Back to school: smart phones, social media and private schools
Children across Europe are back at school after the summer holidays, and with their return the national debates about how schools and teachers should handle the use of digital devices have reignited. Strategies under consideration range from controlled use to outright bans in schools. Commentators ask if and how smart phone use can be meaningfully integrated into school life.
Provide digitally safe childhood
In Tygodnik Powszechny, digital media expert Magdalena Bigaj makes the case for creating mobile phone and social media-free spaces:
“At a time when many technology companies treat people as mere biomass and 'data farms', we need new social norms: a digitally safe childhood and schools that are free from the influence of the digital economy. However, norms only emerge when they are understood by society, put into practice and perceived as feasible. Providing specific guidelines and standardised tools is the key to success for schools. But even if we succeed in depriving pupils, while they are at school, of what they've been using freely over recent years, one question remains unanswered: what will we give them instead?”
Smart devices as delivery mechanisms for education
The Irish Examiner criticises the fact that schools are ignoring warnings about excessive screen time, and calls for a proper debate on the issue:
“Across Ireland, smart devices are quietly becoming normalised in primary school classrooms. Not as an optional subject or pilot programme that parents can choose to join. But increasingly as a delivery mechanism for education itself. The risks come with them. But the conversation with parents did not, despite the department explicitly directing schools to consult their school communities, including parents. What makes this particularly difficult to reconcile is the warnings could hardly be clearer.”
Education a scarce resource
Education is supposed to level out inequalities but it often reproduces or reinforces them, argues economist Romas Lazutka on LRT:
“It's understandable that parents want the best school for their child. It would be strange to criticise them for that. The crucial question concerns the education system itself – what happens when good schools are no longer a common good of society but become a scarce resource? ... The rapidly growing private school sector is exacerbating this problem even further. Private schools are not, in themselves, a problem. ... But when different social groups purchase education that differs in quality depending on how much they can pay, the school ceases to be a mechanism for social mobility and instead becomes a mechanism for social differentiation. Therein lies the paradox – education, which is actually intended to reduce inequality, ends up reproducing it.”