As kids from across the province head back to school, one thing, at least, has changed. With a few exceptions, phones will be banned in classrooms. Likewise tablets, earbuds and smartwatches.
Kids can still use their devices during lunch break if the school agrees, and exceptions will be made for kids with special needs, and on occasion if digital devices are needed to teach certain lessons.
But in general, the provincial government is discouraging pretty well any such use.
Perhaps predictably, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation opposes the new policy, arguing that such matters should be left up to individual schools, or perhaps on a teacher-by-teacher basis. Of course, no professional organization welcomes unwanted interference from government.
Yet the case for a full-scale ban is solid.
Teachers around the country report that it’s common to look out over the classroom and find pupils’ heads down, texting or playing video games under their desks. And it’s not just the older kids who are absorbed in this way.
Children as young as five are bringing cellphones to school.
There are two separate concerns that educators and child psychologists have raised.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development runs PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment.
PISA publishes student grades in math, science and reading at age 15. Around 80 countries participate.
Between 2000 and 2022, Canadian pupils’ scores in math fell from 532 to 497, in science from 534 to 513, and in reading from 534 to 507.
While some other countries reported worse drop-offs, these are discouraging results. No doubt the onset of the COVID epidemic in 2020 played a part, but it’s a strong likelihood that increased use of cellphones during class was also to blame.
Notably, reports from both Canadian and American schools that have banned cellphones suggest that cyberbullying has been reduced.
On the child psychology front, the last two decades have seen an alarming increase in children being diagnosed with depression and in some cases hospitalized. Suicide attempts have also climbed through this period.
Here again there are likely to be several causes, yet cellphones are certainly a factor.
Kids who spend much of their waking hours on their phones lose contact with the world around them. They become isolated by their fixation with staring at digital devices and cut off from friends and parents by wearing earbuds.
This form of desocializing is not of course confined to children. Adults increasingly turn inward through a near addiction to such devices.
It’s not unusual to walk into a cafe and find every customer peering intently at a cellphone, rather than engaging with the people around them.
Likewise eye contact and recognition of others in streets and stores has been reduced by the use of earbuds. These folks aren’t socially aware, may not even hear when someone talks to them.
Sociologists use the term “socially present” to describe the normal reaction expected of people in proximity to others.
We smile when meeting strangers in the street. We help elderly folks cope with over-heavy grocery bags.
Giving others their space is part of it: It’s rude to stand too close to people you’re speaking with. And so on.
In other words, there are unspoken rules about how to behave appropriately when others are present. For we are a social animal living often in densely populated cities.
We have to go along to get along.
The preoccupation with cellphones and other digital devices has bitten heavily into how we interact with others.
Banning them in schools is a step toward restoring a more polite and socially respectful way of life.
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
