Letters: screens in schools are not a problem

Screen tests

Sir: As somebody whose teaching career coincided with the digital revolution, I must take issue with Sophie Winkleman’s well-meaning but blinkered views on screens in schools (Actress’s Notebook, 30 March). I shall ignore the several familiar yet unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts, but I cannot let ‘straight back to books, paper and pens’ go unchallenged. Adults involved in education have often, lamentably, seen it as their job to prepare children for the world they themselves grew up in, rather than the one that awaits the next generation.

The comment, ‘Well it worked for me!’ boils my blood. Any perusal of the current school curriculum would have visitors from outer space rolling their eyes in disbelief at how irrelevant to a child’s future much of it is. ‘Right, children, today we’re going to be learning how oxbow lakes form.’ Bafflingly, we don’t seem to have recognised that almost anything a child wants or needs to know is now at their fingertips.