Children and Virtual Reality – Some dilemas of Education

Abstract

Possible responses to the extremely complex and delicate question of the influence that «virtual reality» exercises on the development of a child as a unique personality, on the child’s psycho-social development and on the education of a child generally may be provided by serious research of a cohort sequential design, either in research programmes in the field of educational sciences or of other social disciplines. The present paper confronts some dilemmas of the modern world. Particularly those between the «traditional» educational values, «obsolete» families and schools and «progressive» education supplied (imposed) by virtual reality that promotes the social standardization of behaviour and the perception of values and of the world around us. The aggressiveness of the mass media in presenting «virtual reality» as « progressive» and without an «alternative» often results in a virtual life for a child, with virtual friends, education and even virtual families. In the time of developing technology, an important question arises: how to deal with such a situation. Do we direct young people to carefully select from what modern virtual reality has to offer and how do we do that?