The new school year is underway here in the overly-large school district. And just as in many other areas of the country, our administrators are planning to ban students from using smartphones during the school day.

Again.

My memory is a little foggy, but I remember we tried banning phones in schools at least twice during my long time in the system. Obviously, those past attempts didn’t stick. I wonder how far this latest one will last.

Anyway, our district never does anything like this without a pilot,¹ which in this case will be run in seven middle schools.

During the first week of September, students in the participating schools will receive pouches, which they will be responsible for bringing to school each day. At the start of the day, students will place their phone in the pouch then touch it to a magnetic locking station that will seal the phone inside. Students will tap the pouch at the station again at the end of the day to unlock it. If a student forgets their pouch, the phone will be stored in the front office. If a student loses a pouch, an $18 fee will be assessed.

Middle school students must remember to bring a pouch to school every day. A pouch, incorporating electronics to be fiddled with, which will be used to lock away their phones every day. Which someone will have to securely manage.

Sure. I can think of a few ways this plan could go south very quickly.

Aside from the logistics, the reasons offered for blocking kids from using their technology in schools usually falls into two areas. They are a “distraction” from whatever the teacher is doing in the classroom. Or phones are supposedly the cause of a variety of mental health problems.

That second one is part of a complex societal issue that impacts many adults as well as kids. Simply locking the device in a high-tech envelope for six or seven hours a day will do nothing to address the problems. But, hey, it’s simple and makes all the adults feel better.

As to the distraction part, that’s also rather complicated.

Instead of blaming the technology for kids being disinterested in our instruction, maybe we need to do some serious introspection around the relevancy of both the curriculum and pedagogy used in most schools.

I’ve ranted about the need to rethink the whole concept of school math many times in the past, but, if we’re going to be honest, just about everything about the K12 experience needs major revisions. Starting with answering this one basic question: Why School?

However, all of that – helping kids deal with the emotional and psychological issues that come from social media and creating learning experiences that actually prepare them for the future – is hard, expensive work.

Banning the technology is much easier, so let’s do that.

Problem solved.

The sign in the photo was spotted in a high school library just up the road from here. Which is easier than librarians helping kids use their phones as learning tools, right?

1. Especially the IT department. And this project has their fingerprints all over it.