Page 50 - Spring 2019 Journal

The FCC’s decades-old guidance on RF exposure does not reflect “current science and newer exposures, especially to children.”
60 percent of the school computer market.24,26 As these statistics suggest, the push to swap textbooks for tablets has been very good for business, particularly given the near-saturation of demand for mobile devices in other corners of the consumer market.27 According to a 2013 report in Bloomberg, “tech companies are fall- ing back on the old adage: get ’em while they’re young”—and “if you’re looking for young people, there’s no better place to find them than
in schools.”27
Common Core provides a clear example.
The bold Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- backed initiative is now acknowledged by no less than Bill Gates himself to have been an educational flop,28 and a disappointment to par- ents, students and teachers alike. Nonetheless, Common Core was a “huge boon” for the tech industry, inspiring a “gold rush” to supply the iPads and laptops on which the digital curricu- lum was meant to be delivered.29 The devices were also central to Common Core’s push for “individually adaptive computerized assess- ment”30 and the collection and cloud storage of troves of “Big Brother” data on schoolchildren.31 Although the initiative appears to have tanked (for now), Common Core encouraged a new level of “corporate encroachment in public educa- tion”32 that may be here to stay.
With such strong incentives to push the wireless revolution forward in schools, the technologies’ impact on schoolchildren’s health has, once again, been a nearly invisible topic of discussion. In some states, however, concerned citizens have nudged officials to take a closer look. In Maryland, for example, the Maryland
Children’s Environmental Health and Protec- tion Advisory Council (an advisory body to the state’s General Assembly and state agencies) undertook an “expansive” investigation after hearing from parents worried about schools’ increasing use of wireless tablets and laptops.33 Parents expressed concerns about health risks as well as frustration over their lack of any say over their children’s in-school exposure to Wi- Fi radiation.
Guided by a literature review, a medical presentation, public meetings and emails from citizens, the Maryland Council considered “chronic health effects such as cancer, as well as chronic and acute effects such as impacts on vision..., and non-health outcomes such as educational performance.” One of the critical insights produced by the review was that the FCC’s decades-old guidance on RF exposure does not reflect “current science and newer exposures, especially to children.” Thus, the Council recommended that Maryland’s Depart- ment of Health and Mental Hygiene ask the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “to formally petition the FCC to revisit the exposure limit to ensure it is protective of children’s health and that it relies on current science.”33 (For the council’s additional sug- gestions, see “Recommendations at School.”)
Ironically, schools’ uncritical rush to get a tablet or laptop into every student’s hand has given rise to some unanticipated problems. For example, after purchasing iPads for fifty thou- sand students at almost fifty schools, the Los Angeles Unified School District encountered challenges with keeping the devices “secured”
RECOMMENDATIONS AT SCHOOL
An investigation on school-based Wi-Fi risks conducted by the Maryland Children’s Environmental Health and Pro- tection Advisory Council resulted in a number of recommendations for local school systems:33
• Use wired instead of wireless devices wherever possible.
• Have children place devices on desks “to serve as barrier between the device and children’s bodies.”
• Locate laptops in a way that “keeps pupil heads as far away from the laptop screens (where the antennas are)
as practicable.”
• Use a switch to shut down Wi-Fi routers when not in use.
• Teach children to turn off Wi-Fi when not in use.
• Place routers as far away from students as possible.
• Fund research on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation in schools.
• Educate parents and the public on ways to reduce exposure.
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Wise Traditions
SPRING 2019