Schools are just waking up to the idea that having non-stop phone access is a terrible idea. And it’s not just bad for students - it’s also terrible for those who teach.
When my main job was teaching at a university, the first thing I would talk about with students was our relationship with our phones.
. He says the bans are “more urgent than ever” after years of academic disruption and soaring screen use during the COVID-19 pandemic.It’s not bad for teachers solely because students are distracted, but because teachers too are distracted. I was so bored in a meeting once that one of my colleagues stormed out because I wasn’t paying enough attention to her droning but was, instead, attending to useful emails on my phone. I thought I was doing it discreetly. I was so very wrong. Everyone knows what you are doing, no matter how you try to hide it.There is no research that is compelling on the banning of mobile phones for academic reasons, and nearly none of banning them for social reasons.
“It has to be really balanced, whether it’s schools or employers. It’s like asking a smoker to go cold turkey. It’s going to be hard on users, particularly adolescents who aren’t good at self-regulating.”