of their dry and dusty text book any more, is there? You just get your pupils to reach for the nearest handy electronic device (be it school or parent supplied), and ask Dr Google (or the school-approved safe content guaranteed equivalent) to provide the relevant information.
And this is great, this is liberating, this is what the internet does brilliantly.
Except. Scientists frequently tell us that there are limits to the amount of time that a child - with their growing, emerging, fragile brain and all the establishing neural pathways and synapses it consists of - should spend in front of any kind of a screen each day. Guidelines vary with each new study but that's immaterial since how are we, as parents, expected to gauge what actually is a 'safe' amount of time for our children to spend using a laptop or similar at home when we have no idea how much time they have already spent doing the same thing at school?
Sure, the on-screen content they have been looking at in school may have been 'educational' - but does that actually make any difference? Does the part of the brain that deals with cognitive development analyse the information that's coming in from the screen in front of it and make a judgement call on whether or not the length of time the child has been looking it is harmful, saying to itself 'Oh, it's about the lifecycle of an amoeba. That's educational - part of the National Curriculum. No need to worry about that screwing with the formation of my synapses, then'?
So when he got home from school this afternoon I asked my 11 year old son how much time he had spent in front of the computer today. He reckoned 45 minutes in his maths lesson, 45 minutes in foreign language, and 30-45 minutes doing research for a current school project. Unusually there was no writing on computers required for language arts today, so that was it - in school hours. But add on the approximate 30 minutes he spent online this morning before school catching up on homework, and the 30 minutes doing the same thing this evening, and we are at, let's see, more than 3 hours on the computer today.
And that's without any screen-based game time or watching any tv (because we simply didn't have time for that), so I reckon it's actually a light day.
Which leads me to my ultimate question, I suppose. Parents are constantly being asked to take responsibility for the amount of electronic input that their children's brains receive, and I'm happy to do that; I want to do that; it's my job. But is anyone asking schools to factor the same calculations into their lesson plans and to take a similar level of responsibility in safeguarding their pupils' brain development?
Technology is the future. It's the way ahead, an inescapable fact of life. But schools need to work with parents on this whole issue of screen time, because it seems to me that there's a disconnect between what they consider acceptable educational practice and what we at home are expected to allow in terms of safe amounts of access.
*Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park - you can see the fantastic scene where he uses this line here. Vintage Spielberg.
