Weekend replays: disconnect, acclimatize, investigate, rebel

THE MORNING LIST

This weekend, we're taking you to meet a CM2 teacher, heroines of the French Revolution, siblings who set out to trace their "vanished" sister, and a nature with exceptional powers...

For one school year, director and school teacher Gilles Vernet invited CM2 children from a Parisian school to reflect on the place of their smartphones in their lives, and in our lives. A former trader, he already directed, based on the same principle, Tout s'escalade , in 2016. This time again, the experiment is simple. Each student writes down in a table each day the time spent in front of the phone, television, console… The results vary from ninety minutes per day to… six and a half hours! If his students readily play along, their words are very lucid and not devoid of poetry: “It’s as if an invisible thread came to cling to your brain so that you remain glued to your screen” ; “Like moths, attracted by the light…”

Parents involved in the project sometimes say they feel helpless. Gilles Vernet has invited singer Aldebert , who sings "Ecrans, rend-nous nos parents!" The teacher also addresses the myth of Narcissus, discussing influencers and social media. He has his students review divisions by calculating their screen time. His goal? "To show them that we can regain control over screens. [Because] while these objects open up countless possibilities for us, they wage a war for our attention."

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