Screen-centred Schools: the New Wild West

A New Paper by Dr. Mary Redmayne

Screen-centred schools are like the new Wild West, according to a recently published paper about device use in schools. “This new frontier in education” had sparse evidence of educational benefits when it began to take off. Since then, health and mental well-being challenges have emerged as screen use has increased.

Dr. Mary Redmayne, an adjunct research fellow at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, School of Environmental Studies, explains that devices including laptops and mobile phones, and the routers used to enable wireless connections, expose our young people to radio-frequency radiation in class right through the school day. “There are many health and biological effects from exposure to the microwave radiation…[that have been] demonstrated in many hundreds of international peer-reviewed studies..”

The review highlights specific legal issues that WiFi and screens in schools pose, including implications of the Human Rights Act and the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child. Boards of Trustees, Principals and teachers are rarely aware of these legal obligations.

Suggestions are made on how to provide for the rights of those whose health, and therefore their education, are affected and how to minimize exposure for staff and students.

The paper appears in the latest issue of the International Journal of Law & Education and can be found here https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Redmayne2