*Completely* banning phones from schools is a conservative, reactionary response which says more about the frailties of school systems which are based around controlling, nudging, and mistrusting young people (and their teachers) … 🧵
There is definitely a need to detach young people from targeted advertising, the attention economy, and other Big Tech impulses that make smartphones a highly-problematic presence in all of our lives …
Smartphones can be highly distracting in some situations … but great catalysts for learning, creativity and collaboration in others …
Also, completely banning these devices from classrooms takes away the opportunity to make schools a site of critical pedagogy around the harms of the tech, and how it might be resisted/subverted …
Governments should trust teachers and students to make their own decisions around when it is appropriate to have smartphones out in a classroom … and when it is not.
This the balance that most schools seem to have already settled on – so having politicians suddenly popping up and loudly proclaiming system-wide bans is not very helpful … regardless of how well it plays to parents and news media.
Governments should trust teachers and students to make their own decisions around when it is appropriate to have smartphones out in a classroom … and when it is not.
This the balance that most schools seem to have already settled on – so having politicians suddenly popping up and loudly proclaiming system-wide bans is not very helpful … regardless of how well it plays to parents and news media.
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