Next year, she hopes to be in college and is looking forward to freedom.
Transcript:
Steve Inscade, host:
More countries prohibit students from using their phones during school hours. Some individual schools too. One of my kids should zip the phone in a small bag during school hours. NPR’s Sequoia Carrillo has the story.
Sequoia Carrillo, Byline: This school year is the first in which every student in the public and charter schools in Texas will be without their phones during the school day. But Brigett Wylie, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Western Texas A&M, has an idea how things are going to go.
BRIGETTE WHALEY: A more righteous environment, a more engaging classroom for students.
Carilo: She spent the last year studying a ban on mobile phones at the Western Texas public high school, focusing on how teachers feel about the program. They saw improved commitment and more conversation between students.
Whaley: They were really happy to see that students were more sick to work with each other.
Carilo: Students’ anxiety also decreased, according to her research. The main reason? Students were not afraid of being filmed at all times and being disturbed.
Whaley: They could relax in the classroom and participate and not be as worried about what other students do.
Carilo: The findings in Western Texas are aligned with the results of many of the United States and areas that return to school without telephones. Students learn better in an environment without phones. This is a rare problem with bilateral support that allows for a quick adoption of policies in many countries. This quickly pace, says Wali, can sometimes be a danger to the impact of politics. While most teachers at school are studying, she supported the ban …
Whaley: There was a teacher who does not apply politics well and that seemed to cause difficulties for other teachers.
Alex Stegner: Every teacher had a slightly different policy on this.
Carilo: This is Alex Stegner, a social research and geography teacher in Portland, Oregon, who talks about the ban on his area’s mobile phone. He says different types of application were normal in his school. Last year, every teacher at Lincoln High School received a locking lock for phones at the beginning of the class.
Stegner: Some teachers have not locked the boxes. Some teachers left the doors wide open. And some teachers like me locked them. I was just committed to getting into it and I liked it.
Carilo: He said last year was the first year of a decade that he did not spend time in class chasing mobile phones around the room. Now, as Lincoln enters his second year with some ban, things are changing a little. This year, students’ phones will be locked throughout the day, not just a class. Stegner thinks this will be a training curve, but not just for teachers and students.
Stegner: I think some parents will fight. But I think it seems that there is this kind of collective understanding that we have to do something different.
Carilo: Like many schools, the Lincoln High School will spread individual locked bags known as Yondr bags, students this year – the same ones used in the Whaley area studied in Texas and for about 2 million students across the country.
Stegner: I heard stories last year about Yondr bags, you know, cut off, destroyed. And there is one whole, as a logistical thing that comes with the fact that it gives the students these bags and you tell them, well, now it is your responsibility.
Carilo: So teachers seem to like prohibitions on mobile phones. But as for the children …
Rosalie Morales: You will see a different answer from the students.
Carilo: Rosalie Morales is in his second year, which is watching Delaware’s pilot program for banning mobile phones across the country. She examines teachers and students at the end of the first year to ask if the ban should continue. Eighty -three percent of teachers said “yes” while only 11% of the students agreed.
Zoe George: It’s annoying.
Carilo: Zoe George, a student at the Early Bard High School College in Manhattan, says no one asked her before New York to ban mobile phones.
George: I wish they could hear us more.
Carilo: She is worried about the consequences of homework and school work during free periods. She says her school does not have enough laptops for every student, so often students would use their phones. But also, it’s just an inconvenience.
George: It’s not the worst because it’s my last year. But at the same time, this is my last year.
Carilo: Next year, she hopes to be in college and is looking forward to freedom.
Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News.
(Soundbite of Song, “Phone Down”)
Erika Badu: (sing) I can do you, I can make you, I can make you put on your phone.
Inskeep: Is there any story of human beings who survive without mobile phones? Yes. Yes, there is.
