Don’t Cite Pre-Pandemic Screen Time Guidelines For Distance Learning, Pediatricians Say - capradio.org
HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?
Screen Time Guidelines For Distance Learning
Big Education Ape: Scores of Education Experts Call on Schools to Reject Screen-Saturated Return to Learning | Common Dreams News - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/08/scores-of-education-experts-call-on.html
Editor’s note: We’ve updated this story’s headline to clarify the recommendations were based on guidelines, not a study.
When Sacramento City schools started back up again just before Labor Day this year, parents were scrambling to figure out their kids’ online learning schedule for the fall.
The teachers union and the Sacramento City Unified School District still hadn’t agreed on a distance learning plan during the pandemic. So the school system sent out the schedule as they wanted it, and the teachers moved forward with their own.
The crux of their dispute? About an hour of screen time a day.
The district wants first graders to have at least three hours of live time with their instructor. But teachers say, that’s too much screen time. It should be less than two hours for that age group.
“We can’t support a district plan that puts our 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds in front of a screen on zoom for three or more hours a day. It goes against research on screen time and brain development, ” said Erin Macy, a teacher at John Cabrillo Elementary School, to reporters on Labor Day.
“This goes against our professional judgement and our ethical judgement,” she said.
The Sacramento City Teachers Association points to research from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which warns that too much screen time could lead to obesity, and could interfere with children’s sleep. Pediatricians say electronic device use should not get in the way of children getting a minimum of an hour of exercise a day, and, as a general framework, it’s healthy to keep screen time to less than two hours of recreational use a day. But the doctors don’t think their guidelines should be used in the district’s fight.
“I don’t think they can be extrapolated that way,” said Dr. Cori Cross, spokesperson with the American Academy of Pediatrics. She said that pre-pandemic media-use guidelines “really applied to time when they weren’t doing homework.”
She said their recommendations were mostly based on recreational screen use, not school work. It’s better for kids to learn in-person, she said, but the COVID-19 pandemic has required education to be conducted in other ways.
“The next best thing is remote education. So just because it’s on a screen, it’s not ideal, but it’s still better than nothing,” Cross said. “It has a lot more value than playing video games, or surfing the internet, or Facetiming with a friend.”
Still, the SCUSD and the Sacramento teachers are at odds over how many minutes should be live teacher instruction versus how much is independent study.
State education policy expert Alix Gallagher said schools across the state vary in the mix of live teacher interaction and independent study that is provided under distance learning.
But Gallagher, the director of Strategic Partnerships with Stanford University’s Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), said that the state does set some standards through Senate Bill 98.
