Andrew Dickens Afternoons

Yesterday I was doing talkback on a couple of related stories.The first was on the thoughts of Dr Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish education expert who’s just started at the University of New South Wales. He believes all smartphones should be banned at primary school and managed at secondary school because they are a distraction and impediment to learning.This is a similar view to France who banned phones in school in 2017. Then their education minister said "These days the children don't play at break time anymore. They are just all in front of their smartphones, and from an educational point of view, that's a problem."That dovetailed nicely into another story out of Lower Hutt, where a survey showed that 88% of kids don’t play every day and 96% of parents said their children weren’t playing daily.In a social experiment, the kids were given chalk and told to draw pictures of what they do at home. The kids drew TVs, phones, gaming setups and one kid even drew the YouTube logo.The 2 stories show just how in thrall our