Distracting, disrespectful side to cell phones in class

Students are replacing education for cellular devices and the social media of the internet. Now, students take a class on how disrepectful phones can be, and how multitasking isn’t a beneficial factor to a student’s grade.

When phones first started integrating into the classrooms, the administration created the phone policy to only have phones out during passing period. Soon, the freedom of technology grew to the point of having them out during lunch as well. Both came with the same consequences: if the phones were out in class, the hand-held device would be taken to the office to be picked up the next day. Currently, both the policy and consequences have changed to where the teacher determines what to do with those phones.

Now, with teachers having control over the omnipresent phones, students still seem to have them out during class at the most disrupting and disrespectful times. So, it’s time to take the students through a listening course on why phones should stay in the backpack during class. While phones are helpful in the sense of having out educational apps and websites, students main use for phones are not only disrespectful for the teacher, but they lose out on what’s going on in the classroom around them.

A lot of teachers react differently to how phones are used in the classrooms. Some embrace it, whereas others actually use it for a review game. But that doesn’t mean having it out isn’t disrespectful. Unless a teacher says otherwise, students should be keeping their phones in their bags, and not their hands. “More often than not, phones are a distraction, and if students can’t have them out, they get restless; it gets harder to hold their attention,” Mark Hewitt said.

Also, students need to learn that multitasking isn’t real. Maryellen Weimer, author of “Students Think They Can Multitask. Here’s Proof That They Can’t,” reports on how two different groups of 62 teenagers took the same class, one with phones, and one without. Through the quiz they took, studies show that the group without phones did overall better on the quiz. Students need to know what they miss in school is what’s truly important for the lives that wait for them in the future.

For so long students have been willing to sacrifice their education, along with the teacher’s time, to a technical device. But students need to know that they are being disrespectful to their teachers and classmates, losing time in the world around them. It’s because of phones students are distracted and unengaged in the classroom. All they have to do is put the phone down.