The Privilege of not needing a Laptop
There was a tweet floating through edutwitter the other day that briefly stopped my scrolling.
She’s right, of course. And it's a sentiment I've seen echoed in different corners of my timeline recently, especially because we seem to have agreed to stop worrying about the harm in children spending 14hrs a day looking at a screen. And yet she’s missing something crucial. Because these things actually rely on a large number of elements all locking into place. For example:
Availability. One of the things this pandemic has revealed is the extent to which the professional and managerial classes are able to work at home on flexible working hours in a way that others, on whom all our comfort, health and safety is utterly dependent, can’t. I call parents, from the comfort of my bedroom, to discuss their children’s home learning. The parents - cleaners, NHS staff, shop workers - will often answer from their places of work. Once I’ve done what I need to do, I go downstairs to work with my own children, a luxury that is clearly not afforded to the very parents with whom I’ve just spoken. Enriching discussions, creating stories, playing paper games - all lovely activities. Can’t be done if you’re not there with them.
A co-parent. There are some incredible single parents I work with. But there’s also no way I’d be able to do any of the above if I didn’t have a partner with whom I share the childcare and domestic responsibilities. Almost 40% of children at my school live in single parent homes. No-one should underestimate the burden of having to deal with all these domestic responsibilities by oneself, or how little of yourself you will have left over for ‘games’ at the end of it all.
Time. Even aside from having to make a living, there are so many other things that could steal your available time. Having to deal with older relatives with care needs. Siblings, with or without additional needs. Doing all your own cleaning. Cooking by yourself for the whole family. Dealing with domestic emergencies, home maintenance. When you are living on a low / single income, none of this can be outsourced in the way that it might be in households with greater means.
Resources. Activity books, reading books, equipment, games, stationery... these might not be massively expensive per se, but nor are they free. (Reading books were free, of course, before our library rebranded as a Covid testing centre). When you have to account for every pound of your outgoings, there might be other things that need to be given a higher priority at any given moment in time.
Confidence. It’s easy to suggest that parents should just ‘create a story’ with their child, but it’s also easy to forget that this takes confidence in your ability to do so. Those who say this is an easy thing probably have the literacy skills, the confidence and freedom with language that makes them forget about those who don’t. Try jumbling up the letters of everything you read. Write with your weaker hand. Try doing this in your third language and see how far you get.
Parents who did this with them when they were children. Parents don’t always have the energy to create whole new ways of parenting, so we tend to (especially at times of stress) gravitate to what feels familiar. Often these will be the experiences given to us by our own parents. This is the mechanism by which cultural capital tends to pass from one generation to the next. Starting new traditions that deviate from your own personal experiences of childhood is challenging. People do it all the time, of course, but there's a cost.
Mental load. Honestly, if I’m worrying about a couple of minor things then I find myself unable to give my kids’ home learning the undivided attention it needs. And my worries are really trivial. I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I don’t have to be routinely thinking about my financial situation, or my housing situation, or my health, or the health of anyone in my family, or what my kids are going to have for dinner or where it’s going to come from, or any of my utilities bills, or my phone, or my car; I don’t have to deal with a landlord or navigate the labyrinth of contacts at the local authority, I’m not constantly having to apply for every tranche of funding and support I might be entitled to, and then have to wait days and weeks for the decision. “Let the imagination fly. Draw pictures. Have fun.” It’s a lot easier when your own imagination isn't busy flying through a hundred worst-case scenarios in your head.
As an aside, this is why a large part of the left are focusing so much energies on making sure families are getting the basics. Free school meals during the holidays, a living wage, boosts to Universal Credit. Because I think the left have an understanding that if these foundational basics aren’t in place, everything else we try and place on top is liable to come crashing down.
But back to the original tweet. Why are we giving kids laptops? Why am I genuinely proud that we’ve been able to secure laptops for all our students? Obviously computers can’t recreate the lovely home environment in which children read and write stories, discuss documentaries and play paper games. And if I think any of my students are doing that then I for one will be happy to tell them to ignore the work I’ve set and carry on with what they’re doing. But for the ones who aren’t, what these laptops do is allow us to get that bit closer, to get into their homes, to create versions of the lessons they might otherwise have had. To give them access to something that almost resembles a school. And they’re not perfect, but the kids are attending. They’re engaging. To a surprising extent actually.
Think of it this way. Growing up in a home learning environment that is rich in confidence, cultural capital and available adults, is like living on a cruise ship where you're given what you need to get to wherever you want to go. And schools like mine are a kind of lifeboat, where we try and give children the kind of learning environment they might not always get at home. Now the lifeboat might not be as good, and sure it might leak a bit in places, but we’ll take you to where you need to be. Or somewhere close. Now at present these lifeboats are out of action, and there a lot of kids treading water. For God knows how long. And they certainly can’t reach those cruise ships out there on the horizon. So in the absence of anything better we’ve tossed them a Chromebook to hold on to. And of course it’s not as good as the lifeboat, and it’s certainly no cruise ship. But for some of my kids it might just be the thing that keeps them from sinking.
 |
She’s right, of course. And it's a sentiment I've seen echoed in different corners of my timeline recently, especially because we seem to have agreed to stop worrying about the harm in children spending 14hrs a day looking at a screen. And yet she’s missing something crucial. Because these things actually rely on a large number of elements all locking into place. For example:
Availability. One of the things this pandemic has revealed is the extent to which the professional and managerial classes are able to work at home on flexible working hours in a way that others, on whom all our comfort, health and safety is utterly dependent, can’t. I call parents, from the comfort of my bedroom, to discuss their children’s home learning. The parents - cleaners, NHS staff, shop workers - will often answer from their places of work. Once I’ve done what I need to do, I go downstairs to work with my own children, a luxury that is clearly not afforded to the very parents with whom I’ve just spoken. Enriching discussions, creating stories, playing paper games - all lovely activities. Can’t be done if you’re not there with them.
A co-parent. There are some incredible single parents I work with. But there’s also no way I’d be able to do any of the above if I didn’t have a partner with whom I share the childcare and domestic responsibilities. Almost 40% of children at my school live in single parent homes. No-one should underestimate the burden of having to deal with all these domestic responsibilities by oneself, or how little of yourself you will have left over for ‘games’ at the end of it all.
Time. Even aside from having to make a living, there are so many other things that could steal your available time. Having to deal with older relatives with care needs. Siblings, with or without additional needs. Doing all your own cleaning. Cooking by yourself for the whole family. Dealing with domestic emergencies, home maintenance. When you are living on a low / single income, none of this can be outsourced in the way that it might be in households with greater means.
Resources. Activity books, reading books, equipment, games, stationery... these might not be massively expensive per se, but nor are they free. (Reading books were free, of course, before our library rebranded as a Covid testing centre). When you have to account for every pound of your outgoings, there might be other things that need to be given a higher priority at any given moment in time.
Confidence. It’s easy to suggest that parents should just ‘create a story’ with their child, but it’s also easy to forget that this takes confidence in your ability to do so. Those who say this is an easy thing probably have the literacy skills, the confidence and freedom with language that makes them forget about those who don’t. Try jumbling up the letters of everything you read. Write with your weaker hand. Try doing this in your third language and see how far you get.
Parents who did this with them when they were children. Parents don’t always have the energy to create whole new ways of parenting, so we tend to (especially at times of stress) gravitate to what feels familiar. Often these will be the experiences given to us by our own parents. This is the mechanism by which cultural capital tends to pass from one generation to the next. Starting new traditions that deviate from your own personal experiences of childhood is challenging. People do it all the time, of course, but there's a cost.
Mental load. Honestly, if I’m worrying about a couple of minor things then I find myself unable to give my kids’ home learning the undivided attention it needs. And my worries are really trivial. I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I don’t have to be routinely thinking about my financial situation, or my housing situation, or my health, or the health of anyone in my family, or what my kids are going to have for dinner or where it’s going to come from, or any of my utilities bills, or my phone, or my car; I don’t have to deal with a landlord or navigate the labyrinth of contacts at the local authority, I’m not constantly having to apply for every tranche of funding and support I might be entitled to, and then have to wait days and weeks for the decision. “Let the imagination fly. Draw pictures. Have fun.” It’s a lot easier when your own imagination isn't busy flying through a hundred worst-case scenarios in your head.
 |
As an aside, this is why a large part of the left are focusing so much energies on making sure families are getting the basics. Free school meals during the holidays, a living wage, boosts to Universal Credit. Because I think the left have an understanding that if these foundational basics aren’t in place, everything else we try and place on top is liable to come crashing down.
But back to the original tweet. Why are we giving kids laptops? Why am I genuinely proud that we’ve been able to secure laptops for all our students? Obviously computers can’t recreate the lovely home environment in which children read and write stories, discuss documentaries and play paper games. And if I think any of my students are doing that then I for one will be happy to tell them to ignore the work I’ve set and carry on with what they’re doing. But for the ones who aren’t, what these laptops do is allow us to get that bit closer, to get into their homes, to create versions of the lessons they might otherwise have had. To give them access to something that almost resembles a school. And they’re not perfect, but the kids are attending. They’re engaging. To a surprising extent actually.
Think of it this way. Growing up in a home learning environment that is rich in confidence, cultural capital and available adults, is like living on a cruise ship where you're given what you need to get to wherever you want to go. And schools like mine are a kind of lifeboat, where we try and give children the kind of learning environment they might not always get at home. Now the lifeboat might not be as good, and sure it might leak a bit in places, but we’ll take you to where you need to be. Or somewhere close. Now at present these lifeboats are out of action, and there a lot of kids treading water. For God knows how long. And they certainly can’t reach those cruise ships out there on the horizon. So in the absence of anything better we’ve tossed them a Chromebook to hold on to. And of course it’s not as good as the lifeboat, and it’s certainly no cruise ship. But for some of my kids it might just be the thing that keeps them from sinking.
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