tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/assumption-college-840/articlesAssumption College2020-07-15T12:12:17Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1412612020-07-15T12:12:17Z2020-07-15T12:12:17ZWith kids spending more waking hours on screens than ever, here’s what parents need to worry about<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346205/original/file-20200707-42-iw60pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6140%2C3143&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today's children are getting way more screen time than usual.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/boy-playing-video-game-on-computer-royalty-free-image/1216829942">Isabel Pavia/Moment collection via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Millions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/nearly-3-in-4-us-moms-were-in-the-workforce-before-the-covid-19-pandemic-is-that-changing-141510">working parents</a> have spent months largely trapped in their homes with their children. Many are trying to get their jobs done remotely in the constant presence of their kids, and they are desperate for some peace and quiet.</p>
<p>Many mothers and fathers have sought any available remedy that would enable them to do their jobs and fight cabin fever – including some who have given their children a free pass on video games, social media and television. One survey of more than 3,000 parents found that screen time for their kids had <a href="https://parents-together.org/parents-alarmed-as-kids-screen-time-skyrockets-during-covid-19-crisis-heres-what-you-can-do/">increased by 500% during the pandemic</a>. </p>
<h2>Screen time rules</h2>
<p>In case you missed it, when the <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/325147/WHO-NMH-PND-2019.4-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">World Health Organization released daily screen time guidelines</a> for children in April 2019, it suggested tight limits.</p>
<p>Infants should get none at all, and kids between the ages of 1 and 5 should spend no more than one hour daily staring at devices. The WHO does not provide specific limits for older children, but some research has suggested that excessive screen time for teenagers could be <a href="https://time.com/5437607/smartphones-teens-mental-health/">linked to mental health problems like anxiety and depression</a>. </p>
<p>Kids were already spending far more time than recommended with screens before the pandemic, and had been for years.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>As far back as the late 1990s, children between the ages of 3 and 5 years old were averaging <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2019/02/how-screen-time-affects-kids-development.html?page=all">two and a half hours per day with their screens</a>. And, naturally, what <a href="https://theconversation.com/parents-cut-yourself-some-slack-on-screen-time-limits-while-youre-stuck-at-home-133904">screen time rules</a> families had been enforcing have been on hold since at least mid-March 2020, when most U.S. communities entered an era of social distancing.</p>
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<h2>Prone to distraction</h2>
<p>Should parents worry if their children are spending more time than ever online to learn, play and while away the hours until they can freely study and socialize again? The short answer is no – as long as they don’t allow pandemic screen time habits to morph into permanent screen time habits.</p>
<p>Shortly before the coronavirus led to schools across the country suspending in-person instruction for safety reasons, I wrapped up my upcoming book on the power of digital devices to distract students from their learning. In “<a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/james-m-lang/distracted/9781541699816/">Distracted:
Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It</a>,” I argue that trying to eliminate distractions from classroom takes the wrong approach. The human brain is naturally prone to distraction, as scientists and philosophers have been attesting for centuries now.</p>
<p>The problem with distraction in school is not the distractions themselves. Children and adults alike can use social media or view screens in perfectly healthy ways. </p>
<p>The problem occurs when excessive attention to screens crowds out other learning behaviors. A child watching YouTube on her phone in the classroom or during study time is not developing her writing skills or mastering new vocabulary. Teachers should consider how to cultivate better attention to those behaviors, rather than trying to eliminate all distractions.</p>
<p>Likewise, parents should not view screens as the enemy of their children, even if they do need to be wary of <a href="https://theconversation.com/increasing-screen-time-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-could-be-harmful-to-kids-eyesight-138193">the impact of excessive screen time on eye health</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/worry-over-kids-excessive-smartphone-use-is-more-justified-than-ever-before-108585">how much sleep their kids get</a>.</p>
<p>The trouble with excessive screen time is that it eclipses healthy behaviors that all children need. When children gaze passively at screens, they aren’t exercising, playing with their friends or siblings, or snuggling with their parents during story time.</p>
<p>What I believe parents need to worry about isn’t how much time kids are spending cradling their devices during our current crisis. It’s whether their children are forming habits that will continue after the pandemic’s over. Those habits could stop today’s youngest Americans from resuming healthier and more creative behaviors like reading or <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/family-time/imaginative-play-benefits/">imaginative play</a>.</p>
<p>If kids can kick their pandemic screen patterns, and return to the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000203">relatively healthier levels of screen time</a> they had before, they will probably be just fine. The human brain is remarkably malleable. It has extraordinary potential to rewire itself in the face of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK326735/">accident or illness</a> and <a href="https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/adaptations-of-the-brain">adapt to new circumstances</a>.</p>
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<h2>Making a habit of bingeing</h2>
<p>This feature of the human brain, known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-brain-plasticity-and-why-is-it-so-important-55967">neuroplasticity</a>, is one of the reasons that doctors and health organizations recommend limits to the screen time of young children. Experts, educators and families alike don’t want their brains developing as organs primarily designed for television binge-watching and video game marathons. </p>
<p>In the current moment, parents should be grateful for brain neuroplasticity, and take heart from the fact that whatever changes that might have occurred over the past few months need not be permanent ones. The brain <a href="https://positivepsychology.com/neuroplasticity/">transforms in response to our circumstances and behaviors</a> – and it changes again as those circumstances and behaviors evolve. A few months of excessive screen time won’t override an otherwise healthy childhood of moderate screen time and active play.</p>
<p>The ways in which work and school are adapting to social distancing suggest that screens are not the enemy. Rather, they are enabling people around the world to work and learn and communicate with loved ones during this extraordinary time.</p>
<p>The real enemies of healthy development in children are the same enemies adults face: a <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/sitting-disease-how-a-sedentary-lifestyle-affects-heart-health">sedentary lifestyle</a>, <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation">social isolation</a> and <a href="https://research.udemy.com/research_report/udemy-depth-2018-workplace-distraction-report/">distractions from work and learning</a>. Using screens too much can contribute to all of these problems – but they can also counter them.</p>
<p>Researchers point out, after all, that <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-smart-ways-to-use-screen-time-while-coronavirus-keeps-kids-at-home-133896">not all screen time is equal</a>. You might not make the same judgment about a child writing a novel using Google Docs, FaceTiming with Grandma or using a smartphone to geocache with their friends.</p>
<p>As restrictions on everyone’s movements and activities evolve in the coming months, parents can support the healthy development of their children by encouraging them to return to such healthy and imaginative behaviors – whether they take place in front of screens or not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James M. Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Children will probably be OK, especially if their families make sure this elevated level of screen time doesn’t turn into a long-term habit.James M. Lang, Professor of English and Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Assumption CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/387432015-03-18T10:17:03Z2015-03-18T10:17:03ZAll is not lost in ISIS’s attempt to smash the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74873/original/image-20150315-7039-dkq8qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C87%2C1024%2C901&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Human-headed winged bulls guarding a door in Dur-Sharrukin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-headed_Winged_Bulls_Gate_-_Louvre.jpg">Poulpy/</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The archaeological and historical communities are deeply dismayed about ISIS destroying archaeological sites and materials in the last few weeks.</p>
<p>We have seen pictures of ISIS smashing statues and artifacts in the Mosul museum. ISIS soldiers have reportedly destroyed buildings at the ancient Assyrian cities Ninevah and Nimrud in Iraq. </p>
<p>ISIS is also believed to be selling Assyrian and other antiquities on the illegal international antiquities market.<br>
As an archaeologist, I find all of these actions reprehensible and sad. They damage the historical heritage of all of us, and of people in Syria and Iraq in particular. That is no small thing. </p>
<p>But archaeologists are not surprised by ISIS’s acts of destruction. </p>
<h2>Long history of destroying antiquities</h2>
<p>ISIS’s actions are part of a long history of people destroying ancient sites for political, economic, or religious purposes.</p>
<p>The Assyrians looted and destroyed Babylon in 700 BC; medieval Christians in England toppled and broke up some of the ancient “pagan” standing stones at Avebury; Spanish conquistadors melted down gold artifacts, including the solid gold “gardens,” of the Inca. </p>
<p>Modern conflict has not respected antiquities. The 5,000-year-old cities of Ur and Uruk were heavily damaged by the first and second Gulf Wars. </p>
<p>Despite warnings from archaeologists, ancient artifacts were stolen (or looted) from the Baghdad Museum even while Baghdad was under American control. These are recent examples of the way all participants in conflict do not respect the “value” of antiquities. Just this week, some of these artifacts were <a href="http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ancient-antiquities-and-saddam-hussein-era-objects-returned-iraq">returned to Iraq</a> after recovery by US Customs agents. </p>
<h2>The economy and even archaeologists are culpable</h2>
<p>Looting for profit is a continuous threat to archaeological sites worldwide, not just in ISIS-controlled areas. Poverty and instability have made people turn to digging up antiquities to sell on the international antiquities market. Collectors who purchase antiquities are also implicated in the destruction of ancient sites. </p>
<p>Archaeological sites are often destroyed in the course of<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3084166?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"> economic development</a>. </p>
<p>Archaeologists themselves have also been responsible for the removal of antiquities from their places of origin. Museums around the world are full of antiquities from ancient sites in the Middle East, Africa, Australia, North and South America that were stolen, traded, or excavated by archaeologists and explorers. </p>
<p>The first image that appears in Google search for “Assyrian archaeology” is a photograph of Lawrence of Arabia and archaeologist Leonard Wooley holding a sculpted plaque from the <a href="http://proteus.brown.edu/assyrianempire11/15620">Assyrian city of Karkamish in 1913</a>. </p>
<p>Archaeological research has been conducted at sites in Iraq and Syria, and at Assyrian sites in particular, for nearly 200 years. Materials recovered from those sites were taken to Europe and the United States. They have been studied in great detail, and are in the collections of many major museums, including the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. </p>
<h2>All is not lost</h2>
<p>Archaeological research now employs new kinds of tools. </p>
<p>Developments in archaeological methods and thinking mean that new research, including new excavations, can reveal additional insights. For example, <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/a-new-chapter-opens-in-the-study-of-the-assyrian-empire">the research undertaken by archaeologists</a> at the McDonald Institute of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge has used satellite imaging to locate different types of settlements. These include provincial centers tied to the major cities and the settlements inhabited by common farmers, even roads and irrigation systems. Excavations by John McInnes recovered cuneiform tablets that seem to be in a previously unknown language. </p>
<p>Archaeologists regularly work in “ruined” sites, and excavations by their very nature destroy sites; the important difference is we collect detailed information in the course of that destruction.</p>
<p>But the existence of so many artifacts, images, sculptures, and monuments in museum collections means that all is not lost in terms of preserving the past. We can continue to study ancient remains. We can even recover materials from the sites destroyed by ISIS, if conflicts end and archaeologists can again work in those areas. </p>
<p>Even now, archaeologists are <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/how-isis-cashes-illegal-antiquities-trade">attempting to document</a> what has been damaged, and what has been stolen, in an effort to aid recovering those materials. </p>
<p>ISIS intends for us to be outraged by their actions. It is possible that by replaying images of the destruction of antiquities we are participants in ISIS’s propaganda.</p>
<p>None of this is meant to excuse ISIS actions in looting and attempting to obliterate the ancient past. The question is one of perspective. If our outrage only serves to bolster ISIS’s self-image as the destroyer of the West, perhaps a better response would be to focus on those things – human lives – that cannot be replicated or recovered.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Gazin-Schwartz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>ISIS’s destruction of archeological treasures is horrifying but reflects a too-human history of obliterating the past of “enemy” cultures. Moreover, all is not really “lost.”Amy Gazin-Schwartz, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Assumption CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204682013-12-01T19:29:32Z2013-12-01T19:29:32ZUniversities could be encouraging students to cheat, without even knowing it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36157/original/grvn8gy2-1385445817.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inadvertently, universities may be constructing courses and learning environments that encourage cheating. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cheating image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A few years ago a group of psychologists from two North American universities <a href="http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1969242,00.html">ran a fascinating experiment</a> designed to see whether the quality of light in a room influenced people’s willingness to cheat on a test. </p>
<p>They separated their study participants into brightly lit and dimly lit rooms, and gave them a simple mathematical task to complete, along with two envelopes: one empty, and one full of money.</p>
<p>The subjects were told that after they had completed the test, they could check their answers and reward themselves for each right answer with fifty cents from the full envelope, and then place the remaining money in the empty envelope and take it home. When the originally full envelopes were collected from the two rooms, the researchers counted the money and found that subjects in the bright room had rewarded themselves for around eight correct answers; those in the dim room averaged over eleven. </p>
<p>In subsequent experiments, as reported in the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep4103_1#.UpX_XcRDuSo">journal Psychology Today</a>, the same researchers discovered that even darkening the perception of the subjects, by giving them sunglasses, raised their willingness to cheat on the tests.</p>
<p>Quirky though this study may seem, it forms part of an increasing awareness by scholars in psychology and behavioural theory that the environment in which people complete tasks can play a significant role in their decision to cheat. Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist at Duke University, has argued persuasively in his book <a href="http://danariely.com/tag/the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty/">The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty</a> that the amount of dishonest behaviour in which people are willing engage, to a large extent, “depends on the structure of their daily environment.”</p>
<p>This insight into human behaviour should help us think in new ways about the problem of cheating in education. Most research into cheating in schools and universities, over the course of the past 50 years, has focused on the character or demographics of the cheater. </p>
<p>Researchers have sought to discover whether men cheat more than women (they used to, but the numbers have evened out in recent years), or younger students cheat more than older students (they do), and so on. The problem with this research is that it assumes the decision to cheat depends entirely upon the character of the student.</p>
<p>The work of Ariely and other cheating researchers has demonstrated to us that there is more to the story. If the environment plays a crucial role in determining whether or not someone cheats, then we should also take into account the environment in which school cheating occurs—namely, school. </p>
<p>Are there features of the learning environments that we create for students in our educational institutions that nudge them toward cheating? Could the design of our classrooms, of our courses, and of assessment make a substantial contribution toward their willingness to cheat or not to cheat?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724631">My own research</a> into cheating in higher education began with this hypothesis, and sought to uncover what specific features of course design and teaching practice might play a role in a student’s decision to cheat. And while I did find plenty of evidence to support that hypothesis, I also made the surprising discovery that those aspects of a course that induced students to cheat also reduced student learning in the course, even for those students who didn’t cheat. </p>
<p>So it turns out that research into academic dishonesty can help us identify some key ways to improve the courses we design for our students.</p>
<p>One of the key features of course design that can influence cheating levels relates to the learning orientation of both the student and the classroom: namely, whether they are oriented toward mastery or performance (or as it is sometimes referred to towards “deep” or “surface learning”). </p>
<p>We have plenty of evidence that classrooms which orient students towards mastery learning produce more substantive and longer-lasting levels of learning than those which orient students towards performance. A substantial line of research also suggests that when students perceive their classrooms as primarily performance oriented, they are more likely to cheat.</p>
<p>So what distinguishes a mastery-oriented course from a performance-oriented one? The key factors seem to be choice and control. </p>
<p>In a mastery-oriented course, the student perceives that she has some control over the processes and products of her learning, and she has some choice in how to demonstrate her learning to the instructor. </p>
<p>In other words, rather than asking every student to jump through the same set of hoops, the instructor offers students the opportunity to select among a menu of options to demonstrate their learning, allowing the students to select the tasks that interest them and play to their intellectual strengths.</p>
<p>This type of learning environment often exists at lower levels of education — such as in my wife’s kindergarten classroom — but once students reach our university classrooms, we typically expect them all to follow the same rigidly defined paths toward course and degree completion. </p>
<p>We might feel that older students don’t need the type of choices that we give to younger children — but the research on both cheating and human learning tells us that the same principles that produce deeper learning and less cheating in younger grades apply to our higher education students as well.</p>
<p>So in addition to turning up the lights in the classroom, we should turn our attention to the role that we can play in inducing and reducing cheating in higher education. While we should never let cheating students off the hook, or blame ourselves for the problem, we owe it to them — and to ourselves — to consider how our course design and classroom practice can give them all the help they need in order to support academically honest work.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>James M. Lang is the author of <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724631">Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty</a> (Harvard University Press, 2013)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20468/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James M. Lang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A few years ago a group of psychologists from two North American universities ran a fascinating experiment designed to see whether the quality of light in a room influenced people’s willingness to cheat…James M. Lang, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, Assumption CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.