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wee oneswee onesPosted Aug 19, 2007 19:30 UTC (Sun) by grouch (subscriber, #27289)In reply to: What the OLPC is for by BrucePerens Parent article: Children's Reviews of OLPC XO Technology (OLPC News)
Please excuse me for stating the obvious, but different situations require different responses. While not quite as obvious, it is reasonable to assume that you are in the best position to determine how to handle your 7-year-old's situation. Let's hope no one takes your short list as a blanket recipe and ignores your leading qualifier of "[s]ome of us". ;) My own situation while raising 2 children was undoubtedly different from yours. A wide-open C-band satellite system provided nearly unlimited access to television programming. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to be with each of my children as they watched television, almost every time they watched tv in their pre-school years. Instead of outright bans, I made certain to point out marketing tricks and other distortions of reality as they occurred in tv programming. It's amazing how a running, concurrent lecture about the flaws of many tv programs can somewhat immunize a child to bad marketing and lead to very selective tv viewing. (Bad marketing is hereby defined to be anything used to convince someone to buy something that is not necessary). The downside to this accompanied viewing is that I sat through far too much "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" -- C-band at that time had a separate feed for each of 3 (or was it 4?) timezones for PBS. (A 3-year-old seems capable of viewing a repeat as if new). Thankfully, living in near-wilderness, the outdoors competed well with the television for the children's interest. As to video games and computers, my response to my own children's desires for these things was not an outright ban, but rather a moderating influence. We take an intense, nearly obsessive interest in specific forms of play at different times as children. As the doctor told the worried young mother regarding the coin her child swallowed, "This, too, shall pass." It is my personal belief that such periods of intense interest should be limited only to the extent they preclude other explorations. (BTW, I consider fantasy "shooters" such as Doom to be not inherently harmful, in contrast to some video games I've seen which reward players for destructive behavior directed at fellow human beings). Too much of just about anything can be harmful, any amount of some things can be harmful, and the lack of some things can be harmful. The primary audience (target, in market-speak) for the OLPC is suffering from a lack of access to information and communication that many of us take for granted. I suggest that the parent or guardian of each child who receives an OLPC box should be presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary in specific instances, to be capable of limiting the time spent on that computer if it appears to be doing more harm than good.
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