It's not just parents who express their dismay at the use of mobile phones, but also teachers. Distractions, scattering, disobedience, stolen photos on school grounds, cyberbullying, punishments, confiscation, conflict with families and children in the playground not playing. This is the pattern of bad sleep that managements and teachers have been describing since this intruder crept into the institutes, to the point of forcing them to do endless procedures, some of them sterile, and wearing out the teachers.
This does not mean that teachers give up en bloc the thousand functions that screens can provide if they are put to the service of an educational task. But always limiting space and time, directed and controlled by the teacher.
"Educational communities were forced to digitize their centers after the pandemic, without any information or prior debate on how to use the technologies, and had to start fighting with mobile phones in the classroom and with the problems they entail", explains Hèctor Gardó, project manager at the Bofill Foundation. "It's a learning tool that you need to know how to master, and inform about the risks it entails. But schools cannot do it alone, they need a guide, information and criteria".
Madrid, Galicia and Castilla-La Mancha have regulated mobile phones. In the other communities, each center decides. In Catalonia, the Department of Education will publish "clear guidelines" in January, but their purpose is to respect the autonomy of schools. There are schools that expressly prohibit the entry of mobile phones. Some force students to leave them at the ticket office. There are those that limit its use inside the school, but allow students to carry it in their backpacks, not in the classroom. There are those who let it be used in the yard. "My cell phone is part of me, even if I don't use it, I want to have it," said a student in a school debate this week.
In general, all the teachers consulted want a Government regulation that gives them the freedom to decide where and when to ban them. "That not only the Department of Education intervene, but also the Department of Health, that the rule be for everyone and that 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 also limit it." Or "that at least they don't use the school time". These families entered a situation that the Adolescence Lliure de Mòbils movement, which already has 30,000 signatures in Spain, wants to avoid: they buy the device, pay for the data and look helplessly at the exposure time on the screens.
"We are satisfied by the good response from the students", explains Aniol Pros, teacher at the Ribera high school. This center explained to La Vanguardia the initiative to become a cell phone-free center as soon as the school year began ( Without mobile, we will have to talk! , 7/IX/2023). "We have recovered play and conversation spaces in the playground and the students are very grateful. They see that they can spend a few hours without a mobile phone and that these are quality hours. Incidents and conflicts have also been greatly reduced", adds Pros.
Manuel Motrel, from the Antaviana center in Barcelona, thinks that the students accept better not to use them in ESO because it is a high school. The students have already come from primary school, where they have accepted some rules, and parents are not "obliged" to give them a mobile phone because they are changing schools. Have you tried using it? "Beyond the fact that it "falls out of their pocket" from time to time or that there are blind spaces, such as the girls' locker room, there is little incidence within the school. The real problem is social networks", says Motrel.
The students leave at five o'clock in the afternoon (in high schools, the day ends) and someone writes on the networks: "They have changed my place. What a shit who touched me". The comment, despite the fact that it was written outside school time, requires intervention, time and management with those involved and the families.
"In all classes we deal with disrespect and we always have some case of cyberbullying," says the director of a high school in Sants. Go to WhastApp or Instagram, applications that half of the students should not have due to their age, because they are not 14 years old. "Parents don't pay attention to it, they justify it with a 'it's just that they all have it'". In general, students do not feel that what they write is serious, that they amplify the pain. Other times yes, they want to hurt. "We try to prevent it, but there is no class where it doesn't happen, and we need to explain it, open protocols...". An endless wear and tear.
The pro-prohibition directions (the majority, according to the Catalan territorial councils) do not only want to avoid its use in times not permitted. "The centers have filters so that they do not access certain content, such as games or porn... But they connect to it with their computer through mobile data. And that's how they skip it!", explains the director. Parents of repeat offenders are asked to cancel cell phone data during school hours.
If the teachers see someone with a device in their hand, they confiscate it (“and the cloister must go arm in arm”), and the parents (“immediately go to the center to look for it”) have to put up with the conversation of the director. Also, the boys know to leave it in the locked locker, so if they skip the rule, they won't be 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 take it to the playground and in the corridors. The rules specify, however, that it cannot be kept on the table or used to check the time (“wrist watches have even been bought”, says a teacher), or to send or receive messages . It also cannot be used to download content because they saturate the wifi. A more permissive use not without consequences. "Teachers will issue an expulsion sheet to the student if he uses it in class without permission or if he takes photos or videos and does not respect the right to privacy and image of people", is included in the operating rules of an egarenc center.
These days, in a public high school in the Eixample of Barcelona, classes have been stopped to debate, students, families and teachers, about how to live with the mobile phone. A stroke of the rudder after two months of school to raise students' awareness and gain the complicity of families.
The teachers were discouraged; the parents, helpless; the students, eager to have their mobile phone close at hand. "We don't think it's educational to ban, the most appropriate thing is for them to learn to see that the mobile phone 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 for them to stick to it and that they are not alone."
After the two days of reflection, there seems to be peace. Some students have left it at home, and 20 out of 200 students, in a box at the entrance. There have only been three calls for attention. "We started the initiative a few days ago, but it's a hopeful start."
