I’ve read a lot lately about the phone bans in schools. Many more are also calling for the ban to extend to tablets, computers, laptops, and other devices in classrooms. We are probably seeing the results of students who are introduced to tablets and phones at earlier ages (sometimes under a year old). Students are entering school without perseverance and grit. Everything is on demand, and students treat school with the same expectations. Dysregulation is a regular occurrence.
I’ve written about this before as we came out of the pandemic, but I think it’s gotten even worse. We may need to reset our clocks to 1995. Books, notebooks, pencils and pens. Boredom as a means for inspiration and creativity. Unstructured time and activities that allow a student to develop a plan and work toward the plan. The ability to iterate and adapt when the plan doesn’t work the first time. Or the second time. Or the third. We are afraid that students aren’t going to develop critical thinking skills because they’ve been handed AI. But AI never spits out exactly what you need the first time. You need to craft your prompt. And iterate until you get what you asked for.
Do I think we need to remove all phones and devices from our classrooms? No, but it definitely comes down to moderation, and more importantly — INTENTION. In my first year as a new Principal, I eliminated the computer lab in our school in favor of one-to-one devices in every classroom. The idea was that computers shouldn’t be used as a one-off outside the curriculum once a week for forty minutes. Students should be using devices within each part of the curriculum. But something happened along the way, we started using the devices to keep our kids busy and occupied. The one-to-one laptop initiatives enacted in schools gave our students one more screen to look at all day long, without any intention behind why they were looking at the screen in the first place.
Do I think we need a full ban on any and all devices within our schools? Still no. But we do need an analog renaissance. We need students thumbing through the pages of a book that many other students thumbed through in prior years. We need students writing with paper and pens, and solving problems with pencils and scrap paper. Kids need to create, and cut, and glue, and design and iterate. We need kids to go outside and play and to experience boredom.
It might start with more restrictions on phones. As a parent, I wish I had waited longer to put phones in my kids’ hands. A ban on phones during the school day might help, but it’s also the expectations that parents have for kids outside of school. It’s incredibly difficult when our society now functions with phones as an extension of our hands.
We need the analog renaissance right now. Whether at home or in school, we need to give our kids permission to be bored again.
Rich
