I went to a school with a relatively strict no-phone-in-class rule and it was the most nonsensical rule of that school. Students simply carried second phones or said they forgot it at home that day. Despite almost all teachers enforcing that rule, there were still at least 5 people in every class who had (and used) their phone. Afaik it’s still enforced nowadays, but there was and still is no apparent effect on grades or quality of the classes.
When I was an apprentice, my vocational school also had a strict no-phone-use-on-school-grounds rule. Even in recess. Phones had to be off or on silent and zipped up | packed away in our rucksacks/bags. Absolute bs. One of my fellow students played The Sims mobile for hours every day; almost everybody wrote texts and used their calc apps all day. But, they concealed it; it wasn’t distracting or looking too busy at times. Not a bad rule per se. (¡Story time!)
I never used my phone in class, nor the building. I had a technical calculator, and I was eager.
There came the day when my fiancée was in the hospital and I didn’t think about anything else but how her operation went: I had to call her first chance. When I went on break, a good 20 minutes after she’d woken up from anesthesia, I exited the school complex through the entrance building’s main back doorway, phone in hand. I immediately realized that I was technically still on school grounds right after the dial tone. Had I exited through the other door, the front entrance 20 meters behind me, I would’ve been peachy.
But no, the fucking super-catholic, failed preacher, creepy religious studies teacher who was supervising saw me, and approached me with a smug-ass dweeby grin on his bitch-ass dumb fucking mug. Mind you, I was 24 at the time; most students were 16. I could’ve left the school for a smoke or even a beer or two in a free period at any fucking time. And I was so dumb to actually surrender and put my phone in a shoebox in the admin office. Didn’t even take out my SIM card, 'cause I was shaking and slightly dissociated, derealizing, after this stupid mistake, the reli teach’s sheer delight for having caught me in flagranti, and the unfairness of it all. I was told I could collect the phone after school.
(The guy didn’t even go with me all the way to the office, so I could’ve just pretended to go to there and do something. Everybody used tricks when they were caught, but I was toooo honest, and naïve af.)
I wasn’t attending the last 3 periods, so I asked if my mate who was standing next to me could pick the phone up instead, after the last period, because I just wanted to rush to the hospital, go see and bring home my girl.
The thing was, the religion teacher and the ladies in the secretariat immediatly forgot about the whole fuckin’ thing. My colleague wasn’t handed out my bloody phone. And then it was the weekend, and I wouldn’t be as near as 100 km to the school for the next 4 weeks.
I made it through the weekend (took care of my SO, cozy recuperating time), then I bought a new phone & card.
They had to look in a lot of drawers and cabinets when I finally went to get my trusty old brick back. I was glad I didn’t have to attend religion classes.
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When adults talk about education, they always think back to when they were in school. Often years ago. Often you’ll get someone who brings up that Socrates quote where he complains about the kids being lazy.
But it really is different. Covid, lockdowns and omnipresent social media have changed things. Childhood mental health issues and suicides have spiked in many countries. Sure, that’s partly down to increased diagnosis, but you’d expect suicides to go down if we were diagnosing more of them.
When I was a teacher until quite recently, I had kids recording tiktoks in the middle of lessons. When you called them out on it, there’d be physical altercations. They’d have panic attacks. They’d listen to music during classes, then get upset when you told them to switch it off. Throwing literal tantrums, crying because you asked them to switch off their phone. Complaining about not being able to listen to music during a test, that kind of thing.
A teenager who knows the rules, and knows to hide their phone? Normal behaviour. Healthy even.
A teenager who doesn’t hide their phone, and cries when you take away their phone? Not normal behaviour. Immature. Maladjusted.
News from 2015:
Tablets out, imagination in: the schools that shun technology
In the heart of Silicon Valley is a nine-classroom school where employees of tech giants Google, Apple and Yahoo send their children. But despite its location in America’s digital centre, there is not an iPad, smartphone or screen in sight.
