Is banning phones in schools teaching our students to form good, life long habits? Phones are here for the long term, they’re not a fad, and taking them away from our students is not the answer if we are all about teaching them to be self reliant, self motivated, disciplined and independent.
After all, the goal of education is to open doors, to empower our children to look beyond their adult teachers for guidance and to ignite a passion for learning. We want to teach them life long habits that will help them deal with distractions, improve their mindfulness and increase their inner strength. Teaching them how to be self disciplined and independent must be a goal of education.
Cast your mind back to the Adam and Eve story. To paraphrase (and a thousand apologies for cutting straight to the chase here and missing out on details) Eve was told not to do something, so that is exactly what she did. When her rights to use something RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER were removed, she became more determined to use that banned item. Banning its use didn’t solve the problem, it made it more attractive. Maybe if she was taught about the appropriate use of the apple, and was allowed to take a nibble of it every now and then to achieve certain goals (in her case, to curb her hunger), who knows how the story might have ended?!
The point here is that we need to manage our students’ use of mobile technology, not shut it down completely. Teach, don’t take.edQuire can help you and your school to manage mobile devices. Ask us how. www.edquire.com
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