The generation of young children (between 0 and 5 years old) grow up in media worlds that do not only differ from those of previous generations but also transport quite different learning and experiential conditions from the children’s room into the class room. The children of today live with books to be read aloud and computers on an equal basis; here there is no competition but rather a relationship of complementarity. When they are encouraged appropriately children grow up in comprehensive “media worlds” in which neither reading aloud nor the children’s programme nor even communication via internet can be excluded. Through self-socialisation and the family young children today learn important elements of their communicative and interactive being-in-the-world. The task of the school will be to process these new experiences psychologically but also didactically.
