Gaston Ternes

At a time when the iPad is becoming the standard tool for teaching, the voice of its opponents is also increasing. At the end of 2015, the OECD-PISA consortium published a very critical report entitled “Connected for learning?” with the main statement: "The more children use software, the Internet and educational programs, the more their academic performance declines." Prominent neuroscience researchers, including Manfred Spitzer, have consistently warned of “digital dementia” and therefore want to completely ban technology from schools. Recently, Michel Desmurget, director of the CNRS, the National Center for Scientific Research in France, supported the thesis with his book “The factory of the digital moron, the dangers of screens for children”.
However, alarmist discourse prevents us from asking the right questions. The name “screen” now hides a myriad of interfaces and applications: television, smartphones, social networks, video games as well as educational software. The subject therefore concerns very diverse issues.

A nuanced discourse is required: there are times when the use is useful and important, there are others when this is not the case. We are quickly led to ask ourselves the question of reasonable use and a maximum duration per day. Reasonable use is that which has no impact on daily life, learning or the organization of work.
Note that, among all the experts who express themselves so differently on this subject, there is a minimal consensus: a child under 12 should in principle not be left alone in front of a screen.

Today, our duty is to prepare young people for the digital world, and therefore to transmit digital skills to them. For this, the iPad at school is a good tool: it not only supports learning, it also allows us to show how the Internet and its algorithms want to influence us, how the business model of collecting our private data works.
My response to the theme is this: screens do not make children stupid, they are a wonderful resource on one condition: that we support young people! This is why the next initiative of our Minister of Education “Screens in the family, manage, educate and support” is entirely appropriate. Hopefully this will have an impact and become a topic of conversation, both in the family and at school.