“Kids will be able to carry their cell phones, but they will have to turn it off when entering the center and they will only be able to turn it on when leaving the center,” this is how the Minister of Education of the Generalitat Valenciana, José Antonio Rovira, explained the strict prohibition on the use of telephones. in schools adopted by your department with immediate effect from last Monday, now a week ago.
The limitation is based, according to the PP politician, on “field studies” carried out together with the Autonomous Office of Mental Health. The positive experience in centers that had already experimented with the measure has been decisive.
Teachers from the Cabo de las Huertas Secondary Education Institute in Alicante shared a concern a little over two years ago: the atmosphere in the playgrounds had changed, it was less bustling, less “childlike” than in the courses before the pandemic.
The teachers detected that, especially among the youngest students, the 12 and 13 year old students, games that required some physical activity, even simple chatting among classmates, had given way to a sedentary lifestyle absorbed in front of the mobile screen. The socialization that recess has always facilitated was limited to comments on messages, ‘stories’, or photographs shared through smartphones that almost everyone used.
The observation of these behaviors prompted the teachers, as Ana Vaquer, professor of History, Geography and Art, recalls, to propose in the faculty the prohibition of the use of mobile phones in the playgrounds. The measure was approved and was transferred to the School Council, a body in which the entire educational community participates, including students, families and the city council, where it was supported. It has been applied in the last two courses.
“We had noticed, especially in the youngest children (students aged 12 and 13), a dependence on cell phones in the playgrounds, and a lack of interaction between them,” explains Vaquer. “Many did not interact, they did not play; “They left class, they were on their cell phone, and there were situations in which they misused photographs, things that were not educational at all.”
During the first fifteen days, the center made efforts to strictly apply the rule: “when a student is using their cell phone in the hallways, in the courtyards or in the toilets, they are asked to hand it over to the teacher and it remains stored.” under lock and key in the Secretariat,” explains the Alicante teacher. It is recorded which teacher has collected it, the name of the student and it is his parents who have to pick it up.
The schoolchildren initially reacted with surprise “and thinking that we were going to be very lax,” adds Ana Vaquer, “but when they saw that all the teachers applied it strictly, they immediately accepted it.” The measure does not prevent the school from doing so when it is necessary to make educational use of the mobile phone, although, as the IES has laptops, teachers prefer to avoid it.
A special circumstance that occurs at the IES Cabo de las Huertas, as in other centers in the province of Alicante, is the arrival of a significant number of Ukrainian and Russian schoolchildren, for whom the use of automatic translation applications is almost essential. Furthermore, Ana Vaquer points out, “they are used to using mobile phones without any restrictions in their countries,” which has forced teachers to be flexible at times.
The rule approved by the Ministry in fact provides for exceptions, when the cell phone is considered teaching material, for medical reasons or with the authorization of the center’s management, as explained by Minister Rovira,
“But the objective, which was to improve the communication of the students in the playgrounds and for them to return to the more traditional games, for them to talk, for them not to isolate themselves… that has been achieved,” concludes Vaquer.
