Johnhwilburn.com

Monday morning, I started going through some old material that has seen better days (Island-life and children are hard on them). While looking at some of the old board songs it made me nostalgic….and a little sad.

Because I can remember children running to see me while carrying those songs…..

and singing them excitedly.

In 2020 during the pandemic SVG held their latest elections. Leading up to this the party in power did something that had a greater impact upon our culture than even they probably expected. Children were given tablets.

It began with higher grades, but by the end of 2020 almost all children from second grade up were given a tablet for “school work“. Of course the quotes and italics here mean they used it for many things OTHER than school work!

And those tablets destroyed a simple time.

Before the tablets came in, kids would spend the afternoon playing at the park with friends or pitching marbles. They would spend hours playing marbles! It got so bad the principal of the school I volunteer at was forced to say anyone playing marbles at school would have them taken away.

But when the tablets came….nobody cared about marbles any more.

I do understand how tablets can be wonderful learning tools (especially during the pandemic). But they dramatically changed the way young people spent their time. Now things like marbles are seen as “boring” while they stare at glowing screens.

Looking at the board songs the kids loved to sing I thought that children can still enjoy the simpler time that came before tablets. But they must have something that captures their attention. Something that causes them to look up from their electronic device, and join in the fun.

And songs like that are one of those things!

We can never eliminate technology from the lives of children (I don’t think we need to). But we can give them revive some of the “old school” activities that show them life before tablets wasn’t so boring after all.

And slowly but surely…they will start to turn the tablets off.