iPads in Pre-schools
I weep for our children if this is the wave of the future – it could very easily become a tsunami with destructive consequences not yet even imagined.
I was recently invited to attend a workshop at the Apple store entitled “iPads in preschools”
I decided to go along with an open mind to see what was on offer and to decide whether or not there was a place for this technology in a pre-primary school environment. From the outset we, as attendees, were bombarded with clever marketing and ‘techno-speak’ from a local school that has taken on board this technology and they now wish to declare that this is the way of the future for pre-primary learners to be relevant and ready for the 21st century. They made one feel that without it your learners were missing out on educational best practice! Even homework and child assessment must be uploaded to the iPad on a daily basis – Gone are personal interactions with our parents in the pre-school and a notepad and pen that cost are few rand are clearly not effective enough to send a note home! We must now invest in a piece of technology that costs thousands of rands to be “relevant”.
I was deeply concerned to learn that children as young as 2-year old are issued with their own iPads on enrolment and that all children in the school are given daily access to their personal iPads for some aspect of their pre-primary learning.
As a “cute” example of the power of this device we were shown a Youtube clip of a toddler sliding her finger through an iPad book and then being presented with a three-dimensional “real” magazine which she then attempted to view; by sliding her finger across the cover page. This elicited several naïve responses of; “Aw cute!” or “ Look at her – she’s trying to use it like an iPad” from attendees – I, however, saw it as a tragic indictment of all that is potentially bad with introducing two- dimensional technology in a key phase of development where the greatest and most critical aspects of brain development take place.
Bearing in mind that from the moment of conception until the beginning of Grade R, children’s brains develop more rapidly than at any other phase of their lives. Born with brains that are only 25% developed, human brain development is heavily dependent on what children experience in their environments, demonstrating the critical nature of early exposure to quality learning opportunities. If children are given appropriate ‘learning-through-play’ opportunities in a three-dimensional, concrete operational manner on a consistent basis, many of them will be uniquely able to rapidly acquire the early language, mathematical, artistic, and physical abilities that will serve them well in their later learning. By the time children reach their fifth birthdays, their brains are 90% grown. All the more reason to ensure that you child is placed in a good school with degreed ECD specialist teachers from an early age.
It is not sufficient to say you have Varsity graduates running your schools – You need to ask if their area of specialization is Early Childhood Development. If not, ask why not? Would you allow a graduate lawyer to design military helicopters – just because he has a degree? No; of course not? So why then would you let any varsity graduate other than an ECD specialist teach your pre-school child? We need to ensure that graduate educators that have specialised in this key phase of education are the only ones allowed to fulfil this critical educational role? Do you want to entrust 90% of your child’s critical learning opportunities to under-skilled or inappropriately skilled facilitators that are marketing some or other gimmick or new-fangled curriculum that could in fact do more harm than good?
As a cautionary note: We should all remember the consequence of offering Thalidomide to pregnant mothers suffering morning sickness before adequate trials were conducted. Thalidomide certainly stopped their morning sickness but it also stunted the growth of limbs in the developing foetuses. How can we be placing untested technology in the hands of children as young as two when iPads have only been around for two years and there are no longitudinal studies currently available to show the impact of these devices on our precious children’s developing, highly malleable brains? I may be ‘old school’ when it comes to my views but I would much rather turn to tried-and-tested approaches that do have long-term, provable results before I will ever experiment with methodologies that may, and very well could, have a negative impact in the future, with dire consequences too awful to contemplate.
We should all be asking critical questions about the early introduction of this type of technology now before it’s too late. Even a cursory search on the internet shows that there are things that we need to be concerned about – even in these early days of iPad exposure and none of these issues were even touched on by the workshop presenter. I believe she was significantly remiss in this regard. In as much as cigarette packages carry a warning the LAP schools’ marketing brochures should carry a warning re: the fact that they are exposing your children to untested approaches and new technology and parents that allow this; do so at a potential risk to their children’s brain development.
We need to carefully consider an extensive range of areas that could be and often are affected: Ranging from the financial implications for parents whose disposable income is already stretched to the impact on the children’s language development and the erosion of existing language skills. From the reduction of social interaction to total social isolation as children interact one-on-one with a device rather than with each other. Then there is the very real threat of ‘addiction’ that iPad games generate, as children seek instant gratification and many games develop a false sense of hope. They start to believe that there is always an instant reward for meeting a basic expectation. Also when children sit for extended periods of time and play with iPads there is a decrease in the level of physical activity which is a critical component of pre-school development and could lead to challenges in a number of areas and could lead to obesity in the very young. These aspects all need to be explored thoroughly.
Our children live in a three-dimensional world – let them learn to live in it through three-dimensional experiences every day in a range of ways – there is plenty of time in the 12 years of formal schooling to get to come to grips with technology and all it implies.
Margot van Ryneveld
BA, B Ed(Ed Mngmnt) HDE(JP/PP), Dip Comp
Principal – Stepping Stones Pre-Primary & Sandhurst Preparatory College
