motherlode
Sommerfeld: All LOL aside, cellphones are a distraction in class
September 26, 2010
Lorraine Sommerfeld
I occasionally speak to groups of students. The first time was unnerving: I looked out at a sea of expectant faces, every one of them with a laptop open on their desk.
“How many of you are Facebooking while I talk?” I asked. A couple of honest hands went up amidst the guilty laughter. I don’t blame them. I had some deadly dull instructors at various times in my schooling career, and the pages of solid ink doodles on my notebooks were the proof.
Many adults I know have little self-control when it comes to accessing their social sites, just as 15 years ago it was games of Freecell that were being plunged into toolbars as bosses walked in. And if adults — paid and trusted to manage their time — struggle to do so, how do we expect children and teenagers to somehow be better at it?
My sons are not allowed to text at the dinner table, just as I wasn’t allowed to answer the phone if it rang. Both kids know if they are texting friends, I won’t have a conversation with them until they focus on my witty repartee.
Kids don’t need cellphones in class. Not only is it disrespectful to the other party involved — in this case, the instructor — it also dilutes the quality of the information being exchanged. When I see the calibre of some students graduating from many of our schools, let me flat out state we cannot afford any further dumbing down.
The average teen sends 3,000 texts a month. A friend of a friend discovered her daughter had sent 11,000. Texting while driving is one of the primary distractions leading to increased collisions. Yet I’m supposed to consider that incorporating this into our classrooms will somehow lead to something instructional? Unless they are going to use social networking forums to elevate the discourse by, for instance, Twittering a play in real time, or setting up Facebook pages about the coming elections, I don’t get it.
I am not averse to the rocket-fast changes taking place in technology. That genie escaped the bottle a long time ago, and the world my sons move about in so easily will be to their advantage, even as it challenges me at every turn. What I do take umbrage with is the belief that these tools come with no instructions, no boundaries, no order.
I couldn’t fire up a band saw in shop class whenever I felt like it for the same reason a kid can’t haul out their phone and start goofing around with friends, who are similarly ignoring their teacher down the hall.
It is a teacher’s job to engage the students. Why anyone who doesn’t possess at least a modicum of the performer would go into teaching is beyond me. All the knowledge in the world is useless if you can’t relate it well. But on the flip side, students have to commit to learning, and parents have to make that commitment paramount.
Parents can be terrible texting offenders. Many contact their kids frequently. When I was in school, a message at the office meant sudden death or a missed dental appointment. Has so much really changed that kids can’t function off the end of an electronic leash?
How about we let Tyler and Emily be responsible for remembering their own homework and volleyball practices? How about we tell both of them having a cellphone is a privilege, one that will be yanked if they can’t maintain reasonable priorities?
Maybe Johnny can’t read because he’s busy LOLing.
Lorraine Sommerfeld appears Mondays in Living and Saturdays in Wheels. Reach her at www.lorraineonline.ca.