Wisdom teeth. The 5c coin. Fax machines. We can now add the National Party’s school phone ban to this list of useless things.
When Opposition leader Christopher Luxon announced his party’s phone-ban plan, Education Minister Jan Tinetti called the policy “unnecessary” and said it showed a lack of understanding of how schools operate.
To that I would add it shows a lack of understanding of teenagers. After all, the fastest way to get a teenager to do something is to tell them they’re not allowed to.
Luxon cited overseas evidence of phone bans in schools. But what he neglected to note is that in those examples there is typically an enforcement problem that renders the ban useless.
One researcher at Bates College in the United States, Anita Charles, has spent more than a decade observing teaching in schools. She found blanket bans were unenforceable.
“Managing cellphone use was really about contextualised negotiation happening classroom by classroom, teacher by teacher, group by group,” says Charles. Inevitably, some teachers enable greater cellphone use than others and students develop strategies to work around the bans.
Although phone bans are not legislated for in the United States, many schools have individually enforced them, and some are resorting to technologies such as Yondr, a magnetically locked pouch that students are supposed to put their phones in for the school day.
But a Google search returns dozens of hits on how to unlock the pouches and TikToks are being shared of students finding ways around them.
All of this raises the question, rather than removing the distraction are we creating another one?
When faced with a phone ban, kids will inevitably look for a way around it. Not only will this soon make the ban ineffective, it creates resentment and disenfranchisement between teens and authority figures, and time that should be spent on school work is wasted studying locking mechanisms.
In France, where phones were banned in schools in 2018, students and teachers are still creating exceptions to the rule and phones remain ubiquitous. Phones are still being allowed in learning contexts, too. One teacher testified that students use their phones as dictionaries in language classes.
National’s phone ban, then, also shows a lack of understanding about phones and their role in the classroom.
Phones are computers. When I was going through NCEA in the mid-2010s, my peers and I were already using phones as study tools much as you would a laptop, tablet or other device.
Because of poor eyesight, I would routinely use my phone to enlarge whiteboard notes or to photograph them for later revision. With permission, some students would record teachers as they spoke.
In the event of a forgotten or dead laptop or other device, it was often faster, easier and less disruptive to make do with a phone to access Google Docs or another online word processor than it was to check out a school-owned device – that is if there was one available.
Many schools now give students school email addresses, often linked to a Google or Microsoft cloud service. Students’ coursework and timetables are often, therefore, stored on their phones.
Maybe you’re wondering about kids using social media on their phones during school time. At my school Wi-Fi access to social media was blocked from the day those platforms were invented.
And if bullying is the concern, that scourge is not limited to the online sphere. To really help bullied students we should be investing in mental-health resourcing.
Although there is some evidence linking phone bans to better academic performance, the caveat on those studies is bans must be properly enforced. Research showing beneficial effects on school results was conducted in strictly controlled experimental conditions.
In the real world, effectively enforced phone bans are almost impossible, can be detrimental and place an enforcement burden on already overworked teachers.
Given all this, what’s the point of the proposed phone ban?
It’s example of a simplistic policy seeking populist support.
But in many ways it is a red herring. What young people and schools need are resources, counsellors and other support.
If National’s phone ban was made law, it’s likely nothing would change in schools.
The only effect would be to waste time and resources that could be better spent helping our rangatahi.
