Parents need to set the example
This time there’s an additional incentive to the Education Ministry’s regulation for banning the use of cellphones in classrooms and that’s the threat of specific penalties for the violation. We’ll assume that such punitive measures will have the power to trump the addiction that children and teenagers have to their cellphones. After all, similar rules have existed since 2002, but the situation is only getting worse and smarter and smarter smartphones are now everywhere, all the time, in the courtyard, the playground and the classroom.
“Pupils can bring their cellphones to school but they need to stay in their book bags throughout the day,” said the prime minister when announcing the new measure, dubbed “Cellphone in the Bag,” in a meeting with the education minister. He knew what he was saying was basically a midsummer night’s dream that relies entirely on the willingness and ability of school administrators and educators to enforce the rule, and we know he knew from the fact that he added: “We don’t necessarily expect 100% compliance from day one, but we do want the children, their parents and educators to understand the importance of pupils being focused entirely on the educational process at school.”
Right, OK. Let’s look at the bigger picture, though. Let’s take a snapshot from the summer holidays, of the ubiquitous scene of young parents sitting at a table for dinner or a coffee with their children (sometimes as young as 2 years old) and keeping the youngsters occupied with games or cartoons on a cellphone or tablet. It is the perfect pacifier that when taken away – or losing its connection to the internet – prompts the child to make its presence more than apparent.
“We constantly hear parents complaining that their children are on their cellphone ‘all day long,’ even when it is the parents themselves who absolved themselves from the responsibility for their child’s upbringing and succumbed to their pressure by giving them the much-coveted device from too early on,” educator Dimitris Angelis said in recent comments in Kathimerini.
What does it boil down to? That once children reach school age, it is hard (if not too late) to wean them off their devices. And while it may be true that “we have a duty to ban cellphone for reasons of mental health balance just as we can smoking for health reasons,” as Angelis argued, we, as adults and as parents, need to set the example first. At the very least, we should switch off our phones in the theater or cinema when asked to – something that everyone knows doesn’t happen.
