France rules to further restrict mobile phone use in schools

Last week The French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer announced that mobile phones will be banned in both primary and middle schools from September. French high schools, which teach children of ages between 15 and 18, will not be affected by the new ruling. The feeling over this side of the channel amongst many of the teachers I know was one of envy and admiration - how they wished that the same rules could be put into place in British schools. `I have to fight to make every lesson more interesting than the entire internet,` one secondary school teacher told me, `phones are just too much of a distraction for children during lessons.`

The news report in its concise, heading shocking form `France bans mobile phones in schools` is actually slightly misleading. Phones have been prohibited in their classrooms for some years now, and this new ruling merely states that pupils are now also forbidden from using their mobile devices during any breaks, at lunchtime, and between lessons. The ruling seems to come slightly short of imposing a total ban whilst on school property, but it certainly is a step in that direction.

The Education minister said that the primary motivation for the decision was one of `public health,` and hoped it would reduce cyber bullying, and encourage children to spend more time outside during their breaks.

`These days the children don`t play at break time anymore,` Mr Blanquer has said. `They are just all in front of their smartphones and from an educational point of view that`s a problem,`

The question of the mobile phones being permitted at school is a divisive one. There are some who favour a total ban of their use on school grounds - and there are others who opine that the mobile is a necessary part of this generations toolkit, and to deny them their device, even for a few hours, is tantamount to infringing upon a civil liberty. Perhaps you can detect from my tone that my sentiments lean more towards the former of these opposing mindsets. As a former teacher I have spent a good period of my career fighting the `little glowing demon` that would magically appear under my pupils` desks. This nefarious creature would always evade my capture, dancing from child to child, rendering them spellbound, and utterly insensible and inattentive to my lessons, which were of course fascinating.

When I was a schoolboy (many many years ago) the Nintendo Gameboy was possibly the coolest piece of kit anyone could own. This portable video game console, which was about the size of a paperback book, would be surreptitiously passed around the classroom while the teacher, their back to us, scraped some chalk shorter at the blackboard (no interactive screens back then). As exciting as this monochrome, squeaky beeping device was, all it could do was display rather simple games on a tiny 2.5 inch screen. Today`s phones though are like a whole video arcade system, capable of surfing the web, playing music, and of course accessing social media. No wonder children get distracted by them, even adults can barely get their faces out of their mobiles.

Many parents would not want their children to be without their phones, for reasons of safety. This is of course a perfectly understandable point of view: I would not want my child to be in a situation where, should they need assistance, they were unable to contact me. I cannot imagine such a situation occurring in a classroom during a lesson though, where a teacher will be present, and they will surrounded by their peers in an environment - one certainly hopes - of study and learning.

I part company with those who think their children must have their phones with them always, wherever they are. To me this view portrays the mobile signal as a kind of invisible tether, a second umbilical cord, never to be cut, lest their child be lost forever. A few hours away from their phones might even be a relief for them schoolchildren - and it will certainly let their teachers get on with their job with greater ease.

Allowing children to use their phones during breaks - that I can certainly concede to; but I really don`t know why they must be to hand during lessons. If a parent needs to contact their child they need only phone the school, who will of course know which class they are in; and if a pupil has an urgent reason to communicate with someone during a lesson, the teacher could briefly return their phone to them. We are fast becoming a nation of people addicted to their phones - nomophobes, yes, there`s even a word for it! If adults cannot look away from their screens, having picked up the habit relatively late in their lives, how strong will the addiction be for children, who are getting hooked at such a young and impressionable age? A few hours away from their phones will, in my view, make children more attentive in classes, and enable teachers to do their jobs with fewer interruptions. We shall have to see if the UK adopts a more Francophile approach in regard to where and when phone use is permitted in schools - but with the channel seeming to widen every day as we become politically ever more distant from Europe, the latest ringtones are unlikely to be banished from the classrooms anytime soon.