Phone Ban: Pro or Con?
Sitting on the desk before you is your pencil, a three-page packet you were just assigned, and your phone. In the corner of the classroom hangs a laminated sheet of yellow paper that reads: “ONE earbud only. No phones.” You look around and see half the class with their heads down, on their phones. You’re left with two choices — finish the assignment in front of you, or spend the last 30 minutes of class on your phone.
For many students, the choice they make in this situation reflects their grades or attitude in school. If they make the choice to ignore the work in front of them and take the easy route of procrastination, they’ll either rush to complete the assignments or submit something sub-par. They could also make the choice to go on their phone because they know themselves well enough to be confident in the fact that the work will get done no matter what choice they make. With all these choices at hand, the question of how to create the most productive classroom for students lingers. That is until a higher power gives it a defined answer.
On the first day of school, Saint Joseph High School faculty unveiled the Personal Communication Device Policy. In a nutshell, the policy states that the use of cellphones and headphones is prohibited, except for during passing periods and lunch. As the policy — more casually coined the “phone ban” by students — has been announced and enforced, students are unsure whether they are for or against it. With a near-split vote, 52.4 percent of students who completed the SJHS Wind-Up survey said they didn’t like the policy, with the other 47.6 percent saying they were okay with it.
The fact that some students like or dislike the ban isn’t surprising. How the teachers of SJHS feel about it is another subject entirely.
When asked why he and most teachers dislike the use of phones in their classrooms, Mr. Lyle Hayden explained the issues with phone usage both psychologically and practically. From a psychological standpoint, phones don’t allow students to “improve human connections.” Practically, he finds phones in a classroom setting to be just plain rude.
“Being on your phone while someone is talking to you just shows that you don’t care,” Mr. Hayden remarked.
Mr. Hayden has become known for his rather harsh methods of not allowing phones in his classroom, like throwing them directly in the garbage after being taken from students, but his process has worked in making his message clear.
“[My students] know what I expect, and they know that that standard doesn’t change. They learn to know what’s right.”
While this method has proved to work extremely well in Mr. Hayden's classroom, the question of whether teachers need a ban in place to be able to ban phones in their classrooms has arisen.
“No,” Mr. Hayden said in response to this question. “Every teacher should do what is to their personality.” He stressed that it doesn’t necessarily matter what the standard is, as long as it’s being enforced properly. Mr. Hayden made it clear that everything about a classroom, from the teachers to the students, to phone usage, is circumstantial.
At the end of the day, every classroom is going to have to work differently. An art class is going to need students to take pictures of their work to add to a portfolio, and an English class isn’t going to need students using Snapchat in the middle of a lesson. What defines how well these classrooms are truly going to work is the respect that students give their teachers and rules, and a teacher's abilities to discern what is best for their students.
