Opting Out of Screens

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is where the Catholic schools shine. Many don’t have any screens whatsoever.

Eh, when we were looking, most have screens. Perhaps not as heavy as public school. But they are there too, in elementary, and being used more and more. It’s a rarity for any private school to not heavily use them. You really have to be looking at Monessori, Waldorf, and “classical education” schools- which are not prevalent

Agree. They also don’t take kids with any disabilities either. And the classical schools are also full of odd families. Sorry, it’s true.

Catholic schools educate many children with disabilities.

Not ADHD or dyslexia. Not the ones we talked to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is where the Catholic schools shine. Many don’t have any screens whatsoever.

Eh, when we were looking, most have screens. Perhaps not as heavy as public school. But they are there too, in elementary, and being used more and more. It’s a rarity for any private school to not heavily use them. You really have to be looking at Monessori, Waldorf, and “classical education” schools- which are not prevalent

Agree. They also don’t take kids with any disabilities either. And the classical schools are also full of odd families. Sorry, it’s true.

Catholic schools educate many children with disabilities.

Not the chair throwing disability. Which can make a big difference for the other kids in the classroom

[Anonymous]

Our local Catholic schools in the DMV with no or limited screens do take kids with disabilities and they are academically better than the other local options (public and charter). They do use laptops 2x/year for kids to take the standardized tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are Catholic schools generally better about this or only some? Any good examples in NOVA?

Not Catholic. We looked into academics at two NoVA Catholic elementary schools.

Both were good academically, using paper textbooks and paper workbooks from reputable publishers. It was unclear to us in our limited visits how much academic differentiation (students either ahead or behind) was supported. Reading used Phonics and explicit instruction. Spelling and grammar taught explicitly with weekly spelling tests. Both were "low screen", but not absolutely zero screen.

[Anonymous]

Classical Christian in this area are screen free as far as I know. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but great for Singapore math, hands on science, and kids reading whole books. Ours does school plays and 3 recesses a day for younger kids, a big pro.

[Anonymous]

We went for a private Montessori education specifically because they are screen free and I would highly recommend going that route if you can afford it and there are quality Montessori schools in your area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Classical Christian in this area are screen free as far as I know. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but great for Singapore math, hands on science, and kids reading whole books. Ours does school plays and 3 recesses a day for younger kids, a big pro.

What are the names of some local examples? Thx.

[Anonymous]

If public schools offered a screen opt-out the majority of parents would choose it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want a quality education, unfortunately you have to pay for private.

Correction: a private that doesn’t utilize screens for teaching. Many do, unfortunately.

+1 Even many (most?) parochial schools are using chromebooks or iPads to have kids do work through apps. It isn't ALL bad to submit assignments electronically through Google Classrooms. What's actually bad is the "learning" apps like Dreambox, IXL, etc. and not having actual physical copies of articles to read. Handouts and packets of yore are now pdfs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Classical Christian in this area are screen free as far as I know. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but great for Singapore math, hands on science, and kids reading whole books. Ours does school plays and 3 recesses a day for younger kids, a big pro.

We have a son and felt uncomfortable sending to classical Christian because of the messaging - hellfire, the world is dark and fallen- and the trad families, anti-gay stance. DS hasn’t hit puberty and we have no idea who he will become so we didn’t want him around that messaging constantly. If we had a daughter I suppose I’d be worried about her for different reasons. In the end we opted for Catholic school and we’re not even Catholic. It’s not perfect but that’s life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want a quality education, unfortunately you have to pay for private.

Correction: a private that doesn’t utilize screens for teaching. Many do, unfortunately.

+1 Even many (most?) parochial schools are using chromebooks or iPads to have kids do work through apps. It isn't ALL bad to submit assignments electronically through Google Classrooms. What's actually bad is the "learning" apps like Dreambox, IXL, etc. and not having actual physical copies of articles to read. Handouts and packets of yore are now pdfs.

Our parochial doesn’t use iPads for teaching, but it does for enrichment and math fact practice. So they do math homework and lessons (and all their other subjects) through textbooks and workbooks, but they get daily or almost daily time on the iPad to do math ahead grade level. It’s maybe 10 minutes a day at the end of math class. So far there has been zero homework involving screens - it’s all on paper. I am ok with this limited amount of screen use at school.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know any schools (even public schools) that have given ES homework in many years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know any schools (even public schools) that have given ES homework in many years.

Sounds made up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know any schools (even public schools) that have given ES homework in many years.

Sounds made up.

DP. True here too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know any schools (even public schools) that have given ES homework in many years.

Sounds made up.

DP. True here too

To add, my public middle school kid gets zero homework