Children are spending more time on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube than in the company of their own parents. At school they are in one of two distant planets that hardly ever meet: the students use TikTok and Instagram while their teachers use online newspapers and Facebook.

No one guides children on how to use social media better: it has a lot of good and interesting content but can also be harmful and dangerous. Children are being left alone to navigate social media when they are not allowed to use it in class and do not discuss it with their parents while at home.

An interesting seminar themed ‘Promoting digital literacy and creativity in the classroom’, held last month at the Malta Union of Teachers headquarters, raised and tackled these issues that are not addressed adequately locally.

Finnish and EU education expert Kari Kivinen, who promotes creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and responsible digital engagement among young Europeans, led this stimulating seminar. He was brought to Malta on the initiative of Malta’s Ambassador to Finland and Estonia, Kenneth Vella who is himself an educator and head of Mater Boni Consilii St Joseph School, in Paola.

That morning Kivinen had visited his school and held a workshop with both teachers and students on their use of different social media, which separate the two generations into parallel universes.

Kivinen has contributed to the European Commission ‘Guidelines for teachers and educators on tackling disinformation and promoting digital literacy through education and training’. I believe that, to be successful, we must not erect bastions around schools and isolate them from the real world. Schools must engage with the modern world of social media and artificial intelligence, not fight them or embrace them uncritically, but assimilate whatever may be valid in them and use them purposefully. We have no time to lose.

The pace of change in education is much slower than the rate of change in the real world. With digital technology, the gap is widening fast, making our education systems at every level obsolete faster unless we adapt and adjust to these new constantly changing realities.

Our national education policy should allow and encourage the use of digital devices in teaching and learning. Kivinen recommends: “Digital competences should be integrated in the curricula, teachers should be trained properly and they should be supported and encouraged to deal with the challenges of social media environments during their lessons. This needs the common action of the whole school community starting from school management and without forgetting the role of parents.”

Getting off the hamster wheel

Promoting digital literacy must not be confined to yet another subject or simply incorporated into media literacy. Digital literacy requires an integrated gradual and thoughtful rebooting of the entire education system: curriculum, syllabi, learning outcomes, pedagogy and assessment.

Formal education in schools must be made fit for purpose in the 21st century where layer upon layer of content in many of the subjects needs to be redesigned realistically and sensibly, allowing teachers to get off the educational hamster wheel. Teachers should no longer be made to rush through their vast syllabi, allowing no time for questions from students and discuss and explore their topics in relation to the world outside the classroom.

Schools that refuse to engage openly and critically with digital technology are increasingly becoming archaic and boring- Evarist Bartolo

As the European Commission guidelines say: “This digital world potentially allows students the opportunity to access a great deal of information, hear multiple opinions on a topic and to communicate across geographical, linguistic, cultural and religious barriers. Yet, they mostly lack the competences and the wisdom to take full advantage of what is being offered and to identify potential threats.”

One of every five children in our state schools comes from another country. More of our state schools in our towns and villages are becoming international schools. They need to adjust to this complex reality. Digital technology, used properly, can help schools navigate these new uncharted waters.

Schools must not behave like besieged fortresses – fortresses of fear – alienated from a hostile world and threatened by its digital technology, from Google to ChatGPT, that is changing the world of learning irrevocably.

AI expert Angelo Dalli says: “Technologies like ChatGPT can help students improve writing style and grammar while providing quick talking points and consolidating information from the internet. GPT does come with its own pitfalls and cannot be fully trusted to produce factually accurate information. 

“GPT can provide inspiration and cut down on the amount of reading that needs to be done to write a focused summary of known facts about a particular topic. By treating it as a sort of automated literature survey tool, schools can help prepare children for a world where humans and AI collaborate and work together to achieve more, faster and with less effort.”

Schools that refuse to engage openly and critically with digital technology are refusing to join the 21st century and increasingly becoming archaic and boring institutions killing the lively curiosity and creativity of students. Digital technology is changing the world and will continue to change the world. Children must not be left to their own devices in using digital technology.

Schools must provide the stimulating space where students develop their critical and creative thinking, where they learn not only to know but also to do, to be and to live with others. Students need to develop their critical thinking to be able to filter the content they find on social media.

They need to learn how to check facts and to tell facts from opinions and to scrutinise the sources of the information they access and what facts are included and left out.

If they continue to build bastions against digital technology and social media, schools will continue to isolate themselves from the real world. Instead of educating for today and tomorrow, they will be educating for yesterday and for the last century and our country will fall behind.

Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour education and foreign minister.