Technology and upheaval in the classroom

Mobile phones in classrooms can be invasive distractions. A finance professor at the City College of Dongguan University of Technology in China recently found them so disruptive that he ordered a student violating his “No phones in class” rule to smash her device in front of stunned classmates. It turned out to be the crack of Gorilla Glass heard round the world.

A fellow student, naturally, recorded the incident surreptitiously on another contraband phone and the clip was soon being watched on social media across the globe. Much debate ensued over the teacher’s rule and role, the forlorn student and the wrecked phone, with the focus remaining chiefly on the utility (or lack thereof) of smart gadgets in the classroom.

While the educational authorities in China decided the teacher’s action was an overreaction and told him to compensate the student for her broken property, the discussion continues as to whether students should be allowed to wield Internet-connected devices while under instruction. 

Of course it’s quite understandable why teachers – most of whom belong to pre-gadget generations – regard smartphones in class as counterproductive. They are disruptive with the noises they make, distracting with Facebook and Instagram competing for their users’ attention, and potentially a tool for cheating, since lectures can be recorded on video and summarised in text for the benefit of the impatient owner of confederates outside the classroom. 

The protagonist in the Hollywood movie “The Gambler”, a college lecturer, is infuriated when one of his students keeps sending text messages during class. In that case, his tantrum is the most he is permitted, but the scene at least does suggest that smartphones are causing consternation universally, not just in China.

The compensatory penalty assigned to that teacher in Dongguan was perhaps the easiest sum to calculate in this debate. The pros and cons of smartphones in the classroom are by contrast blurred beyond compromise.

The upside of modern communication technology in schools is generally acknowledged. Drawbacks remain, but teachers have had to concede that these are outweighed by the smart gadgets’ ability to enhance learning. Smartphones, properly utilised, enable instant and effective research and ought to improve teacher-student relations, if only because school assignments are easier to organise. Even the ability to record a lecture is deemed fair use within reason, and a truant student can always catch up on missed material through clips posted on Facebook by their more studious friends.

Studies have shown that students’ academic performance improves when they are allowed to use such communications technology in class. It’s a development that’s not hard to explain. A student who’s too lazy to hit the books or bone up in the library might instead feel inspired to learn when the answers are always at his fingertips in a device carried in the pocket.

We can empathise with the Chinese teacher. He is of a generation for which learning was a focused and disciplined activity. Seeing his students playing video games and taking selfies in class and sending each other love notes by e-text would certainly be vexing. 

His generation, however, has no alternative but to evolve with the technology. In the interest of proper education – which should always entail a degree of self-discipline – lines must be drawn to minimise the abuse of computer tablets and smartphones. Striking this balance, between harnessing the benefits of the technology and stopping it from disrupting the learning of others, will be difficult to find, but nevertheless it must be found.