The Toronto District School Board raised hackles this week by voting to discontinue its ban on electronic devices in schools, but I’d like to applaud the move. The banning of whatever is overpopular and not understood by teachers is an old practice – concert shirts and Walkmans when I was young, Gameboys and Pogs and Magic Cards later on, cell phones most recently – and I have always thought that there was something rotten about the practice.
Children have their own culture, as do teens, as does everybody, really – and who is to say which aspects are right and wrong? Just as every curmudgeon over 20 wants to declare their music “real” and the music of younger people “trash”, the Banning Things habit among schools is simply mean-spirited and unimaginative, and teaches kids to do the same later on. I may not have understood or enjoyed Limp Bizkit when my kids played it for me, but who gives a shit? They’re not trying to turn me onto it. They’re just enjoying it. It’s theirs.
Same for the Pogs and the Gameboys and the 3DS’s. Maybe I don’t like them, but so what? Is it my job as a teacher to tell people what to like? I think a lot of people think so – but there’s no evidence to validate the practice. Rock and Roll stood up to cries of “jungle music” just the same as Ragtime did. Videogames and computers turn out to be no less social than any other sort of pastime. Pogs – well, I don’t know what those were. But they didn’t destroy civilization, or even have an impact on it. The resistance of older people to younger people’s interests may be completely natural – but so what? Coercion – every instance of it – has to be justifiable, and the practice of reflexive banning isn’t.
Those upset by the news, please keep your heads on. A relaxation of the ban doesn’t limit or change how you run your class. I’m not letting cell phones into my classroom. I teach grade 8, and my kids are very distractable, and I believe there’s a place for zones of quiet. But I’ll be pleased to not have to pretend to care if kids talk or text on their phones in the halls. And I’m VERY impressed that the TDSB was so quick in making this change – a welcome change from the glacial approach to change that schools and teachers generally show.
You can have a cell phone, that’s okay, but not me by Jonathan Richman
