“Your pet won’t tell you your password”

“If someone you don’t know asks for your password at the supermarket, will you share it?”

“No – no, never”, shout the children of groups 3 and 4 at primary school Het Zuiderlicht in Dronten. Miss Lisette van Eikenhorst nods satisfied. “Because your password is…?” “Secret,” some children shout. Almost correct. Van Eikenhorst: “Your password is your own.”

The children of Het Zuiderlicht receive their monthly lesson in digital literacy, an area of ​​learning that the government wants to include in the new curriculum for primary and secondary schools. That curriculum will have to wait a while: if everything goes according to plan, Stichting Leerplan Ontwikkeling will have set the updated core objectives for basic skills in 2025 (in addition to digital literacy, this also includes arithmetic and mathematics, Dutch and citizenship) for which primary school pupils and secondary education should work towards it from now on. These goals are then presented to the House of Representatives in a bill. Some schools are not waiting for this and are going to start integrating digital literacy in their curricula themselves.

This starts as early as kindergarten age (groups 1 and 2) and can include learning how to use digital devices or learning the basics are of programming. But the lessons at Het Zuiderlicht do not always involve computers. For today’s lesson, Van Eikenhorst only uses the IWB to discuss the teaching material in class; the pupils themselves work ‘just’ with pen and paper. Their teacher has printed out a worksheet for all of them with an empty silhouette and a large circle around it. The words “personal” and “trust” are displayed on the IWB. “We are going to learn today that personal information is something that belongs to you,” explains Van Eikenhorst. “Something you don’t have to share with everyone.”

Media literacy

While the children draw and write down personal facts about themselves in the silhouettes – “My favorite food is barbecue”, Isabel from group 4 confides to her friends – Van Eikenhorst talks to Vincent Veenbrink about how the children have experienced the series of lessons on digital risks so far. As co-owner of Basicly – the company that develops the learning tool for digital literacy that Het Zuiderlicht, among others, works with – Veenbrink occasionally attends a lesson to see if the material is successful. That is the case with this lesson, he judges when he sees the children who are angrily scribbling down personal facts.

“People don’t immediately think of digital literacy when they see children with worksheets in class,” says Veenbrink. “One of the big misconceptions is that the number of hours of screen time increases significantly when you start working with it.” Digital literacy is about more than just learning practical computer skills, emphasizes Veenbrink: it is also about formulating problems in such a way that you can solve them with technological means, about discovering how and where to find reliable information and about consciously thinking about dealing with the media.

The latter is called media literacy and is not an unnecessary luxury for the children of Het Zuiderlicht. The majority of pupils in groups 3 and 4 say they enjoy working with tablets and smartphones at home – whether or not under supervision. They are no exception: in April the annual Iene Miene Media research that children up to the age of six already spend an average of 100 minutes a day behind a tablet, telephone or television screen. The children of Het Zuiderlicht mainly use that time to play online games and watch videos on YouTube or TikTok; a few already have their own accounts on social media. Others share a profile with an older sibling.

Then it can also happen that a message from an unknown internet user ends up in your inbox. Someone who might like to know some personal information about you. This brings Van Eikenhorst to the second word that is central today: trust. “That is when you tell someone something and believe that they will do the right thing with it. That he does not tell anyone else.”

Together with the children, she goes through a few examples of people you can or cannot trust. Just like a stranger in the supermarket, a stranger on the internet falls under the category of ‘don’t trust’, is the consensus. “Because you don’t know who that is,” explains Van Eikenhorst. “It could well be someone from your class or from another school, but it could also be someone who wants bad things.”

In the last part of the lesson, students fill the circle around the silhouette with people they trust. They compare with each other who entrusts which personal information to which people: one person would like to give his iPad password to a friend, the other is really a bridge too far. There is room for both opinions. The main aim is that the pupils consciously think about what they want to share with whom. “That is not always taught at home,” says Van Eikenhorst. And even if that does happen, she thinks it makes a big impression on children when they also hear it from the teacher.

Krijn (group 4) has now come running: can he also write down his pet in the circle of trust? The teacher may. “You can still notice that they are young,” laughs Van Eikenhorst. “But at least that pet doesn’t tell passwords.”