THINGS THAT MATTER

“I finally realised it – people are prisoners of their phones; that’s why they’re called cell phones.” (Anonymous)

With the flood of newspaper reporting on the three-day budget debate (but rather more like an election campaign) there was a hugely important report in another section of the Press that many people may have missed. It was a statesman-like pronouncement by Mr. Dennis DePeiza, General Secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions and Staff Associations of Barbados (CTUSAB). Mr. DePeiza said that at a time when schoolchildren are facing criminal charges in the beating of a 14-year-old girl that went viral on social media, now is not the time to allow wide-scale cell phone use in schools. He said he supported the stand of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) and the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) that current conditions did not support the move.

“With the prevailing climate within schools, where the maintenance of discipline and control are growing challenges for teachers, the decision to institute a mobile policy in schools is ill-conceived,” DePeiza noted. He said that while CTUSAB accepted there was room for technologies in schools, this should be for instructional purposes only.

It is clear that both Teachers’ Unions object to the use of cell phones at school during school hours.

The reasons given are many, creating disciplinary problems, escalating issues of conflict and violence, theft, security of examinations, the privacy of teachers within their workspaces (there are already instances of students recording teachers without their knowledge and the potential to manipulate voice and images is very worrisome), the well documented bullying through texting, increased indulgence in pornography and the recording of sexual escapades. In others words, everything except learning. And the challenge for the teacher struggling to maintain discipline in today’s large classes, with so many secular changes in behaviour, is mind-boggling, according to many teachers. Our teachers are having a tough time.

The majority of teachers are not opposed to technology use, with its potential value, but there is a very clear consensus that the negatives of cell phone use as opposed to computer labs far outweigh the theoretical positives or “ideal” applications for learning.

I am told that about two years ago or so the Teachers’ unions were asked to submit their views on the potential introduction of a cell phone policy ... I am told that they submitted that they were against any such policy as there were enough issues already existing with the illicit use of cell phones in schools, and they have neither heard nor seen anything in writing from the Ministry as a Union in that regard since, but have learnt of the decision to ok their use through the press. I am told there has been no formal discussion or consultation.

Multiple research studies and reports have shown that cell phones are not, in practice, effectively used for learning in schools. They are frequently used for everything else but learning. In many developed countries, at many schools and some universities, they are not allowed to be used in class. Some USA schools, because of cell phone abuse, demand that students place cell phones is a special purpose-built container on the teachers’ desk during class time, but then whose responsibility for the phone’s safety does it become?

The major problem is the use during class time for diverse personal reasons – both casual communication and texting as well as totally unhealthy and inappropriate uses. Furthermore, there is a major issue of distraction from learning activities and on-going teaching. It has been repeatedly shown that performance drops when cell phones are introduced, and the biggest decline is among the less bright students. Let me repeat that – those worse affected by cell phone distractions are the less bright student. For example, a study reported from the London School of Economics showed that in a comparative study, low-achieving students improved by 14 per cent with the ban. So while some students would not abuse them, far too many do, and suffer significantly. In a country where thousands of students leave secondary education without acceptable CXC achievements it seems to me that we would be courting disaster.

But use outside of the classroom is also a problem. Their use plays a part in student violence. A repeated cry to the fighters is “fight bad and get nuff likes!”, as fellow student onlookers rapturously record on the cell phones the fights that in prior times they would have sought to diffuse or part. I am told they are also linked to gang activity outside of the school premises. The many horror stories told by some teachers, fortunately or unfortunately do not reach the press – and as one eminent teacher said, they are not stories in the meaning of the word when we were reading Aesop’s fables.

The BSTU president is reported as saying that the Minister of Education is operating within the realm of ideals amid what is the grim reality facing students and teachers today.

In many countries the excessive use of cell phones by children is described as an addiction with adverse effects on health – concentration, sleep, vision, academic work and personal skills. In any group of young people waiting on a bus, on a train or gathered anywhere, the majority are buried in their devices. Cell phone use dominates young people’s lives the way television viewing did a few years ago. There is a growing view that we are now at the stage with cell phone use that we were with the tobacco industry before its many dangers were widely recognised, i.e. denial.
A common justification given is that parents need to protect the child’s travel to and from school – to be able to contact in the event of a change of plans, et cetera. But how did we manage without the telephone on our person in the past? Those ‘phone facilities’ still remain in all schools, and furthermore an extra telephone line at the school office would solve that problem.

A simplistic view is that children have cell phones anyhow so we might as well accept the fact, authorise their presence and move on. The logic here is identical to that used in the justification of ignoring the health problems of drugs of abuse because they are there already, or that children are having sex so accept it.

As in all social change, there is disagreement. What is unacceptable is when major policy changes are made without adequate discussion and against the advice of the key stakeholders, in this case the teachers. It sometimes seems that our constitution gives some ministers a perception of divine right – and a Russian-style, totalitarian approach to policy making, as opposed to the well-tried, common-sense approach used by others of considering the research evidence, followed by informed discussion with stakeholders and prudent planning. When will we ever learn?
(Professor Fraser is Past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. Website: profhenryfraser.com)