Despite the many distractions they offer, cell phones have become an integral part of modern life. That’s why I was surprised to learn that Swampscott Public Schools is seriously considering banning students and teachers from using them throughout the school day.
The district received a $30,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to implement a pilot program that involves magnetically locking all phones away in the classroom.
The program claims to combat cyberbullying, which is an honorable ambition. However, since most cyberbullying happens outside of school hours, it seems the program would not be fully effective at reaching that goal.
It is also meant to cut out social media’s perceived social and educational detriment on children and teenagers. Again, this is a good goal. However, I would argue that social media is too often a scapegoat pointed to when administrators are forced to account for failures in our education system.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, average reading and math scores for American students have dropped sharply since 2020. Social media undoubtedly has negative effects, but it’s yet to be proven as the reason students’ test scores have dropped.
While social media and cell phones have been around for decades, the steep decline in student performance has only unfolded in the last couple of years. If you’re looking for a reason, you might consider that the last couple years have seen teacher shortages, strikes, curriculum and book bans, and a reliance on home-learning, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
To blame students’ declining performance all on cell phones is too easy.
I am not the only person with hesitations about the program. In Swampscott, more than 1,000 residents signed a petition urging the district not to adopt it.
One of the strongest concerns expressed at a School Committee meeting last month was that the program could prevent students from calling for help in an active-shooter scenario.
At the meeting, Swampscott High School junior James DeFilippi pointed out the irony that the district’s latest active-shooter response protocol, I Love U Guys, was named after the final text a school-shooting victim sent to her parents in 2006.
DeFilippi said it best when he said “I honestly feel like you are more worried about me texting a little too much than me dying with a bullet lodged in my face.”
Banning cell-phone use in schools would also lead to decreased accountability for teachers and administrators. Without cell phones around, students around the country would not have been able to share videos of problematic teacher tirades and the misuse of power by police officers assigned to schools.
I also find that many fail to realize how much work is done on cell phones these days. Throughout my day, I use my phone to work on Gmail, Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Slack, and its calendar. I’ve had each of these apps downloaded since high school, because I used them then, too.
There are appropriate uses for cell phones in school. My high-school math teacher did not have enough calculators to distribute one to each student, so we sometimes used our phones instead. In my high school AP European History class, my teacher had us keep our phones on our desk to Google small questions like “when did WW1 begin?” so we would not interrupt her carefully crafted presentations. She is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had and her students consistently had the highest test scores.
The thing that concerns me the most about the specific program being considered in Swampscott Public Schools is that the cell-phone ban would also impact teachers. A profession should not restrict your ability to communicate with the outside world. Whether it’s a message from their own child’s school asking to pick up their sick kid, or their dentist asking to reschedule an appointment, teachers should have the right to at least receive these messages throughout the day.
Although they are society’s backbone in many ways, educators currently face myriad difficult changes. Banning cell-phone use for teachers is just one more way to make the job less appealing. I think the district should take the community’s concerns seriously and reconsider implementing the program.
Rachel Barber is The Item’s news editor. Her column appears every Thursday.
