Families have asked for a school position on devices at home. We have one, and it is not a rule — it is a question we would rather every family answer for themselves.
Twice this spring a group of families asked whether MMS would set an expectation about screens at home — a shared standard, so that no family has to be the only one saying no. I understand the appeal and I have thought about it seriously. We are not going to do it, and I owe you the reasoning.
What we do at school, which is simple
There are no screens in the Primary classrooms. There are none in Lower Elementary. Upper Elementary has four laptops, kept on a shelf, signed out for research with a specific purpose and returned when it is done. That is the whole policy and it has not changed in eleven years.
We are not against the technology. We are against it being ambient. A tool a child fetches deliberately, uses for a stated purpose, and puts away is in a different category from a tool that is always within reach.
Why the same rule does not travel home
A school is a prepared environment with one purpose. A home is not, and should not be. Homes contain grandparents on video calls, a parent working a second shift, a long car journey, a sibling with different needs, and a hundred circumstances I do not know about and should not be legislating for.
A school rule that reaches into your living room is not a standard. It is an instruction, and I do not think we have earned the right to give you one there.
There is also a quieter problem. A shared standard, adopted so that nobody has to be the only family saying no, works by moving the decision from the parent to the institution. That is a relief in the short term. Over ten years it makes families less practiced at the thing we most want them to be good at, which is deciding.
The question I would ask instead
When families ask me what to do about screens, I ask what the screen is displacing. Not what it is doing — what it is displacing. The answer is usually specific and usually obvious once said out loud:
- It is displacing the twenty minutes of boredom before dinner, out of which most invented games come.
- It is displacing a conversation in the car.
- It is displacing the child having to solve the problem of an empty afternoon.
- Or, honestly, it is displacing nothing, and it is fine.
That last one is real and I want to name it. Some screen time replaces nothing of value and there is no reason to feel bad about it. The problem is never the device. It is what a household stops being able to do because the device is always available.
What we will do
We will keep the classrooms as they are. We will keep sending almost no homework, which removes the most common reason a young child needs a device at all. And in October the Family Association is hosting an evening for families who want to compare notes, which I will attend and at which I will not be issuing guidance.
You know your household. That is not a polite deferral. It is the actual reason.
Dr. Amara Osei-Bonsu
Head of School, Montessori Makers School
Writing from the classrooms is published four times a term and collected in the termly letter. Questions are welcome at hello@montessorimakersschool.org.