A number of school districts have restricted the use of cellphones in the classroom, and officials are now considering making a change across Massachusetts.
Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has proposed a statewide ban on students using their phones in class.
High school students in Needham and Brockton are among those affected by recent rules on mobile devices.
“It’s pretty much fine,” one Needham High School student said. “If you really need your cellphone in class for, like, a real reason, the teachers will let you have it.”
Get top local stories in Boston delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC Boston’s News Headlines newsletter.
“It wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction where we had a cellphone policy in two weeks. This took over five to six months of planning,” said Brockton High School Principal Kevin McCaskill.
Students at the state’s largest high school lock up their phones in a pouch in the morning and unlock them at the end of the day. McCaskill says the little green pouches are changing student behavior with improved educational focus and social interaction.
“We’re seeing students that are more engaged in the classroom, we’re seeing less distractions in the classroom and the hallways,” McCaskill said. “We’re even seeing the impact with our lunches, where students are actually engaging in conversation instead of just looking at their phones, so it’s helped us tremendously.”
Dr. John Torous, a psychiatrist and researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, cautions against a one-ban-fits-all approach.
“I think we ideally want a more nuanced and personal approach that says, ‘What is technology doing for each person and how can we make a plan and respond in a way that helps that individual?'” he said. “These bans will help us as a first step, but I guess I wouldn’t want them to be the last step.”
The state’s education department couldn’t say how many communities have cellphone bans. It says it gave more than $1 million last year to schools grappling with the use of electronic devices in the classroom.
#cellphone #banned #Mass #classrooms #NECN
Leave a Reply