Final Word: Hello, is it me you’re looking for?

Evolution is a complicated thing. It is assumed that as our daily lives change we evolve to meet the demands of new thinking and new ways of working.

So, for example, there is some evidence to show that young people are beginning to evolve more complex movements for their fingers and thumbs due to the amount of time they spend playing computer games. Similarly marsupials, animals which give birth to premature young, have developed pouches in which their young can be protected until old enough to fend for themselves, although even then they often return to the safety and comfort of the pouch on a regular basis.

It would seem, however, that these two examples of evolution have somehow merged in Northern Ireland since a school in Belfast has announced that it will be ensuring that all its pupils will be carrying pouches – in which they will store and protect their mobile phones, so that they are not distracted by them during the day. The article reporting this venture quoted five young women it will impact on, all of whom lied and said they thought it was a great idea and would be very helpful in their quest to pass examinations. The other fifteen hundred young women who are horrified and traumatised at the thought of not being able to access their mobile phones each school day were not interviewed or quoted.

As someone who works every day with digital technologies I find this solution bizarre, akin to using a hammer to crush a butterfly. I would accept that phone usage during learning time is not a good thing but the answer lies in classroom organisation and media literacy not in expensive magnetic pouches which interfere with young people’s rights. We give young people mobile phones (and iPads) and then assume that they are versed in the use of them, a hangover from the digital native thesis which said that all young people are automatically media savvy because they have grown up in an information environment. This we now know ( and even the commentator who came up with the idea, Marc Prentsky, has admitted it was misguided) is nonsense. It is equivalent to giving a young person who has never used one before, a chain saw and then expecting them not to be injured. Mobile phones are tools and like all tools the process of how to use them safely and efficiently is learned.

A couple of years ago I worked in two schools which were introducing iPads to support learning, a large co-educational grammar school in Lisburn and a small, rural primary school in Fermanagh. At the start of the project the young people were taken through the dangers of mobile phones and internet use and they then drew up the rules for their use. These included leaving the iPads face down on the desk until the teacher instructed them what they were to do with them, not using them for social media or texting, not using them during break or lunch and only using them for leisure purposes for one hour each evening when at home. The key to this was having parents involved in the training also and they could then ensure that the pupil-designed rules were adhered to at home. This is not rocket science. It is called classroom management and good teachers use it all day every day when in loco parentis with our children. If young people are not listening to you in class then you are not as interesting as their mobile phones and that is a different problem. As for the purchase of magnetic pouches I have a less expensive suggestion: Mobile phones have an off button and it can be used at any time – even on a school day.