Beyond mobiles, tablets, computers and screens in general, the citizens’ movements that are gestating, have highlighted the need to reflect on the preponderance of our lives. The off movement was born a few months ago in the Spanish State and has received numerous supports, among which are the signatories of the declaration of Euskal Herria. They claim that technological development is at the service of human beings, not the other way around, and denounce the control of technology led by the interests of big companies, the “indiscriminate use of technology” and the “violation of personal data”. They say that in the face of each new technology it is necessary to establish protocols, guarantee the possibility of disconnection, promote training…

“Education should help limit hyperconnection”

The Off movement has placed a special focus on education and on children and youth. Education should help reduce hyperconnection, not increase, but if it's not that we're often blindly falling into the glow of digital technology, in the name of modernity. On the contrary, more than one voice has already questioned the belief that technology will favor education per se, and on the contrary, they have warned that it can be harmful in several areas (on the subject we write in depth in ARGIA: That fascination with technology does not disgust education).

The Off movement puts forward five proposals for education: to ensure that learning books are always in paper format; to use screens in the classroom only in exceptional situations (other than digital devices are part of the daily routine); to ensure the right to disconnect students, families and teachers; to make digital an object and not a learning resource; and until this is achieved, to offer a non-screen alternative: to offer a line without screen at all levels for families.

Are we evaluating the digitization of schools?

In the French state there are also movements concerned about the speed of the implementation of digital technologies in education. “We have made tablets and digital devices the only privileged or privileged element of learning and, in this way, we encourage students to use these devices for everything and everything; we do not turn children into informed users, but into captive consumers subject to algorithms,” says the group of agents from the educational community CoLINE, as we counted in ARGIA. They have denounced the normalisation of over-exposure to school screens and have written to the French Minister of Education asking for debate and reflection on the process of digitisation being carried out in schools: “The French Ministry of National Education assesses everything except the use of technology. For years, the High School 4.0 model has been widespread in several schools, and they do not intend to assess the impact, but to question it is to go against progress.”