The Challenges Of Technology

Last week, there was a rare outbreak of a government minister making a non-Brexit related pronouncement!

According to the Times newspaper, schools minister Nick Gibb called for mobile phones to be banned in schools, saying, “My own view is that schools should ban mobile telephones and smartphones inside school, and particularly inside classrooms.” He went on to add, “I believe very strongly that children should be limiting their own use at home. Every hour spent online and on a smartphone is an hour less talking to family, and it’s an hour less exercise and it’s an hour less sleep.”

Few things in education are as controversial as mobile phones. At one extreme we have the evangelists for technology in education: children now have ready in hand personal computers which a few years ago would have required whole rooms to house, they argue. It’s a calculator, calendar, processor and encyclopaedia all at a touch of button; used properly, it can transform education in the classroom. At the other extreme are the naysayers, who decry the infernal gadgets as braincorroding, attention-stealing time bombs. They have no place in schools or indeed in a civilised society.

There is no doubt that phones pose a challenge to those running schools. Whilst the potential for educational use is undoubted, the scope for misuse and indeed abuse is unlimited. Aside from the simple issue of distraction, the ready availability of cameras and audio recorders can lead to problems of illicit recording and an extra dimension of cyber bullying. Allied to that is the tortuous challenge of social media. The pressures to conform to a gender stereotype, to look a certain way and to have a certain lifestyle exacerbate the already testing period of adolescence.

Schools have responded in different ways to this challenge. Some have indeed banned them outright; they report mild insurrection from pupils at first, then resigned acquiescence. Some report an increased engagement with extra-curricular activities and anecdotal evidence of pupils “talking to each other more.” Other schools have timed restrictions on use, or zoning arrangements which allow pupils to use phones in certain parts of the school but not others. Still others have a fairly liberal approach, with clear and obvious rules on using them in class and when pupils are supposed to be engaged in schoolwork.

It’s not clear from these policies just what is the right approach. History tells us, from prohibitionera America all the way through to the Victorians covering table legs, outright bans are rarely a successful strategy. Once Pandora’s Box has been opened, it has hard to put the evils of the world back in again. Mobile phones are as much a part of people’s lives, not just adolescent’s, as television and computer games were for earlier generations. You do not have to search very far to find similar apocalyptic proclamations being made about those devices and their effect on youngsters back in the day.

There is an extra dimension of the challenge of phones though, and that is the very personal, perhaps even intimate, relationship between phone and owner. The phone is protected by passcodes and fingerprints which wed it solely to its user. There is a pang felt when it is surrendered to another person which is similar to jealousy. A significant proportion of the user’s life is contained in that 15cm x 7cm piece of plastic and metal which is usually invisible to anyone but the owner. That to me is the real worry.

As ever, the answer is education. At the proper time, used in the proper way, phones can provide entertainment and information in an amazingly accessible way. Used incorrectly, they can expose youngsters to challenges that we could never dream of. It’s our responsibility as adults to guide them through those difficult waters.