Phones

King Canute trying to turn back the tide

In the first two thirds of my career in secondary or high school teaching, none of my pupils had mobile phones. However, in the last ten years that changed. Phones were creeping in. My school made a policy that if youngsters were caught using mobile phones in classrooms then teachers should confiscate them.

It was perhaps twenty five years ago when I was teaching a Year 8 class one morning. I was speaking to them from the front when I heard a mobile phone go off in somebody's bag. Of course this interrupted my talk and everybody's attention was diverted.

A girl in the middle of the room took the phone from her bag and began to answer the call. I stood in front of her and said, "Give me that phone now please!". The girl refused and said, "It might be important. It's my mum!" And I said, "I don't care who's calling just give me that phone now!" With great reluctance and with the eyes of her classmates watching, she handed over the phone and was soon blubbering in her seat.

Later the mother contacted the school to complain that I had confiscated the phone and her daughter had been upset by the incident.

In a senior staff meeting a few weeks later, I argued that  that mobile phones were insidious in classrooms and needed to be stopped. The way that one or two of the other participants responded made it clear that they did not share my opinion. Perhaps they thought I was becoming an old fuddy duddy and needed to catch up with modern times.

Since those early days, mobile phones and smartphones have caused many unwelcome incidents and concerns within schools, including:-

• deliberately winding up teachers in order to film them having angry outbursts
• messaging other pupils in threatening ways (i.e. bullying)
• calling unsavoury outside characters to enter the school with a view to meting out punishment
• up-skirting photography and making other imagery of a sexual nature
• cheating during tests and exams
• simple distraction - checking out social media etc. instead of paying attention to teaching and learning.
• losing expensive phones or having them snatched by other pupils

I am sure that my list is not exhaustive.

Of course the horse bolted long ago but I was delighted yesterday to read this headline:-

It has taken the thinking world and educational strategists far too long to recognise that mobile phones are not entirely wholesome or desirable in secondary school classrooms. The damage they cause far outweighs any potential benefits.

Troubled schools might try some sort of storage system whereby pupils' phones are dropped off in a secure facility in the morning and retrieved at the end of the school day.

I would also say that phone restrictions should impact on teaching staff and visiting inspectors too. Sometimes you have got to lead by example.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/0pLw59Q