“Amazing!” “Smoother than expected” “A game changer!”
These are just a few of the descriptors that I have heard from teachers over the past few weeks as educators here in Nova Scotia have begun to navigate the new provincial guidelines around cell-phone use in our schools.
For those of you who may not have connection to our public education system, the Tim Houston Tories announced on June 6th that starting this September, cell phone use by students would be severely curtailed during school hours.
At the elementary level, students are required to turn their phones off and not have them in their possession during the school day, storing the in a backpack or in a locker. At the middle and upper levels, students are also required to have their phones turned off and out of sight, unless the teacher specifically allows their use for instructional purposes. Some schools have adopted the strategy of providing “Cell phone hotels”, which provide a storage place for phones in class and allow students to keep their devices (which can, of course, be extremely expensive) in sight.
Older students are still permitted to use their phones when the overall school population is not in class, but this exception applies specifically to times like lunch and recess. A student who leaves class for a washroom break may find themselves subject to discipline should they decide to use that time to send a text or two while they are on the way.
Although some may believe that type of enforcement is perhaps a bit draconian, the logic is sound. As researchers at Harvard University put it : digital devices can… be an impediment to education, insofar as they enable students …to indulge in the illusion that they can multitask at no cost to their learning. A 2017 Rutgers University-New Brunswick study showed that cell phone use in class led to lower student test scores. Regardless of where one turns, the conclusions are remarkably consistent. Cell phone use in classrooms is bad for kids, period.
Even though we are in the early days of the new policy, teachers are already finding a marked difference in their classrooms. Students are engaging with the curriculum in a much deeper and more meaningful way than they were prior to the ban, and several of the teachers I spoke to expressed how their students were already ahead of where they were this time last year. One teacher commented to me that if this pace kept up, she would undoubtedly need to prepare extra units of study. In her own words, her students were “flying” through the material.
One of the benefits of surviving in this career as long as I have is that I have a professional memory of teaching before cell phones were a “thing”. I was able witness to the slow trickle of usage that rapidly became a tsunami over a remarkably short period of time. I was also part of the earliest and largely ineffective attempts by the education sector to push back against the use of personal devices by students.
Much of this ineffectiveness can be traced squarely back to a lack of political will. Although individual schools may have tried to implement bans, a lack of policy meant little support was offered to principals who wanted to change the cell culture of their schools.
Interestingly enough, Nova Scotia had ample opportunity to be on the forefront of what has become a national movement. Back in 2017, the idea of banning cell phones in schools was floated in response to a report from Dr. Stan Kutcher on the state of youth mental health in the province. Although supportive of recommendations calling for a provincial cell phone policy, then Education Minister and current Liberal leader Zach Churchill balked at an outright ban.
The idea was floated again in 2019, after Ontario announced it would be bringing in a ban of its own that year. Once again, Churchill dismissed the idea opining that he didn’t believe it was possible to prevent students from using phones in classrooms. Churchill then placed responsibility back on schools to instead look for ways to incorporate the technology into their lessons.
As far Churchill and the rest of the McNeil Liberals go, I can’t, in good conscience, say this was the most egregious error they made on the education portfolio during their time in power. However, I also can’t help wonder how much further ahead our students would be had the political tenacity that was shown by that government in regards to such things as contract negotiations and “educational governance” had been otherwise directed.
We are, of course still in the early days of this particular endeavour, but the signs, so far, are positive. The kids are adjusting well, teachers are feeling supported, and parents (at least for the most part), seem to understand that they should no longer be texting their child mid-school day.
As long as schools can maintain this current momentum, the strangle hold which cell phones once had on our students may finally, at long last, be broken.
frostededucation 