The use of phones by students is something that has always been frowned upon by teachers and everyone else as a whole. Hell, if they could help it, students wouldn’t even own phones at all, that would be how they want it. There are many reasons for that, reasons which are very valid considering how kids can be.
But then, one chief reason is the distraction that the phone can constitute to the child’s academic pursuit. Especially in the classroom. It can be quite frustrating to be teaching some students but finding out that none of them are actually listening to a word you are saying, and instead focusing on their phones. It can be quite unnerving.
But then, we have to be honest with ourselves. Kids will be kids, phones or not, they will always find ways to distract themselves. I didn’t own a good phone until I was in SS3, and that didn’t stop me from being distracted by other things. I know that another argument people have for this is how it can be used to cheat and the like. My opinion? This should embraced and utilized.
Do you know that many years ago, maths teachers were against the idea of allowing students to use calculators? They felt that it would make them lazy, but in reality, calculators made the job easier. It saved you from running complex calculations and gave you time to focus on the major problem. Soon, they went on to invent the scientific calculator which also met its controversy before schools allowed students to use them.
Whether we like it or not, phones will soon become an accepted part of school life. The battle shouldn’t be about keeping the phones out of exam halls, it should be about setting exams that even if you have all the cheat in the world, it still won’t make a difference if you don’t know what you’re doing. Back in school, we had a lecturer who was a master in things like that, he would set open tests, allowing us to use phones and even textbooks. However, it was still hard to pass the test if you don’t know how to. Yeah, even with Chat GPT.
So, do I support that phones should be allowed in schools? Hell yeah! A lot of the things we learn these days have no credence anymore. All the formulas we pack in our heads don’t help us. For many people, they know how to solve the problem, but the formula will be the very thing stopping them. Definition of terms, merit and demerits of things, characteristics… these are sections that should no longer have any bearing in today’s exams.
Asking people to define terms or list their advantages should belong to the past. Instead, exams should be set that actually prepare the students for their course. Let the students show rather than tell us that they are ready for this.
As an electrical engineer (my course of study), when you come across a problem, you check out all the symptoms and that is what tells you what the specific issue is. And many times, when it comes to fixing it, you’d most likely have to calculate. This is where the formulas come in, but how many formulas can one person have in his head?
So, I feel that phones are not being utilized as they should and this is a major problem for us. As it stands, stopping children from taking phones to school is almost impossible, even stopping them from taking them into exam halls can be hard. It’s an old tradition and one that requires major changes. The system needs to embrace this change and make it so that using a phone or not, the exam success will depend solely on how good the student is.
