Zero tolerance no fix for cellphones in schools
Re: “Cellphone ban at city school riles parents,” May 14.
As an Internet and socialmedia safety and digital-literacy expert, who has presented to more than 330,000 junior and senior secondary students internationally, I understand and have seen firsthand the frustration that educators and administrators are experiencing with this 21st-century challenge.
I don’t know the full particulars of what the administrators at Central Middle School have already done about this challenge, or what kind of policy they had in place. However, I have seen schools that have implemented excellent Bring Your Own Device programs, where students benefit academically from using technology in the classroom.
In more than 500 schools throughout North America, I have seen how school districts and administrators are attempting to implement, or not, mobile technology in the classroom, and I have observed three basic academic approaches:
Zero tolerance: Schools do not allow any kind of technology into the classroom, unless it’s provided by the school. Many schools that have adopted this policy quickly learn that this is often ignored by students, who find ingenious ways to use their devices without teachers knowing. I have seen many of them in my travels. This type of policy also does not prepare students at younger ages to become digitally literate with their devices, which can have undesirable consequences as students prepare to move into senior high school.
Partial tolerance: Schools allow teachers to decide who uses a mobile device and when in the classroom. The onus is placed on the teacher to enforce his or her own rules. Often, policy specific to this use is wanting. Given that this is not a full-tolerance policy, it sends a mixed message to both students and staff. This is especially true when it comes to enforcing sanctions where students are using their devices inappropriately.
Full tolerance: Schools allow reasonable use of phones in the classroom, but only with policy, education (both students and parents), clear expectations and the enforcing of sanctions, should a student breach the policy. The key to the success of such a program is to ensure that all teachers apply the sanctions equally and without exception.
It needs to be made clear to students, especially in middle school, that there will be consequences to actions if they use their phones in violation of policy, and that teachers will follow up on these consequences.
As you can probably guess, I’m a proponent for “full tolerance” programs, and provide schools with a free best-practices policy to help them along this path.
Too many forget, however, that this is not just a school issue, but more importantly, a parenting issue. Parents, we need to stop phoning or text-messaging our kids during school hours, unless it’s an emergency.
It is amazing to hear from educators how common and distracting this is. We parents are the ones who are providing our kids with these cellphones without placing appropriate expectations on their use, both in and outside of the home, which includes schools.
If a teacher or administrator has “reasonably” enforced a school sanction against your son or daughter, given they violated a school cellphone policy or rule, then parents need to support such action. I also believe that if parents were actually monitoring their child’s cellphone use, we would see a huge change in behaviour.
Parental abdication on this issue is huge. We parents need to start being our kids’ best parent and not their best friends when it comes to the digital world.
Also, teachers need to be good role models. If students see them using their cellphones for private communication during class, then what kind of message are they sending to their students?
Teachers and administrators have a tough job in today’s technology-driven world. We have learned a lot over the past decade, where we unfortunately did not know what to expect, and often allowed unsupervised technology to get into the hands of our kids, which then naturally flowed into their use at school.
Today, we have lots of peerreviewed research that can help guide us through this evolving educational quagmire. I just ask that before we move to a zerotolerance response, we consider and implement some other options. It has worked in other schools, so why not here, as well?