Another rainy start today - the footpaths are full of muddy puddles again. I’d quite got used to them being mostly dry. We had planned to cut the grass this weekend - no chance! However, the today has got brighter. By the end of the afternoon, it should have turned into a nice day according to my weather app.
There’s a school in the Netherlands that banned mobile phones four years ago. Some parents objected because they might need to contact their children during the day. Surely even in an emergency the normal thing would be to contact the school office and ask them to get a message to the child. But they went ahead and banned mobile phones: “Walking through the corridors and the school yard, you would see all the children were on their smartphones. Conversations were missing, the table tennis tables were empty. Basically we were losing the social culture.”
Since then pupils increasingly talk to each other in free time, they play games and interact face to face. Amazing! Other schools consulted them about how they made it work. There’s also less cyberbullying because they are using their phones less often. In January this year the Dutch government started urging other secondary schools to ban phones, tablets and smartwatches. More recently the recommendation was extended to primary schools. Really? Do so many primary school children have phones that it is a problem?
Listening to our grandchildren discussing Minecraft yesterday, I marvelled at how from the youngest (5 years old today) to the oldest (27 years old) they all get on so well with technology. It’s a generational thing. Even the smallest has a tablet but he and his 8 year old sister do not have mobile phones. The older ones pass on their mobile phones to us grandparents when they get an updated model. And they all use their computers to work from home.
Not that I’m averse to technology. My iPad is used every day. And we have a regular family chat thing going on between me, my daughter and the Granddaughters Number One and Number Two. Occasionally there’s a bit too much detail about various pets but on the whole it’s a good way to keep track of things.
Mind you, I have not yet gone as far as Granddaughter Number Two and resorted to reading books on my mobile phone. Give me libraries any day. To be fair to Granddaughter Number Two though, she probably keeps shops like Waterstones in business as she loves buying books. Here’s a link to another article about libraries - since 2016 one on twenty libraries have been lost across the UK, more of them from deprived areas than from richer parts of the country.
Granddaughter Number Two returns to university next weekend, by which time she’ll have reclaimed her belongings from our attic bedroom. I’ve already expressed by amusement / bemusement at the stuff university students “need” to take with them these days. Here’s a link to another article on that topic.
I find it interesting and quite significant that almost all of them say you don’t need stationery!! None at all!! The modern languages student was a significant exception, maybe because linguists need to memorise such a lot of stuff and actually writing it down helps. I was also impressed by the student who insists that you need a doorstop … so that you can prop your door open in halls of residence and socialise more easily with fellow residents as they walk past your open invitation to chat!
There you go!
Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!
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