From Hamilton Middle School in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood to the Los Angeles public schools, the largest district in the country, educators are finally getting smart about cell phones: they are banning phones from the classrooms and the hallways connecting those classrooms.
The starry-eyed belief that students could use phones in class as an educational tool has given way to the hard reality that phones are a limitless distraction from learning, as well as a handy weapon for cyberbullying. Short-sighted parents who have insisted their kids need a phone in hand at all times in case of an emergency should now recognize that an educational emergency has already been sweeping through our schools. It’s the crisis of addiction to social media that is messing with our children’s emotional and psychological health and undermining their educational attainment.
Phones are a drug. Phones are a weapon. Phones should not be in schools.
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