In California, a high school teacher complains that students watch Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students use gambling apps to place bets during the school day.
Around the country, educators say students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.
The hold that phones have on adolescents in America today is well-documented, but teachers say parents are often not aware to what extent students use them inside the classroom. And increasingly, educators and experts are speaking with one voice on the question of how to handle it: Ban phones during classes.
I’m not against some system of qualified exceptions, though they’d need to be very tight or you’ll suddenly find every parent discovering their kid’s own special need.
From conversations I’ve had with teachers, this is not at all remotely consistent with what they report.
I am not a teacher and not part of the school system right now. Are schools no longer allowed to send kids to the principal’s office? Or send a letter to their parents? Or issue detention? Or is it that none of those methods help? Is a teacher’s only course of action to remind students to not look at their phones during class?
When I read the article and the teacher realized that as long as the students looking at their phones were quiet it was fine it really just seemed to me like that teacher failed. If a parent said that, I would also think they failed.
There have always been distractions in the classroom and unless we are talking about a diagnosis of addiction, smartphone uses shouldn’t be treated differently.
“There have always been distractions in the classroom and unless we are talking about a diagnosis of addiction, smartphone uses shouldn’t be treated differently.”
If that’s what it comes down to then, fine. Maybe some serious research should be done in the subject.
But, until then why allow something in classrooms that isn’t just a simple distraction. It’s a tool with lots of uses that should never be allowed in school (and I’m not just talking about cheating).
It’s also an easy method of bullying that can be very difficult to stay ahead of.