ANDREW Denholm is spot on with his report from the EIS conference ("Schools need to be a safe last bastion as social media stress rises'', The Herald, March 2).
However, what has always confused me is that although the education system plays an important part in protecting our children, it also must face up to the fact that it is partially to blame for the problem of computer and social media stress.
I remember being astonished when my son first started nursery nine years ago and the practitioner telling me his "mouse skills'' were poor – this being because he was only three and had never used a computer before he entered the education system. And this was a nursery which was in my opinion, one of the best, because they actually allowed the children to learn through free play.
But they too had to follow the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, which obviously included technology and so my son started on the computer treadmill and as he went to primary school, it continued and increased, with social media becoming the norm to promote school activities.
As he now heads for secondary school, it will no doubt become more and more important in his life, with phones and computers the modern way to complete school work.
I may be a dinosaur, but I have never understood the lure of social media and especially the need for schools to constantly bombard us with pictures and information as to what our children have done at school that day.
In fact, I have come to the conclusion that there is no real need to go to an event, because afterwards, the social media will always portrait the event as being out of this world. I am all for being positive, but is nothing just ok these days?
Society has got itself into a pickle over social media and its going to be a really hard issue for us all to tackle.
Let's just hope that schools will follow the advice they give children about the dangers of over-egging life and let children just enjoy school without feeling the need to splash it all over social media.
Rebecca Hay,
38 Langlands Road, Auldhouse.
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