Tracking the trends in education over the last 5 years there has been a noted push-down approach to the impact of curriculum demands in the early years of learning. Many of the school-based approaches, fuelled with the standard testing, have led to teachers noting the levels of anxiety creeping into our young students, but have we considered the physical ramifications that are now starting to present themselves with the world focus on digital learning?
As teachers we are currently engaging in a new level of diagnosis that adds to the trends of ill health in our young students. We have witnessed first-hand that the increases in screen time have led to levels of disengagement in our classroom and many of the developmental milestones being stilted. What lies beneath is an increase in students struggling with basic visual tracking skills – the ability to remain focussed on what is in front of them and the rates of vision distortion that are increasing year by year.
In comes the area of behavioural optometry, which has supported many teachers to understand why students are struggling with focussing on tasks and how they interpret this with their body. Here lies the increasing problem as visual bombardment has become part of our 21st century lifestyles, and with these choices increasing levels of digital engagement with our screens. One only needs to stop for a moment to view screen usage in our adults and how this is then modelled to our young. Have we taken a moment to consider how often we move towards our devices to listen to the message tones or check current social feeds, all in the hope of staying connected or glued to another through the cyber world? Let us not forget how in our day-to-day lifestyle engagements – doctor’s visits, hospital stays and shopping at our local supermarket and malls – we are constantly surrounded by TV screens or visual cues to keep us connecting to the digital screen rather than one another. Are we stopping to feel this impact over time and how this can become the normal of what we model to our younger generation?
Now more than ever our play opportunities are centred around flat screens where students are no longer using the whole body to help them navigate their world. Instead they are offered sedentary fixed positions where the head takes priority and the body lays dormant and over time is not given the opportunity to maximise the true potential the body offers to learn and grow.
Teachers are noting children becoming restless, displaying watering eyes and an inability to display common visual tracking skills, leading to a growing number of referrals for eye screening tests. Our lifestyle choices in opting for a hand-held device over a play in the park or backyard leads to a child’s eyes constantly converging to focus more on a small and large screen, putting pressure on the eyes’ muscles to work harder to keep the information clearer. This in turn impacts tabletop activities in classroom settings. Add sedentary play options into the mix, and this leads to students struggling with long and short-range vision.
Our students are zoning into the smaller pictures yet leaving behind the bigger picture of whole-body movement and awareness that includes naturally developing peripheral vision. Choosing a sedentary option of screen time over the whole-body movement is a key indicator for these trends. Student referrals from optometrist’s visits are reminding parents to allow a minimum of three hours daily outdoor play to support the prevention of the development of long and/or short-sightedness.
As educators, part of a world-wide education system and care givers to the young, what are these indicators reflecting to us?
What choices have we made in our educational models to promote levels of digital engagement that are necessary, while also monitoring the impact on the health and wellbeing of the students?
Do we continue to be swept up by the trends that we know are ever-changing, or do we stop to ponder on the impact and what serves our young to allow for responsible activity so that the body becomes a healthy vehicle and tool for learning?