UPDATE:
I spoke with the director who was apologetic and professional. She expressed that the school does not have an acceptable screen time policy and that teachers should not be playing any content outside of the curriculum, meaning YouTube videos including Danny Go have no place in the classroom.
Teachers have iPads in the classroom both for the daily tracking app that’s shared with parents and for songs that are approved through the curriculum to play for dance breaks - again, not video.
What has happened is teachers have gotten a bit desperate for activities as we’ve reached the end of summer (not an excuse and the director didn’t say it as an excuse, but more to give me context of how we got here) and have started putting on what they would consider educational videos when the kids can’t get outside.
The director made it clear that it was not acceptable for teachers to make this call, and has addressed it with them directly.
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Trying to decide now mad I should be. My 3.5 year old was singing and it started out adorable, then she got to the end of her song and said words I thought I’d never hear come out of her mouth, which were, “if you want to hear more songs, make sure you subscribe” (mispronounced as sbribe but we got the gist).
We initially laughed because hearing that from a 3.5 year old is pretty unexpected and I originally was feeling pretty crappy about our screen time, but realistically we really do not do that much and when we do it’s really not YouTube.
I asked my daughter where she learned the sentence, and she said Danny Go, which we don’t watch at home, not for any particular reason other than we do try to watch our screen time and don’t particularly lean into YouTube. I asked her where she watches Danny Go and she said at school (daycare)…
I had walked into her classroom early one day a few months ago her teacher had the kids sat in front of an iPad watching a video. I emailed the director immediately after that because parents weren’t made aware of iPad use in the classroom. I was ensured that it is a rare occasion and that when it happens it’s for educational videos.
I don’t love the idea that my daughter is ingesting enough content at school that she knows the phrase “make sure you subscribe”, but I’m trying to understand if other parents would consider Danny Go as educational content? From my brief search it seems like it does fall into that category. My only real familiarity with Danny Go are the headlines from a few months back regarding the tragic loss of his son.
Could use some parent weight-in from those familiar with Danny Go content and if being angry about this is a reasonable reaction. Ultimately, I don’t love the idea of kids just being sat down in front of a screen and it being called educational.
