Learning first, minus smartphones – New York Daily News
The first day of return to school for New York public schoolchildren is always happy to see friends and sad to leave the summer holidays, but the first day today is the first day without any smartphone or other distracting electronic device. Children can be sad at first without their phones, but it will be happy for everyone.
On behalf of more than a million students in New York, their teachers and their parents, we thank Governor Hochul for having propelled his bell to bell to the state scale earlier this year. Each public school public school from Long Island to Hochul’s native Buffalo must have a policy prohibiting these ubiquitous machines in classrooms and corridors and lockers.
The status, the education law §2803, also covers “bridal periods, lunch, recreation, study rooms and passing time”. No phones at any time anywhere. And it’s not just smartphones.
Said a memo by David Newman, director of Brooklyn Tech, who with nearly 6,000 students in his Fort Greene building, is the largest school in the United States: “Examples of such devices include mobile phones, smartphones, smart watches, laptops, tablets, ipads and portable music and entertainment systems.”
The law of the state allows “devices not compatible with the Internet such as cell phones or other communication devices which are not able to connect to the Internet or allow the user to access the content on the Internet.”
As for when, Newman writes: “Students will not be allowed to use or access their personal compatible internet electronic devices when they arrived at school until the end of the school day. The school day is defined as the period from the moment when students enter the school building until the end of the day, including during lunch, the passage between classes and bathrooms.
Unable to collect 6,000 smartphones each morning and return 6,000 smartphones each afternoon to the right owners, Tech has rather expressed a Velcro pocket in which the phone must remain throughout the school day. Students keep the cover in their backpack or locker. Lose a pocket and you will have to buy a new one for 10 dollars.
Our only scruples about the new bell law is that it has so far been needed to implement it. For years, different schools had different policies towards phones, but now, with considerable evidence of the distractioning nature of the apparatus, a universal ban is correct policy.
If there is a family emergency, mom and dad can call the school office, as they did for 100 years before smartphones, so that the student contacts. Meeting meetings and other special arrangements can still be made, as they were before smartphones. Students will always use computers and internet during school day, but for school work.
The advantages are that students can focus on school at school and what their teachers teach. And beyond the class, there are also gains: lunch from today, students will really have to talk to their table, instead of looking at their palms. The same goes in the corridors between the lessons: listen to Yakking children instead of typing.
Regarding teachers, not only will they not have to compete with videos and attractive texts for the attention of students, they will not have to act as smartphone cops, because there will be no smartphones.
Again, thank you, Governor Hochul.
