If you try and don’t succeed, try and try again, I guess. The first article I wrote in this column explained that I wouldn’t follow the cellphone/smartwatch policy for a single day, and I, like many others, followed through on that. Now, instead of giving up, the administration wants phones “Away all Day.” Away during classes. Away during passing period. Away during free periods. Away during lunch.
I struggle to find how to even approach this because no matter how you look at it, the logic seems flawed at best. I understand why we shouldn’t be on our phones during classes and presentations. But why can’t we use them when we aren’t doing anything at all? Do they think phones distract us from the people around us? If so, what about when there is no one around? Or you want to jump on a game of Brawl Stars at the lunch table? Phones don’t remove the opportunity for social interaction. They’re a tool to play a game with your friends on or back up your side in an argument or receive the latest news and share it with your friends.
Also, how in the world is this going to be enforced? How do they plan on enforcing a plan that goes beyond the locations being directly supervised by teachers? What does this do when we have an open campus policy? You have to be able to take your phone out with you? Can I use my phone across the street? Or maybe in a nearby alleyway? Where is the line drawn and why?
The main place where I see this becoming an issue is in between classes with the new schedule. Over half the student body uses Skilldule to know their schedule as it stands. That number will only go up when the schedule becomes virtually unmemorable. Phones are objectively the better way of checking your schedule because you’re most likely on the move and don’t have time or foresight to take out your computer and check before you leave your last class. Where is the logic of switching to a complicated rotating schedule, then taking away the devices we use to check said schedule, and then just for fun removing all time dedicated for checking it?
Schedules aren’t the only time I use my phone for school purposes. Often we receive emails with information for the location of various events at relatively short notice, and using a phone means being able to stay up to date on what’s going on.
Phones are a powerful tool and should have a place in school. Instead of banning phones outright, we need to figure out a strategy that doesn’t allow them to be a distraction during classes but gives us access to technology that we will use for the rest of our lives. It doesn’t make sense to spend my last year hiding in the Parker bubble where phones don’t exist when the year afterwards I will be responsible for knowing how to use it resourcefully and well.
I sat through an informative Civic Lab Presentation today from the SSDP (Students for Sensible Drug Policy) and their group found that a harm reduction strategy was more effective than prevention for drugs. Saying we don’t need to prevent the use of drugs, but phones are where we draw the line, seems a bit ridiculous.
My proposal for a Sensible Phone Policy is we keep the rule that phones shouldn’t be out during class (but it doesn’t matter where they are away) and that smartwatches shouldn’t be used beyond their time telling capabilities. Then we create a high school wide screen time competition where students, teachers and staff can compete for who can stay off their phones the most during school hours. Every so often awards could be given out for the leaders adding reason to participate in the competition. Framing this policing as a competition allows phones to still be used while providing incentive to stay off them.
I write this at risk of sounding like the boy who cried wolf because more likely than not no one will follow this new policy either, and nothing will happen but as I said the first time this isn’t the right direction to be going in. As a community, we have to embrace technology and prepare students for living with it instead of pretending like it doesn’t exist.
