to think primary school children shouldn't be parked in front of videos and ipads during class time?

[schroedingersdodo]

Ds1 will start reception this year and I've visited several of the schools nearby. This morning I went to the one considered the best in the area. Outstanding ofsted, catchment area of 200m (heard people rent nearby to get a place for first child and then move away again), yadda yadda yadda.

In the reception class quite a few children were playing with ipads on a table. The head said the school has 30 ipads and they are always being used by the teachers in class (as part of the class programme). I passed by at least two classrooms were all the children were watching videos in a big screen, one of them Rhyme Rocket from cbeebies.

Sometimes I do plonk my Dc in front of the tv or ipad, so I can do something else, but I consider this a lazy solution, that I use when I can't be bothered to think of something else and am too tired to parent properly.

AIBU to think plonking children in front of screens is not the role of the school, and that the teachers should be engaging them in activities and not relying on ipads to keep them quiet/well behaved?

Thanks over.

There's no doubt that children are connecting things faster today than when we were kids. I just worry that what we're gaining, perhaps (and it's a big "perhaps") in breadth, we're losing in depth.

YABU. My children use ipads/laptops at school and watch videos. I see it as an important part of the learning process. It isn't about teaching them to use ipads though, is it! It is about using a variety of different methods to teach different concepts and that is important as not all children learn in the same way. There are some great educational web-based programmes out there - Education City and Mathletics to name just two.

And I'm not sure what the sticker chart issue is, either. My children earn points for good work which get added to the chart as stickers. Once they have enough stickers they get a reward. So far from instant gratification, they are taught that they need to put in quite a bit of effort over several months to earn a reward. The stickers are just there to mark progress as children find it more difficult than adults to visualise their progress without actual visual prompts.

We used to get hit over the knuckles with a ruler if we weren't holding our pen correctly or we got something wrong.

We got sent to stand in the corridor if we talked without putting our hand up.

We sat in rows, did very little collaborative work, and we all did the same work. If you finished early, you could colour in your paper, but there was no extension work. If you fell behind, you got held back a year.

Students with special needs were shuffled off to another school and had no contact with a mainstream classroom.

Education has moved on. And with very good reason.

I spent too many hours at primary school listening to the teacher say something, she'd write it on the black board, then we'd all have to copy it into out books. I learnt that my handwriting was terrible and I still wouldn't be allowed to use a pen that term.

I would have learnt more with the Minecraft app.