by Joe Bispham, teacher at Forest Gate Community School. He featured in Channel Four’s ‘Educating The East End’, metro.co.uk, 9 June 2018
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| Phones can be incredibly disruptive (Picture: Getty) |
I admire the French. Not simply for their fantastic food, their joie de vivre or their working conditions but for their no nonsense attitude to government policy. Never has this admiration been greater felt than when I heard they had banned mobile phones in school; and I hate mobile phones.
Mobile phones are the bane of teachers’ lives. They have been proven to distract people who are simply sitting near them, allow secret communication that enables bullying and gets in the way of so much of the good work that can be achieved in schools. I must admit that there is a tinge of hypocrisy here. I find it exceptionally hard to pry myself away from my phone. Whether it’s WhatsApp, instant news or the social media car crashes that populate my Twitter feed, I am an addict. But isn’t this precisely the point? If us adults cannot focus with our phones so readily available to provide distractions from otherwise interesting or important matters, then how can we expect teenagers to? I am lucky to work in a school where they are banned in the building so I don’t have these distractions preventing the students from making the best use of their time at school. Others do, and this adds to the list of things making their jobs far too difficult.
Colleagues from other schools that allow phones constantly complain to me about how they undermine them and their diligent preparation. This simply isn’t fair. Some teachers claim they are a learning resource, and while I am usually supportive of teachers and schools having autonomy to decide what works for them, when it comes to phones, I’m not buying it. Even when you want them to be reading formulas, researching the Romantics or recapping the periodic table, the draw of Snapchat or Instagram is far too potent to be ignored. No occasional Google search for the causes of hyperinflation will make up for the lost hours from teachers being interrupted time and time again to challenge a pupil on their phone but who pleads they were ‘just checking the time sir’. And it’s not as if they are not familiar with technology. The average teenager has digital knowledge that puts us adults to shame. Removing phones has zero impact on their ability to engage with technology.
Advocates of phones who argue it is about ‘digital literacy’ are not only ignoring this but severely overstating the impact. Is a quick Google search of ‘the differences between metamorphosis rock and sedimentary rock’ really going to propel our students into fulfilling tech careers in Silicon Valley? Then there are the safeguarding implications. Schools need to be sanctuaries for some of the most vulnerable in society. In a world of internet trolls, of child groomers and of gangs, giving young people a place where they’re protected from this is not only desirable but our moral obligation. If phones hinder our central objective of keeping young people safe then they simply have to go. So congratulations France. Let’s hope that British schools can be as courageous by removing the phone from the classroom.
https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/09/france-banned-mobile-phones-schools-time-uk-7618113/
Mobile phones are the bane of teachers’ lives. They have been proven to distract people who are simply sitting near them, allow secret communication that enables bullying and gets in the way of so much of the good work that can be achieved in schools. I must admit that there is a tinge of hypocrisy here. I find it exceptionally hard to pry myself away from my phone. Whether it’s WhatsApp, instant news or the social media car crashes that populate my Twitter feed, I am an addict. But isn’t this precisely the point? If us adults cannot focus with our phones so readily available to provide distractions from otherwise interesting or important matters, then how can we expect teenagers to? I am lucky to work in a school where they are banned in the building so I don’t have these distractions preventing the students from making the best use of their time at school. Others do, and this adds to the list of things making their jobs far too difficult.
Colleagues from other schools that allow phones constantly complain to me about how they undermine them and their diligent preparation. This simply isn’t fair. Some teachers claim they are a learning resource, and while I am usually supportive of teachers and schools having autonomy to decide what works for them, when it comes to phones, I’m not buying it. Even when you want them to be reading formulas, researching the Romantics or recapping the periodic table, the draw of Snapchat or Instagram is far too potent to be ignored. No occasional Google search for the causes of hyperinflation will make up for the lost hours from teachers being interrupted time and time again to challenge a pupil on their phone but who pleads they were ‘just checking the time sir’. And it’s not as if they are not familiar with technology. The average teenager has digital knowledge that puts us adults to shame. Removing phones has zero impact on their ability to engage with technology.
Advocates of phones who argue it is about ‘digital literacy’ are not only ignoring this but severely overstating the impact. Is a quick Google search of ‘the differences between metamorphosis rock and sedimentary rock’ really going to propel our students into fulfilling tech careers in Silicon Valley? Then there are the safeguarding implications. Schools need to be sanctuaries for some of the most vulnerable in society. In a world of internet trolls, of child groomers and of gangs, giving young people a place where they’re protected from this is not only desirable but our moral obligation. If phones hinder our central objective of keeping young people safe then they simply have to go. So congratulations France. Let’s hope that British schools can be as courageous by removing the phone from the classroom.
https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/09/france-banned-mobile-phones-schools-time-uk-7618113/
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