Banning phones in classrooms won’t make kids smarter. But permitting them will surely make students dumber – and distracted

The electronic elephant in the classroom is staring us all in the face — we can hear it ringing loud and clear. We need students to disconnect from mobiles sooner rather than later, for we have waited long enough for action.

Education Minister Stephen Lecce first laid down the law on cellphones in 2019 — but silence in the classroom never came. All these years later, the noise has only grown louder.

Now, Lecce is making his second attempt in five years to unplug kids from phones. If at first you don’t succeed, ban, ban again!

This week’s announcement is a teachable moment that’s long overdue, with a potentially lasting impact for students. Yet the critics are carping — claiming it’s old news, a recycled remedy already tried before.

Their accusation — that it’s a political distraction — ignores the mental distraction afflicting our schoolchildren and the pedagogical distraction handicapping our teachers.

Is this merely a political play by Lecce and an electoral ploy Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives to score points with voters? If so, so what?

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
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Sometimes good politics is good government. This is one of those rare conjunctions for Ford’s Tories.

If you don’t believe the premier, just look at the polls. As my Star colleague Kristin Rushowy has reported, an internal PC survey by Campaign Research showed nine in 10 Ontarians believe phones are a distraction in class and 75 per cent want restrictions.

In truth, every teacher sees the problem and every parent senses the peril, because adults are as addicted to algorithms as children are. The only difference is that grown-ups can feel the fallout and foresee the future.

Children have been tethered to telephones since their umbilical cords were cut and landlines were severed. Left unregulated, mobiles are potentially the biggest single obstacle to childhood development and educational attainment today.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t other important challenges in the school system. As any philosophy teacher might say, fixing the phone problem is a necessary but not sufficient condition for our children’s education.

Yes, class size also matters. Yes, the basics are equally fundamental. Yes, technologies and trades are essential skills for students.

But the problem of phones is the prerequisite to unlocking learning. While banning phones won’t make kids smarter, permitting phones in class will surely make students dumber — and distracted.

They need relief from the anger algorithms of social media, not merely to open their minds to learning but also to open their hearts to human relations. It’s not just about formal education but also personal interaction, both of which are essential to intellectual and social growth.

All that said, much of this was said five years ago when Lecce confidently waded in with his solution to the addiction of students on social media. In fairness, he inherited a hodgepodge plan cobbled together by his predecessor, which didn’t give teachers the backing they needed to push back against phones.

Other jurisdictions have similarly failed to keep up with the irresistible lure of increasingly powerful platforms. Their hypnotic algorithms are engineered to capture not just hearts and minds but impulses and synapses, which is why students need a respite from all those interruptions and distractions during the school day.

Ontario’s plan tries to do that. Students up to Grade 6 will have to silence their phones and put them away while at school or risk confiscation; those in Grades 7 through 12 can only access their phones between classes.

Conceptually it seems easy, but it’s all in the execution and enforcement. Silencing phones isn’t as simple as it sounds.

Parents are both allies and adversaries in this process. For while most of them strongly support mobile bans, many have also become attached to the idea of contacting their children not just for emergencies but simple convenience.

There will be pushback. The plan isn’t perfect, but the perfect is the enemy of the good — and enough harm has already been done that it’s long past time for Lecce to try again (and try harder).

When I hosted him earlier this year at the Democracy Forum at Toronto Metropolitan University, we talked about the irresistible pull of mobiles. It’s fair to say the minister is himself addicted to his phone (he cradles two at a time), so perhaps it takes one to know one.

“There’s a distraction in the classroom,” Lecce said, with many students — recent high school graduates — nodding knowingly. “I accept the premise that we need to do something — and I will do something.”

Now he has. About time, even if it’s the second time around.

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At our next TMU Democracy Forum on May 8 — “Suing Social Media” — we’ll debate the insidious effects of TikTok and other platforms that students can access via their mobile phones (admission is free and open to the public).