From the 13th to 17th of May, a new cell phone policy was implemented for a trial period in the high school of ASB. This was a preliminary trial before the 2024-2025 school year, during which the change will become a permanent staple of ASB\u2019s technology regulations. I have decided that it is within my responsibility as a consistent voice of dissonance against school policy decisions to speak against this change being solidified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First though, why have I taken it upon myself to write about this subject? Because the last time that I didn’t speak up, we got 40 minute long periods on half days. I\u2019m trying to avoid another policy misstep from occurring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hope that by responding quickly and giving feedback to administration, they may think twice about implementing this policy in its current form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think the best way to analyze the quality of this cell phone policy is to determine the goals it attempts to accomplish, then first: evaluate whether or not those goals are valuable in the first place, and second: if they are sufficiently achieved by the cell phone ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main problem that a ban on cell phones is attempting to solve is the prevalence of use of phones in class. Teachers and parents feel as though students are distracted and not learning in class because they spend too much time on their phones within class time. So the solution is to remove access to phones in their entirety. If students don’t have phones, they can\u2019t be distracted in class, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, no. And we\u2019ll get to that later. For now, let\u2019s stay focused on the goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another significant issue identified was students using their phones in lieu of socializing. This is why phones were not only disallowed within the classroom, but also during breaks. Phones were expected to be kept in backpacks or lockers for the entire school day. Again, if students are not distracted by their phones outside of class, then they will be forced to socialize properly in person, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Again, no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, the last complaint concerning student phone usage came more so from parents who felt that their kids were learning bad habits at school and were becoming addicted to their phones because they used them at school so much. So the absence of phones at school would teach students to no longer be dependent on them anymore, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No! You really should know better by now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the general sentiment surrounding these goals and the policies implemented to accomplish them is that of \u201cphone bad.\u201d This is the common narrative among the generations before Gen Z. The idea is that kids these days are just too darn addicted to their devices and their poor impressionable minds are rotting, so we must control their access to phones and social media. Because as we all learned from the United States\u2019 drug laws in the 80s, the best way to stop people from doing something is to harshly punish them so that they never learn how to healthily manage addiction. And I don\u2019t know about you, but I remember Reagan-era criminalization of drugs working really well and definitely not systemically destroying the lower class and stigmatizing addiction for decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, phones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am not going to moralize on whether or not phones are good for our youth. Quite frankly, I think it\u2019s an overdone topic, and not actually relevant to this discussion. It doesn\u2019t matter if phones are good for students, what matters is what benefits they have in a school setting, and if the policy ASB is implementing is actually effective in what it intends to accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So let\u2019s first look at the actual uses of phones in classes for things besides playing games or scrolling through social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s very often that students need to photograph work they\u2019ve finished to submit to Google Classroom. For example, during labs in science classes, students are expected to take photos of their process to add to the lab document later. If your phone must be kept in your locker and is confiscated on sight, that\u2019s no longer possible, which removes an important part of a lab lesson. We can\u2019t expect every student to buy a digital camera for their science classes; ASB\u2019s tuition is already high enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additionally, students must frequently take photos of slides in a lesson, or even just the morning bulletin board to remember room changes. The High School bulletin routinely uses QR codes as a method to link surveys that students must fill out. Without a phone, what is a student supposed to do? Awkwardly position their laptop camera to line up with the code like a 45 year old dad trying to take a family selfie? I have enough things in common with middle-aged fathers, I don\u2019t need more overlap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And what if a student needs to contact family quickly, or vice versa? Sure, they could call through the office, but that doesn\u2019t have the same sort of immediacy. It\u2019s inconvenient, and if anything, takes more time out of class, distracting students more than if they used their own phones in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The things I\u2019ve listed on their own aren\u2019t necessarily enough to adequately rebut the cell phone ban, but in conjunction with one another, they start to create a hill that\u2019s increasingly harder to climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even if this slew of inconveniences isn\u2019t enough to convince you otherwise, I haven’t gotten into the actual efficacy of the policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So first let\u2019s look at this from a purely implementation perspective. Does it get kids off of their phones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During actual classes, to an extent, it does. The threat of confiscation usually keeps students from openly using their phones, and when they do, it\u2019s immediately taken. However, phones aren\u2019t the only distraction that students have access to. You can do literally everything you can do on a phone on your laptop. Students can play games, scroll social media, and text friends all on their laptops. All this policy is doing is changing the medium students use for their distraction. If anything, it\u2019s harder to tell as a teacher if a student is playing games on their laptop rather than on their phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, class periods aren\u2019t the only time that students use their phones. Students are not within vision of teachers constantly, and have ample opportunity to use their phones outside of class at school. This can be done either in the bathroom, out of sight in breaks, or in their locker, since that\u2019s technically where their phones are meant to be. So it\u2019s not like students are going to be completely phoneless for the duration of the school day. If anything, the time when they can access their phones will be taken advantage of further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This gets at the core issue of the new cell phone policy: the addiction. The phone ban is meant to prevent addiction and dependence on phones, but it does the complete opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what it all comes down to. Even if you are not persuaded by any of the previous points, this is the principle that proves my case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If a kid is prevented from using their phone the entire day, the first thing they will do when they get out of school is use their phone. They\u2019re going to use it more because they\u2019ve been suffering from withdrawal for the past 8 hours. The only way to teach healthy use of phones is to actually give kids access to them and to teach them how to regulate the time they spend on them. This is evident in the massive phone addiction present in the high school currently. Because where is the policy already implemented? In the middle school. Students are never given the opportunity to learn self-regulation when they\u2019re young, so once they get to high school, that freedom lets them make bad decisions. Of course they\u2019re addicted \u2013 you\u2019ve never given them another option!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Principally, it\u2019s the school’s responsibility to teach students good and responsible phone habits. They spend the majority of their day at school, and it\u2019s clear from the prevalence of these issues that the majority of their parents aren\u2019t able to educate their kids adequately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kids are going to be using phones no matter what. It\u2019s not helpful to remove opportunities for them to learn how to use them in a productive and healthy way, teaching kids the phone equivalent of abstinence-based sex education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ASB says that these changes come from Catalu\u00f1a\u2019s recently established regulations on mobile devices in schools. But as an international and American school, ASB has no obligation to follow those regulations. I think what the cell phone ban comes down to is really just the ever-present moral panic of losing a generation to the scary new thing. It started with books, then music, then radio, then television, then computers, and now phones. The common factor in all of these things is that they were fought against by the older generation before becoming a fixture of society used most efficiently by the younger generation that accepted the change and learned how to make the most of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So is it really best for our students to patronizingly regulate their phone usage, setting them up for inevitable addiction whenever they\u2019re unsupervised? I think the answer is obvious, but based on the recent decisions made by the school administration, I suppose I\u2019m wrong. I just hope that this article will make some rethink the reactionary and counterproductive policy before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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