A Critique On Mr P ICT's Latest Video

I've just watched this video from Mr.P ICT as he outlines his concerns about the recent open letter from 150 clinicians to the UK (England) education and health ministers. The letter, titled "The physical health impacts of increasing screen and EdTech use in the classroom", highlights the amount of time children in England spend on screens at school could be harming their "physical and developmental health." According to the BBC report, clinicians said they are prescribing glasses, hearing aids and speech therapy to children "for a problem that is unintentionally being made worse in our schools". There are a several points in what Mr. P says, basically in defence of ICT in the primary classroom, that I want to pick up on.

• His main defence appears to be one of deflecting to the Ofcom study data, arguing that children spend 3.5 to 6 hours online at home, therefore making schools the "wrong target" and a "plaster on a broken leg." But, this ignores the fact that screen time exposure is obviously, cumulative. If, as Ofcom have highlighted, learners are already heavily exposed to screens at home, adding further hours of screen time at school only exacerbates the physical and developmental health issues that the clinicians are warning us about. Also, schools cannot control home behaviour, but they can control the classroom environment. Arguing that schools shouldn't address their contribution to the screen time problem just because of the home environment, is in my opinion, a very peculiar argument.
• Quite a significant portion of the video is spent defending his own specific ICT training philosophy, stating he doesn't promote reading apps, screen-based homework, or using tech to substitute paper, all of which I agree is commendable. But, ultimately they are irrelevant to the clinicians wider point. They are reporting on the systemic reality of what is happening in classrooms across England. Pointing out that "good EdTech" exists doesn't invalidate the medical reality that "bad EdTech" is currently widely harming our learners.
• Mr. P does concede that one of the most alarming points raised in the report was that vulnerable children and those with additional needs are being placed in front of screens because it is cheaper than providing human teaching assistants. *Note my concerns about the UK (England) government's, soon to be, introduction of AI Tutors for disadvantaged learners.* However, he appears to dismiss this by saying, "That's not an EdTech problem, is it? That's once again a funding problem." However, from the perspective of the learner's health, which is what is important here, the political root cause is irrelevant and is a secondary argument. If the digital technology facilitates poor care, that damages learner development, the harm is still actively occurring via a screen.
• Lastly, to counter the clinicians' claim that "nearly a million children are on screens in almost every lesson," Mr. P relies purely on his own anecdotal experience, for example, "most of the schools I work with just don't have enough access." This "nearly a million children" figure is referenced in the actual open letter, to this research. He then goes on to invent a hypothetical flaw in their data, suggesting they might just be counting kids looking at an interactive whiteboard. However, he provides no evidence that the research was flawed, but simply casts doubt on a statistic because possibly it doesn't align with his personal observations?

Would it be fair to say that Mr. P's argument boils down to defending the potential of EdTech while side stepping the actual, documented physical and developmental consequences of how it is currently being used in the real world?