France to ban mobile phones in schools

Photo: AFP via The Local FR.

Following on from yesterday's post about mobile phone etiquette at the theatre, I read a post this morning about France banning mobile phones in schools. Apparently phones are already banned from classrooms, but from September next year, students will be banned from taking them out at breaks, lunchtimes and between lessons according to this news report from The Local.

"France's education minister announced on Sunday that mobile phones will be banned from schools in France.

Jean-Michel Blanquer confirmed that the ban, which the government had been mulling for some time, will be implemented in September 2018. Phones are already banned in the classrooms in France but from September next year, pupils will be barred from taking them out at breaks, lunch times and between lessons.

"These days the children don't play at break time anymore, they are just all in front of their smartphones and from an educational point of view that's a problem," said Blanquer."

Amazingly this was in the manifesto that helped elect centrist, Emmanuel Macron. It was seen as a matter of public health. I get the reasons why they want to do it - lessen the chances of cyber bullying, allow pupils several hours away from a screen, it avoids distraction from learning so helps discipline, reducing reliance on social media and encouraging students to establish relationships in person rather than virtually, reducing isolation and reduce mobile phone addiction, lessen incidents of RSI. I'm sure there are many more good reasons for the ban.

I just don't see how it can be done. Can the genie be put back in the bottle? Pupils already admit to breaking the rules about using their phones in the classroom. There were no mobile phones in my day at school, but we routinely broke the rules about passing notes to each other, reading banned books during lessons (Christiane F and Flowers in the Attic are the two most remember) amongst other transgressions.

And where do connected devices come into this - the smartwatches, the Fitbits, the connected medical devices (for those that need the)? Or what I think is most likely to happen, is that pupils will start having more than one device. They'll check one phone in in the morning and get it locked away and keep another one on their person.

There have also been calls for this in the UK. If you click on this link to a letter in the Guardian on the topic, you'll see a whole bunch of other related articles on the same topic.

Of course, this approach goes against the grain of mobile learning which can be extremely powerful. Thinking back to my experience with Woebot, I'm wondering if something like that could be used to help a child dealing with stress or bullying at school during school hours. Equally, I think Chatbots could be useful to help children with revision or to learn a topic they may be having trouble with learning in a classroom environment.

This always on thing isn't without problems and I guess we're still learning about how to integrate it into our lives. Hmmm.

Day 12/25 Blogmas

Bid to ban mobile phones in schools

It seems that cyber-bullying is on the increase and it's both pupils and teachers who are suffering at the hands of these cyber-bullies. They're using all digital means to do their bullying - text messaging, calls, emails, secret videos and using online forums such as ratemyteacher.com and bebo.com to vent their spleen about the teachers they're picking on.

So what's the answer the powers that be are proposing? Ban mobile phones from school premises and class mobile phones as 'offensive weapons'. Yes, that's right, let's ban 'em. And while we're at it, why don't we ban computers too so you can't send an email or access a website. And actually, let's ban pen and paper too so that the bullies can't send you a nasty note.

Of course, if you ban a mobile phone at school, that's going to stop all the cyber-bullying because magically it would halt outside of school hours when you have access to your digital tools again if you're so inclined to make a nuisance of yourself as a cyber-bully. Of course *any* bullying is wrong, let alone cyber-bullying, but banning the tools in school is not going to help much. There must be a better way. Ban the specific use and make that usage punishable, but don't ban the hardware. That's just daft and penalises the majority who use their gadgets sensibly.

D'oh.