Hi there. In this education post I talk about phone distractions in school. The motivation behind this post is based on a discussion I've had with a colleague friend. We work in the private educational services industry. One of the student clients we have is from a private school which really enforces the no phones in the classroom rule. My colleague has mentioned that in the public schools in Toronto they do have the no phone rule in place but it is not enforced. Due to the lack of enforcement the students kind of take over the classroom. As there are more students than teachers the teachers can't really do much.
This type of issue has made me think about things.
Phone Addiction?
When I was younger I had a big yellow handheld Game Boy. I was pretty much addicted to the Super Mario Bros game that was in black and white. Instead of waiting I would play video games on the Game Boy. At the time being addicted to a handheld device was looked down upon. Nowadays cellphone/smartphone usage is abundant and you do see many people preoccupied with their phones. Those who are way into their phones could have attention span issues and/or possibly impatience.
Parenting can play a role in phone addiction in youths and students. Giving a smartphone to a toddler to play with is somewhat irresponsible in my opinion. Games and applications these days are designed to be addictive with their psychology research and their incentive structures. Having a young kid exposed to smartphone usage may get them addicted. Parents could impose time limits with their child's usage of devices. It may work or may not work.
The Fear Of Teachers Being Sued?
From the educator perspective there is a fear for a teacher for being sued if a teacher enforces disciplinary rules on their student. This existence of such a fear seems kind of crazy to me. It is as if parents think that their child can't be that bad and that the teacher is in the wrong. The thing is that both students and teachers can be awful and unlawful. Students can be mega disrespectful to teachers if they are distracted with phones, violent, loud or disruptive. Teachers can also be bad if they are disrespectful, inappropriate, violent or have unnecessarily difficult and unfair tests.
Phone Addicted Students Into Phone Addicted Workers?
Something that could be worrisome is that if there are a lot of phone addicted students these individuals can end up as phone addicted workers. I do question how much productivity occurs if there is a society of phone addicts. Instead of doing proper quality control for manufacturing the person could be on their phone. Instead of servicing a customer, the employee is on addicted on their phone. The user should use their phone as a tool instead of letting the tool consume them.
Thank you for reading.