Should phones be allowed in school?

In the UK 98% of 12 to 15 years olds have a smart phone. You are 4 times more likely to find a student with an extra rib sitting in your classroom than a student who does not own a phone. I am a maths teacher in the UK, my school has banned phones at all points during our school day, if a student brings their phone to school it must remain in their bag. But I think the ship has sailed on mobile phones, trying to ban them in schools is an exercise in futility. Let me explain why.

I am not saying that phones are good for students, there are a plethora of downsides to teenagers having unlimited access to their phones.

The major downside of teenage phone use is for me that they become used to instant feedback. I have some students asking me to check every question they do, as they do them. They expect immediate feedback on their work, but with 30 students in the room it is a completely unworkable expectancy. However, this is the norm when using a phone. If they are playing a game on their phone, they are told immediately how they have done and that is what they come to expect. I have had to give out sanctions before to try and get students to stop pestering me to check their work for the 10^th time in a lesson, because they are just not programmed to handle the feedback delay. In a way I feel sorry for them as they need this immediate gratification, which they will not get in their future life.

A student knowing their phone is in their pocket or bag is a massive distraction. No matter how fun and exciting I make a lesson, I cannot compete with a smart phone. Everything on there is designed to give them a dopamine hit. No maths lesson will ever have the same thrill a student gets when the “popular” kid replies to them in their group chat. That’s why they are always trying to leave lessons, so they can check their phone, studies have shown it is as addictive as some very hard-core drugs, scary stuff for a 13-year-old to have access to. Although this starts to take us down the WhatsApp group chat road, which is terrifying for other reasons. Kids staying up until 3am, because being the first to go to bed in the chat is babyish and embarrassing, then coming into school completely unprepared to learn on 4 hours sleep. But that is more about general phone use, rather than phone use in school.

I think no matter what we try with phones, kids will use them. They will use them at home, and they will find ways to access them at school. We cannot shield them from them, society is too dependent on phones. There is even a new phobia of not having one’s phone, Nomophobia. Phones are not going anywhere.

We need to switch our perspectives as schools, from fighting against phones to educating our students on how to use phones safely and on how we as educators can harness them to improve the quality of education we provide.

For phone safety, so far all I have really seen at schools are assemblies and form time activities telling kids how bad phones are for them, which when compared to using a phone, is like watching paint dry. For me over half the kids in our assemblies are completely spaced out, glazed looks on their faces, minds completely elsewhere. We are competing with apps like TikTok, one of the most addictive things ever designed (I know from experience). Assemblies where a PowerPoint is read out to 200 students are not going to engage them.

What we should be doing is fighting fire with fire. To combat cyber bullying; get students on computers, using programs that simulate chat apps, give a student 3 options to choose from to reply to an imaginary message, then show them a video of how that has affected the person on the other end. Have a game where a student chose to stay up until 3am and then the game simulates the slowdown in brain function that this creates. Have the player try and do complicated tasks, but with a screen that keeps becoming blurry or with unresponsive controls to simulate the effects of lack of sleep. Show the student the effects of their choices. These are just ideas off the top of my head, I am sure there are much better ones. Maybe this stuff already exists and schools either don’t know or can’t afford them, but I couldn’t find them.

With regards to using phones as an educational tool; there are limitless opportunities here. That is, until you factor in the cost. As with most things, having more funding would be a rather large help. Firstly, you need to provide phones for the 2% that do not have them. Secondly you need to pay for whatever software you are trying to use. Setting that aside, using interactive learning tools will provide that immediate feedback that students now crave. If you do a question and get it wrong, the software can tell you immediately and, in some cases, explain why you got it wrong and teach you how to do it correctly, essentially imitating a personal tutor. This allows students to work at their own pace, rather than all students working at a pace aimed at the middle of the 30 students in the room, which will inevitably be too slow for some and too fast for others.

You can also gamify education. Make learning as fun and addictive as video games can be. Most parents must fight tooth and nail to get their kids to stop playing (mine certainly did), imagine if we could channel that addiction into education. That parental fight suddenly doesn’t seem so bad if you are shouting up the stairs “Timmy, can you stop playing that maths game and come downstairs for dinner” rather than “stop blowing up zombies and come and eat!” I know which one I would rather my hypothetical children were playing.

This is a huge topic and some issues have been skirted around so as to not make this an overly long read. I understand using phones in the classroom would need appropriate use monitoring and restricted networks to ensure students are accessing only the required resources. There would need to be a lot of teacher training on the topic, some teachers I work with don’t even have smartphones, it would be an enormous challenge to get them using them in the classroom.

I feel this transition needs to happen; education will be left in the dark ages if we keep don’t try to embrace the technological revolution that the rest of the working world has. Students will have access to their phones in the real world, they need to know how to use them safely and we, as educators, have the opportunity to use this incredible tool to enhance the education we provide. Currently, it feels like we are hiding in the corner, covering our eyes, hoping phones will go away and we can just teach how we have always taught. Historically those than hide from technology often end up replaced by it and that’s a much scarier thought.

Thomas teaches maths at a UK secondary school and is CEO of Schooliago (www.schooliago.com)