(Quebec) The increasing importance of screens among young people, “it is a possible health and educational catastrophe that is before us,” launched French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Friday morning. His counterpart François Legault then showed him around a brand new school in Quebec where the presence of digital boards caught his attention.
“I saw that there were some digital tables. But otherwise, what use do you have for the screens? » asked Mr. Attal, former Minister of Education, to the management of the Ancrage school. It was explained to him that all classes have digital boards, that fifth and sixth grade students each have a Chromebook “which is not used all the time”, and that there is a “deployment plan for the digital” to increase the ratio of devices like tablets and computers.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, stressed that the Quebec Culture and Citizenship course focuses “a lot on digital skills, the dangers of screens, the dangers of social networks and all that.” He recalled that cell phones have been banned in class since 1er January.
“Do you have this?” » asked François Legault of Mr. Attal.
“We banned it in colleges” in 2018, he replied. “We were one of the first countries in the world to do so. » The ban already existed in schools – and not just in the classroom. This means that young French people under the age of 15 cannot have cell phones at school. Gabriel Attal explained that it is more complex for high school, because students “have the right to go out when they are between two classes. If we ban telephones in high school, they will go out every time.”
Bernard Drainville intervened that it was because of this “danger” that he limited the ban to the classroom. “There are some who want us to make ourselves at home, to be closed off for the whole day. We haven’t gotten there yet. »
“I think it’s important,” replied Gabriel Attal immediately.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, LA PRESS
Gabriel Attal, Bernard Drainville and François Legault
François Legault asked him if there was “resistance” to this measure. “Not so much,” Mr. Attal said. “At least not among the French. Among the students, obviously a little. »
“It’s a real challenge because we see that I am very concerned about the place of screens, especially among very young children,” he added.
“It is a possible health and educational disaster that is before us because we have teachers, professors, schools who tell us that even in CP (preparatory school), so at five or six years old, we have children who have difficulty concentrating, who are much less patient and this is probably linked to the screens which have developed. We have a recent study which shows that at six years old, a child spends as much time during the year in front of a screen as in the classroom. It is also parenting education. »
For François Legault, in fact, “we can act in schools, in daycare services, and at home, we must also make parents responsible and we advertise to explain. » Then the Prime Minister ended the exchange, because “we are expected”.
The two prime ministers will hold a press briefing mid-morning.
Thursday, in a speech at the Salon Bleu, Gabriel Attal delivered a powerful plea for secularism. “Faced with those who pretend not to understand what secularism is, who would like to divert it, make people believe that it is a form of anti-religion weapon, make people believe that it is a form of negation of religions, make believe that it is a form of discrimination, we respond that secularism is the condition of freedom, is the condition of equality, is the condition of fraternity,” he declared.
With the collaboration of Hugo Pilon-Larose, The Press