“What should we do with our 5ème (Year 8) and 2nde (Year 11) pupils, all equipped with Chromebooks?”; “How should we think about ChatGPT in teaching?”; “What is the school’s place alongside the family in regulating digital use at home?”; “Is the violence of images cultural?”; “What place should be given to social media for teenagers far from home?”.
These are just some of the questions raised by the educational community of the International French School (IFS) in Singapore, a private international school of 3,000 pupils, from nursery to the final year of secondary school. Approached at first by the school’s head of teaching about our 3-6-9-12+ milestones, we were able to immerse ourselves in the various spheres of the community of this school on the other side of the globe. We therefore spent a week talking about digital issues with 5ème (Year 8) and 2nde (Year 11) pupils, with primary, middle and secondary school teachers, and with parents. While expatriation and contact with a foreign land influence, for many, family life and therefore their use of digital technology, questions and observations shared by everyone remain, beyond borders. These questions testify to the immense technological revolution in which we are all involved together.
Working with teachers :
On the teaching side, three lines of work emerged from our discussions: learning about digital technology, learning through digital technology and learning with digital technology. Learning about digital technology means, of course, understanding the tool one owns, how the internet works, the commercial society it gives rise to, but also how information is processed and how to search for it. Learning through digital technology means using these tools to enrich one’s teaching, getting away from pen and paper to think differently. It also means allowing those further from school to compensate for their difficulties. And finally learning with digital technology, undoubtedly the biggest undertaking, is a reflection to be carried out on how to teach in our rapidly changing societies. Thinking differently about learning, social relationships and relationships to identity. Thinking collaboration to confront ideas, thinking the flipped classroom to learn how to learn and, above all, to cultivate and feed one’s creativity. At a time when algorithms always serve us what we already know to reinforce our opinions, we need to teach our pupils and children to think for themselves, and therefore to think against themselves.
Obviously, digital equipment is not an issue in this school, which has plenty of resources. People wonder more about what this equipment changes in the bonds between pupils and in learning. While the screen is, of course, used as a substitute for the tools of book culture, it also needs to be questioned more broadly about the impact it has on education. In this, nothing very different from schools in France, except perhaps the ease of access to screens at school. Equipment comes first, training after.
Our work with pupils :
Working in another culture at the other end of the world is not simple; one must indeed take into account the specificity of these young people, who are immersed in an international environment and in a country turned towards the world and its modernity. Singapore, although its population is mostly Chinese, hosts many Asian communities but also European ones, with almost 20,000 French nationals. An undisputed financial hub, it is said to be a pleasant place to live, despite the rather high cost of living, because everything there is safe. No delinquency, no dirt, no poverty. A “paradise” in short, or at least in what is shown, which one almost only leaves by plane (often to go to Bali, Thailand or Indonesia for the weekend, as it happens). These polyglot young people, whose academic level excels, grow up in contact with a very demanding Singaporean school system. Everything is in place to imagine oneself in the best of all possible worlds, with the idea of perpetuating excellence and disappointing no one. That is, incidentally, the image the middle and high school pupils reflected back to us : small classes, high-achieving and disciplined pupils, who know by heart the whole expected discourse on social media and video games. “Digital? Not too much, not for too long, mainly for work!” In mirror image, teachers describe very academic pupils who work according to what is expected by teachers and by the top universities that will follow, but who often lack autonomy. It is commonly said that pupils end up resembling the countries that host them… But this autonomy seems to be found in how these teenagers use their digital tools at home.
Teachers, from their privileged position as educators, wonder about the balance to strike between maintaining this pressure, largely sustained by an entire system, and the development of their pupils. As good heirs to the spirit of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, the question is whether we are sufficiently training citizens able to think for themselves where everything already seems predetermined. In this sense, if digital technology only serves to boost existing skills, it risks contributing strongly to producing high-performing but highly impressionable citizens. Very keen on exchange and sharing, the teachers at this school do what they can with new technologies : some seize on them immediately, others do not know how to give them a useful place, others question themselves and feel their way, discovering innovative and creative uses. The first answer given collectively, in line with parents’ demand, is that of control : controlling access, content, times. It is therefore around this notion that everyone comes together to think about digital technology. Everyone has their own belief about time spent, the dangers it represents, and so on. But even if the question of access time is a relevant one that should be asked, it is indeed support that remains the most important.
Talks for parents :
We reflected more broadly, with teachers and parents, on the change of perspective needed to move beyond this question of control. While it is of course necessary to agree on the limits to set and to ensure a good balance in children’s daily lives, it is also (and perhaps above all) necessary to allow them to self-regulate in a society that will only increase the place given to new technologies. The point is then to move away from the question of screen time in order to think differently : to think about digital technology in its context, for these young people, according to their specificities. The place of social media in the context of a very “tightly run” society where young people have few spaces of their own, video games as a space of immersion that belongs to them and where, in the end, they can deploy who they are, the question of the link to others and to family far away: so many avenues that reshape the issues around excessive use and make it possible to establish a more personal dialogue about how young people use these tools.
We warmly thank the IFS team for asking us to support this reflection within their school. Beyond the kilometres that separate us and the specificities of schools abroad, creating a shared space for thought is in itself a device that breathes in fresh air and a way of still feeling that we are all human. In this respect, whether in Singapore or elsewhere, it is essential to come together to support our young people in the society that awaits them.
