Kids are more social, schools report one year into phone ban at secondary schools
It’s been just over a year since the Ministry of Education banned mobile phones in secondary school classrooms, and schools are noticing a marked improvement. Students are more social and less distracted, Parool reported after speaking to multiple schools in the Amsterdam region.
“The awkward moment in the class is back,” Jeroen Bron, an economics teacher at the Montessory Lyceum Amsterdam in Amsterdam Zuid, told the newspaper. “Previously, students could quickly grab their phones when it was quiet at the beginning of the lesson. Now they have to talk to each other. That way, that social moment is back.”
“Students greet each other in the hallway again,” said Hubert Roza, principal of the Sint Nicolaaslyceum in the same neighborhood. “They play football, make music, they wrestle. They are busy with each other.”
Huseyin Asma, director of the Metis Montessori Lyceum, reports a real shift in behavior. “Suddenly, there are pupils playing board games, chess or basketball. And above all, they are talking to each other again,” Asma said to Parool. “As a Montessori school, we like to place the responsibility with the young people themselves. Most young people don’t even have to be spoken to about [putting their phones away].”
Louki Maas, a Dutch teacher at the Hervormd Lyceum Zuid, has noticed less bullying now that no phones are the new normal. “Students no longer film each other and then send images to others during break.” Maas also reported a clear increase in students’ ability to concentrate. “They simply enjoy being less distracted. Now that no one can use their mobile phone, they no longer have FOMO because they are not the only ones who cannot reach their phone.”
Teachers do have to be extra alert to enforce the ban. “They try the craziest things,” economics teacher Bron told Parool. “Some people simply have two phones and only hand one in. And I have even found a hairbrush in the bag in which they have to leave their phones.” He doesn’t experience this extra alertness as higher work pressure because the benefits of the phone ban are so clear, he said.
