I really enjoyed Jesse Miller’s talk on cell phones in schools. I thought that it was refreshing to listen to someone with a positive outlook on the place of personal devices in schools, since most of the discourse I’ve encountered about cell phones has been quite negative.
Photo by Le Buzz Studio on Unsplash.
I had never considered the implications of taking away phones when it comes to student safety and autonomy in situations where they have less power over their situations. As a student who is fully under the authority of their teacher’s at school, I can imagine that retaining as much of your own power over yourself as possible feels very important; I remember this feeling well from my own time in high school as well. I would not take kindly to my own cell phone being taken away, so it does not feel quite right to do the same right off the bat to students who are already less powerful than they’d like to be in the school environment.
I also agree with the perspective that cell phones will be a part of life outside of school and that will not change anytime soon, so it is more valuable to teach students how to effectively use their devices rather than banning them. I think that encouraging students to build healthy relationships with their technology and helping them build skills like self-regulation of screen time is infinitely more valuable than restricting phone time in the classroom. It is an opportunity to teach some skills that could really benefit students in the rest of their lives and help them combat dopamine addictions and other negative side effects of using cell phones.