Another View: Freeport school offers lesson in how to curtail screen time

The Editorial Board was on target when it exhorted parents to set sensible boundaries for their children’s burgeoning screen time (Our View, Aug. 28). However, when they noted the impracticality of schools asking students to scale back their screen usage, they may have not known about one regional school’s technology policy.

Maine Coast Waldorf School in Freeport manages to instruct their early childhood and elementary students without the aid of any electronic devices in the classroom.

Frankie Thevenot, 3, plays with an iPad in his bedroom at his home in Metairie, La., in this October 2011 photo. The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages any electronic "screen time" for infants and toddlers under age 2, while older children should be limited to one to two hours a day. AP

Even lessons in the high school proceed in the old-fashioned way, with teachers encouraging students to engage in spirited debates and to practice critical inquiry, usually without the intervention of computers. Cellphones are off limits during the entire school day; students have access to computers in a resource center, but computer use is restricted to online research or to typing papers.

Outside of school, technology is inescapable for most young people. Yet the world increasingly needs young people armed with capacities unachievable through electronic devices — compassion, resilience, creativity, the cultivation of meaningful relationships. Maine Coast Waldorf School offers a refuge from the unrelenting claims such devices make on their precious time and attention.

David Sloan is a resident of Brunswick.

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