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Why-Fi in the schools?
Apr. 11th, 2012 08:32 pmIs Wi-Fi in the classroom harmful to the students' health?
If by "harmful" we mean that it poses a direct, scientifically verifiable and quantifiable health hazard, then I suspect the answer is no. Even if there WERE some risk, it would be pretty hard to protect your children from it altogether, as there are hotspots in most public libraries, coffee shops and other well-frequented public spaces. Still, a small but vocal lobby group of parents and teachers clearly believes that WI-FI is dangerous and should be banned from the classroom.
It's a nonstarter just to tell these concerned adults that they are complete and utter fools who ought to know better than to react so irrationally and subscribe to all this voodoo-magic-nonsense. Instead, we should say to them, "Tell me about these children's symptoms so we can get to the bottom of this problem." Because the symptoms, whatever their root cause, are real. If it's something ELSE (or more likely, a number of other things) that's putting our kids at risk, I sure as hell want to know about it so we can eliminate or at least mitigate that risk.
I'm reminded of the scare surrounding video display terminals (VDTs) that occurred in the 1970s and 80s when libraries were ditching the card catalogue and moving to an online environment. A majority of cataloguers were young women in their childbearing years. Rumour had it that the VDTs were giving off dangerously high levels of radiation that would harm a developing foetus and infiltrate a mother's milk supply. The doctors, particularly if they worked in the field of occupational health, were quick to dismiss these fears. Nonetheless, a certain number of young women who worked at VDTs - maybe a statistically significant number or maybe not - went on to have pregnancies or postpartum experiences which were in some way problematic.
Chances are, these experiences were nothing to do with radiation. Maybe it was the air quality in those ultra-energy-efficient office buildings of the era, where you couldn't even open a window to get fresh air. Maybe it was the insulation in the buildings that was the problem - many buildings contained asbestos or UFFI, for example. Maybe the women were simply exhausted from working full days almost up to their due dates and then returning to work as soon as their 15-week "unemployment" insurance benefits ran out, so their resistance was down and their health suffered.
Who knows?
So to go back to the WI-FI scare, we need to really LISTEN to and THINK about these parents' and teachers' concerns if we are to have any hope of properly diagnosing the problem.
There's something else too. Maybe schoolchildren really DO spend too much time these days doing things on the computer - at the expense of, say, physical activity, or reading real books made of real paper or talking to real-live people in real time about real-life issues. Maybe they should even be doing more of the things that people of my generation scorned as being too mechanical or robotic, like memorizing poetry and doing mental arithmetic.
If we could arrive at a compromise solution and balance the risks so that kids simply spent LESS time exposed to WI-FI, less time peering at a computer screen, less time being subjected to endless computer-generated worksheets, busywork, and standardized IQ and aptitude tests, would that be such a bad thing?
If by "harmful" we mean that it poses a direct, scientifically verifiable and quantifiable health hazard, then I suspect the answer is no. Even if there WERE some risk, it would be pretty hard to protect your children from it altogether, as there are hotspots in most public libraries, coffee shops and other well-frequented public spaces. Still, a small but vocal lobby group of parents and teachers clearly believes that WI-FI is dangerous and should be banned from the classroom.
It's a nonstarter just to tell these concerned adults that they are complete and utter fools who ought to know better than to react so irrationally and subscribe to all this voodoo-magic-nonsense. Instead, we should say to them, "Tell me about these children's symptoms so we can get to the bottom of this problem." Because the symptoms, whatever their root cause, are real. If it's something ELSE (or more likely, a number of other things) that's putting our kids at risk, I sure as hell want to know about it so we can eliminate or at least mitigate that risk.
I'm reminded of the scare surrounding video display terminals (VDTs) that occurred in the 1970s and 80s when libraries were ditching the card catalogue and moving to an online environment. A majority of cataloguers were young women in their childbearing years. Rumour had it that the VDTs were giving off dangerously high levels of radiation that would harm a developing foetus and infiltrate a mother's milk supply. The doctors, particularly if they worked in the field of occupational health, were quick to dismiss these fears. Nonetheless, a certain number of young women who worked at VDTs - maybe a statistically significant number or maybe not - went on to have pregnancies or postpartum experiences which were in some way problematic.
Chances are, these experiences were nothing to do with radiation. Maybe it was the air quality in those ultra-energy-efficient office buildings of the era, where you couldn't even open a window to get fresh air. Maybe it was the insulation in the buildings that was the problem - many buildings contained asbestos or UFFI, for example. Maybe the women were simply exhausted from working full days almost up to their due dates and then returning to work as soon as their 15-week "unemployment" insurance benefits ran out, so their resistance was down and their health suffered.
Who knows?
So to go back to the WI-FI scare, we need to really LISTEN to and THINK about these parents' and teachers' concerns if we are to have any hope of properly diagnosing the problem.
There's something else too. Maybe schoolchildren really DO spend too much time these days doing things on the computer - at the expense of, say, physical activity, or reading real books made of real paper or talking to real-live people in real time about real-life issues. Maybe they should even be doing more of the things that people of my generation scorned as being too mechanical or robotic, like memorizing poetry and doing mental arithmetic.
If we could arrive at a compromise solution and balance the risks so that kids simply spent LESS time exposed to WI-FI, less time peering at a computer screen, less time being subjected to endless computer-generated worksheets, busywork, and standardized IQ and aptitude tests, would that be such a bad thing?
