Pedagogics
Good reading skills are crucial
Why smartphones & other digital devices are so damaging to children (not only because they are hooked on them themselves...)
by Michael Felten,* Germany
(19 July 2023) Primary school pupils’ reading levels are declining. Current benchmark studies show that the proportion of children who do not reach the minimum literacy standards is growing – one in four fourth graders cannot read properly.
What is the reason for this? Teachers’ associations point to the shortage of teachers, politicians like Schleswig-Holstein’s Education Minister Karin Prien (CDU) to the Corona crisis, integration of foreign nationals in the schools, and inclusion of pupils with special needs. Our guest author, the publicist and teacher Michael Felten, sees another connection: with the triumph of the smartphone.
Reading crisis – or the “phubbing” of others
First it was the IQB Education Trend 2021,1 recently followed by IGLU2: fewer and fewer fourth graders can read accurately when they progress to secondary schools, and there is an increasing difference between the best and worst readers. Yet almost everything in life depends on good reading skills. This is not least a matter of educational equity.
The pressures of migration and the pandemic may have played a role, but this decline in primary schools has been evident since 2011. Inclusion, which has failed in many places will also have played its part. Nevertheless, it seems as if other important things have been overlooked so far. There is an “elephant in the room” that no one is talking about!
In fact, the decline in the reading performance of fourth graders coincides conspicuously with the triumph of smartphones and other smart devices. Actually, it is obvious: adults’ “phubbing” increasingly ties up their attention – which in turn influences parental attachment behaviour and thus the children’s learning behaviour.
“We need more professionally designed books, and we need to get away from students searching for information on the internet themselves.”
Let’s take a moment to review the biography of a fourth grader tested in the spring of 2021 – I’ll call him Paul. For him, the digitalisation of teaching itself was a lesser problem – due to a lack of distribution. It is true that the media companies, through their liaison officers in ministries and at schools, are pushing hard to introduce technology to even younger pupils.
But local paediatricians3 issue clear warnings, and the most recent fact check by the Mercator Foundation4 identifies considerable risks of digitally supported early education. This is why a former model country like Sweden5 is “applying the brakes” after IGLU. “We need more professionally designed books, and we need to get away from pupils searching for information on the internet themselves,” says the country’s Education Minister.
In Paul’s case, his reading ability may have suffered from the fact that self-directed learning has long been on top of the agenda in early education. Although the reading concept “reading by writing” is increasingly being withdrawn, even banned, after scientific criticism,6 it was still en vogue in the past decade.
But perhaps Paul’s life before school was far more relevant. He was born in 2011. At that time, only about a third7 of the over-14s used a smartphone, however his young mother could well have been one of them. She may have been busy with chats on “WhatsApp” while breastfeeding, instead of making eye contact and telling stories; or she may have been out and about with a jogging stroller, where the baby could no longer see his mother’s facial expressions, but only got fleeting images of the world.
At a later stage, his father might have put a digital device in his hand, “so that the child would later be able to find his way around a world full of IT more easily”. If there was a father at all. At the age of two at the latest, he was put in a day-care centre, even though there were far too few qualified staff there – they had to earn extra money, or no one wanted to fall behind professionally.
Finally, at meals together in the evening, or on outings at the weekend, the boy could have experienced more and more often that his parents were somehow otherwise distracted. They may have constantly had something to look up, something to post, someone to respond to. So, he would lack what behavioural scientists like Michael Tomasello call “joint attention” – which they consider existential.
So, you don’t think this is just a yarn: everything is reflected on frequent experiences– and you will not be a stranger to such observations either. Nevertheless, this only has anecdotal relevance for the time being. However, there is also research on this.
The BLIKK study8, for example, an empirical cross-sectional study with 5,573 children and adolescents from 79 paediatricians’ practices, clearly showed in 2017 that language development and concentration disorders, physical hyperactivity and inner restlessness, even aggressive behaviour, increase in proportion to the use of digital media in (young) children.
Such correlations are not regarded as the final cause-and-effect evidence. Yet, there are further indications. According to a systematic review by the IPU Berlin,9 parents react less sensitively and responsively to their children when using portable digital devices and this leads to self-regulation disorders in children and “seems to be associated with impairments in children’s learning”.
Smartphones not only steal a lot of time from adolescents, they also wither away the caring attention of adults.
Digital space offers wonderful tools for a variety of things, but it is an extremely delicate sphere in the years of development. It is far beyond the irritations caused by sex & crime, which the Lower Saxony Digital Ambassador Silke Müller10 recently described so impressively. Smartphones not only steal a lot of time from adolescents, but they also wither away the caring attention of adults.
“Momo’s” grey masters are among us, in a new form – but we don’t want to listen to that; we wish for the devices to be simply practical – and that we don’t need to intervene. This is what a lot of people tell us – from those who sell technology to those who have become new experts of digitalisation.
We can’t turn back the clock for fourth-grader Paul on his poor reading skills. But regarding today’s younger children, we could use our educational potential as multipliers: by including the topic “digital risk” at the next parents’ evening.
Parents with a disadvantaged educational background are most likely not aware of the educational tragedy of “phubbing” on the part of adults – especially about the consequential distraction that leads to some neglect. Many would also be grateful to know the 3-6-9-12 rule of thumb11 of the French psychologist Serge Tisseron:
No TV under 3, no personal game consoles before 6, internet after 9 and social networks only after 12. In the USA, parent associations now even plead for “Wait until eighth!” or “Wait with smartphones until 8th grade!”. That sounds impossible to some, inhumane to others – but it would probably be good for the children.
Even older boarding school students were ultimately grateful, according to a report in the NZZ12, when they were banned from using smartphones on campus – because it allowed for more time for one another.
| * The teacher and publicist Michael Felten taught at a grammar school for more than 30 years and now works as a freelance school development consultant. He publishes, among others, in the “Zeit” and on the “Deutsches Schulportal”. His latest publications are Die “Inklusionsfalle” (Gütersloh 2017), “Unterricht ist Beziehungssache” (Reclam 2020) and “’Schwierige’ Schüler. Wer sie versteht, kann ihnen helfen” (Reclam 2023). Online: www.eltern-lehrer-fragen. |
Source: https://www.news4teachers.de/2023/06/iglu-schock-warum-smartphone-und-co-den-kindern-so-sehr-schaden-nicht-nur-weil-sie-selbst-davor-kleben/, 18 June 2023
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)
1 IQB Education Trend 2021: In this study, the achievement of the educational standards of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder (KMK) for the primary level in the subjects German language and mathematics was examined for the third time. This makes it possible to describe development trends over a period of 10 years regarding the achievement of central educational standards in these subjects for the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany. (https://www.iqb.hu-berlin.de/bt/BT2021)
2 IGLU= International Primary School Reading Survey: In this study, the reading ability of 4th grade students is tested in an international comparison. The test items considered different levels of difficulty in text comprehension as well as two types of texts that children of this age usually read: literary texts such as short stories and informative texts such as age-appropriate encyclopedia texts or leaflets. With the help of questionnaires, it was also recorded how much children like to read and how often they read.
Germany has already participated in the study five times – in 2021, 2016, 2011, 2006 and 2001. Thus, a trend in average reading literacy can be obsjerved over 20 years. The results of IGLU 2021 were published on 16 May 2023.
(https://www.bmbf.de/bmbf/de/bildung/bildung-im-schulalter/iglu-internationale-grundschul-lese-untersuchung/iglu-internationale-grundschul-lese-untersuchung_node.html)
3 https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/140803/Kinderaerzte-wollen-Bildschirmfrei-bis-3
5 https://table.media/bildung/news/nach-iglu-schweden-bremst-digitalisierung-der-schulen/
8 https://www.bildungsserver.de/onlineressource.html?onlineressourcen_id=586289
9 https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/abs/10.13109/prkk.2022.71.4.305
11 https://shop.bzga.de/pdf/11041410.pdf
12 https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/auf-handy-entzug-in-der-schule-ld.1714002?reduced=true