Starting on October 30, students at Leaders High School will no longer be allowed to use cell phones during school hours, as part of a new policy aimed at reducing distractions and improving focus in the classroom, according to school administrators.
At the beginning of the year, Mr. Mullen announced that he will be implementing a new policy this upcoming Halloween that involves taking away everybody’s phones because it will “help us learn better.”
This year the students got knowledge that involved losing phones. This originally was going to be for all of the DOE schools. but when that was pushed back this August, Mr. Mullen still decided to continue. This is extreme for some students because they are used to using phones.
This begs the question on whether or not this phone ban works or not. The phone ban is controversial on its own since to many it came out of nowhere. Some people hate it and some people like it.
According to our principal Tom Mullen, he says that one reason he wants to ban the phones is because he feels like social media (Instagram, TikTok, etc) draws you in to make you tempted to do something. He says that people will concentrate more without phones.
Phones are used on a regular basis.
Local Leaders senior Kiara has this to say about the phone banning: “I’d get mad at first without a doubt because I need music to concentrate.”
Sophomore Marcus says something similar but also shows some opposition: “If there are no phones then there could be more focus since a lot of people in this school look at their phones during class, I guess a lot of teachers would be happy about it.”
Students’ perspectives on this situation is important but what about the teachers? A teacher who may have a good perspective on this situation is Tommy Reihl, an average crew leader and 11th grade ELA teacher. His say in this situation is that phones have a reason to be banned since it may promote more public speaking, but at the same time people are so used to phones that it could be a bad idea to ban it.
Overall phones should not be banned because phones help out society. According to the Harvard Gazette, “There is a huge, growing body of literature showing that social media platforms are particularly helpful for people who need resources or who need support of some kind, beyond their proximate environment.”
Albeit one thing that can be fixed is to take phones away from people any time they are using it. A proposal would be that if a student uses their phones constantly, teachers should be allowed to take their phones without any complications.
