The Disaster of the Digital School ( A plea for a school without screens) , by Philippe Bihouix and Karine Mauvilly

While some Silicon Valley executives are enrolling their children in schools without screens, France has embarked, under the pretext of “modernity”, on a forced digitalization of schools – from kindergarten to high school. A computer or a tablet per child: the panacea? Let's talk about disaster instead.
The digital school is an irrational educational choice, because we do not learn better – and often less well – through screens. It is the waste of scarce resources and the uncontrolled dumping of hazardous waste on the other side of the planet. It is an astonishing health risk when the effects of connected objects on the brains of young people remain poorly known. This ignores the psychosocial risks that weigh on children already caught up in digital technology.

This essay is aimed at parents, teachers, politicians, citizens who are wondering about the relevance of the “digital plan for schools”. What if, on the contrary, we had to make school a refuge zone, without connections or screens, and reinvent the non-digital ways of living together?

About the authors

Philippe Bihouix
Philippe Bihouix , 44 years old. An engineer from Centrale, he has worked in various industrial sectors as a consulting engineer or in management positions. He is the author of The Age of Low Tech , towards a technically sustainable civilization ( Seuil , Prize of the Foundation for Political Ecology 2014) . He has two children.


Karine Mauvilly
Karine Mauvilly , 38 years old. A historian and lawyer by training, a graduate of Sciences Po Paris, she was a journalist and then a teacher in a public college, a privileged observation post for the digital transformation underway. She has three children.