Not only parents express fatigue with the use of mobile phones, but also teachers. Distractions, dispersion, disobedience, stolen photos within the school grounds, cyberbullying, punishments, confiscation, conflict with families, children in the playground who do not play. This is the sum and continuation of the bad dream that management and teachers describe since that intruder sneaked into the institutes, forcing them to carry out infinite efforts, some of them sterile, wearing down the teachers.
This does not mean that teachers renounce altogether the thousand functions that screens can provide if they are put at the service of an educational task. But always limiting space and time, directed and controlled by the teacher.
“Educational communities were forced to digitalize centers after the pandemic, without information or a prior debate on how to use the technologies, and they found themselves with cell phones in the classroom and the problems they entail,” explains Hèctor Gardó, project manager. at the Bofill Foundation. “It is a learning tool that you have to know how to master, and inform about the risks it entails. But schools cannot do everything alone, they need guidance, information and criteria.”
Madrid, Galicia and Castilla-La Mancha have regulated them. In the rest of the communities, each center decides. In Catalonia, the Department of Education will publish “clear guidelines” in January, but its purpose is to respect the autonomy of the center. However, principals are expressing, through school councils, their preference for clear and homogeneous regulations.
There are schools that expressly prohibit the entry of mobile phones. Others force students to leave them in the locker. Most of them limit their use inside the school but allow students to carry them in their backpacks, not at all in the classroom. Some let them use them in the yard. “My cell phone is part of me, even if I don't use it, I want to take it with me,” said a student in a school debate this week.
In general, all the teachers consulted want a regulation from the Government that protects them in the decision to prohibit where and when. “Let the Health Department intervene, for everyone, and they cannot say that the center next door allows it,” says a director.
Some families of teenagers ask schools for help. “If they ban it at school, we can limit it too.” Or, “at least at school they don't use it.” These entered a situation that the Mobile Free Adolescence movement, which already has 30,000 signatures in Spain, wants to avoid: they buy the device, pay for their data and watch helplessly at the time spent on screens.
“We are very satisfied with the good response from the students,” explains Aniol Pros, teacher at the Ribera Institute. This center explained to La Vanguardia the initiative to become a cell phone-free center as soon as the course began ( Without a cell phone, we will have to talk! , 09/07/2023). “We have recovered spaces for play and conversation in the courtyard and the students thank us very much. They see that they can go a few hours without a cell phone and that they are quality hours. Incidents and conflicts have also been greatly reduced,” adds Pros.
Manuel Motrel, from the Barcelona center Antaviana, believes that his students are better off not using it in ESO because it is a school institute. The students already come from primary school, accepting some rules, and parents are not “forced” to give them a cell phone. Do they try to use it? “Beyond the fact that it 'falls out of their pockets' from time to time or there are blind spaces, such as the girls' locker room, there is little impact within the school. The real problem is social networks.”
The students leave at 5 p.m. (in school institutes the day is divided) and someone uploads to the networks “They have moved me. Damn who I got." The comment, although written outside of school time, requires intervention, time, management with those involved and their families.
“In all classes we deal with disrespect and we always have some cases of cyberbullying,” says the director of an institute in Sants. It happens on WhatsApp or Instagram, accounts that half of the students should not have because they are not 14 years old. "Parents ignore it, they justify it with 'everyone has it.'" In general, students do not have the feeling that what they write is serious, that they amplify the pain for those who suffer from it. "We try to prevent it, but there is no class where it doesn't happen, and we have to explain it, open protocols...". Endless wear and tear.
The pro-prohibition addresses (the majority according to the Catalan territorial councils) not only want to avoid use during unauthorized times. “The centers have filters so that they do not access certain content such as games or porn… But they connect with their computer through mobile data. And so they skip them!” explains the director. Parents of repeat offenders are asked to delete the data during school hours.
If the teachers see someone with a device in their hand, they confiscate it (“and the faculty has to respond to that”) and the parents (“run to look for it”) must endure the principal's talk. Furthermore, the kids know that it has to be left in the locked locker, so if they break the rule, they are not helped to get it back.
There are also other bets, that of education in responsibility. Institutes that use mobile phones a lot at work. And the students wear them in the courtyard and in the hallways. The rules specify, however, that it cannot be kept on the table or used to check the time (“and they have bought wristwatches,” says a teacher), or to send or receive messages. Nor to download content because they saturate the Wi-Fi.
A more permissive use not without consequences. “The teachers will open an expulsion sheet for the student if they use it in class without permission or take photos and/or videos, disrespecting the right to privacy and image of people,” is included in the operating rules of a school. Egarense center.
These days, in a public school in the Eixample of Barcelona, classes have stopped to debate with students, families and teachers about how to live with the mobile phone. A change of direction after two months of the course to raise awareness among students and gain the complicity of families.
Teachers have expressed their discouragement; the parents, their helplessness; the students, their desire to have their cell phone nearby. “We don't think it's educational to prohibit, the thing is that they learn to see that it interferes with their ability to pay attention, that it distracts them, that they stop experiencing things,” explains a teacher. “We have explained to them that the device is designed to get them hooked and that they are not alone.”
After the two days of reflection, it seems that there is peace. Some students have left it at home and 20 out of 200 students have left it in a box at the entrance. There have only been three calls for attention. “We have only been there for a few days, but it is a hopeful beginning.”
