„Methods of the 18th Century“: Teacher Criticizes Digital School Reality

Although all students in the 1st grade of AHS or middle school receive a laptop or an iPad, the teaching staff knows far too little about their meaningful use. "We have the technical teaching tools of the 21st century, but partly still the teaching methods of the 18th."

Inappropriate assignments that bore the adolescents or can be solved too quickly can, for example, lead to online games being played instead of tasks being completed. "Using the iPad only for research purposes becomes relatively boring quickly," said Thalhammer in an interview with APA. Many teachers are also not even aware of how they can control which sites the adolescents can access on their student laptops during class.

Too few training opportunities on these topics

All of this has nothing to do with the unwillingness of the teaching staff, he emphasizes. There are simply hardly any training courses on these topics at the pedagogical universities, and no money is allocated for training with external providers. In addition, teachers are already at their limits due to bureaucracy and increasingly demanding classes, and they can hardly keep up with the digital interests of the students because these change so rapidly.

Moreover, digital projects where adolescents learn important skills for their future are often time-consuming, and teachers must dare to leave out other content for them. The curricula, however, allow a lot of leeway here. "We must focus on the things that set us apart from machines as humans," emphasizes Thalhammer. Art, culture, music, and sports, for example, will have to carry more weight in the future. "I need to know how to acquire knowledge and what I can do with it, not when the Battle of Issus was."

Access to digital devices without rules "negligent"

Thalhammer also sees parents as being responsible for digital education. Giving children and teenagers unrestricted and unaccompanied access to mobile phones or tablets, as often happens today, is "negligent" in his view. "We wouldn't have sent children behind the black curtain in the video store in the past either."

It is the parents' responsibility to set boundaries and rules for usage time and content - right from the start. "Otherwise, there is no holding back, and then we have problems like mobile phone or internet addiction, where you can't get the children away from the digital device." The self-control in the brains of children and teenagers is not as developed as in adults. Additionally: "The mechanisms in some apps target the same receptors as gambling."

Nevertheless, Thalhammer is against granting children access to devices as late as possible. Teaching them important basic and handling rules with the devices takes time, and trust is the most important currency in agreements on digital consumption. For most children and teenagers, he would also recommend technical barriers such as time restrictions, app locks, or family sharing.

Need for further education also among parents

For this, parents must also further educate themselves. After all, most use the devices themselves without understanding them. Many also have a completely unregulated approach to them, reports the educator, for example, of parents who check their messages during parent-teacher meetings. The role model effect in media usage is an essential point. Currently, there are free training sessions on the topic as part of the "Digital Education Weeks."

If you work together with children early enough to develop a healthy approach to digital media, you can later do without certain rules because the children understand what it's about, Thalhammer is convinced. "At the moment, we can probably only work with prohibitions because we have neglected it." In this context, Thalhammer also sees the mobile phone ban for students up to the 8th grade, effective from May 1st. "It is an attempt to impose a ban on something that is not understood or cannot be precisely controlled." At the same time, the impacts are manageable anyway.

(APA/Red)

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.