Cellphones. You know exactly what they are, what they do and how they work. You have the world at your fingertips. With tools like these, it’s hard not to become distracted in everyday life, especially in the confined, four-walled, whiteboard-filled rooms we call a classroom.
We have all been there: to have the potential opportunity of a great conversation with the person that is physically sitting beside you in class but instead, choosing to focus on the device connecting you to the world that sits in your hands. The urge to put your phone down still does not come, even when your fingers start to cramp whenever you type for a long time or when there is a person talking to you, but you’re too busy looking at your phone that you don’t hear them. We are all guilty.
“The most disturbing sight is to see students sitting beside each other on their phones instead of talking to each other,” said Ben Mitchell, graves professor of moral philosophy and special assistant to the president.
Mitchell assigned his class a task of sitting without any distractions for 30 minutes, and a student of his decided to sit outside Barefoots, a coffee shop on campus, distraction free. During her time completing the assignment, multiple people came up to her and asked if she was okay.
This sight struck students to be shocking due to the technological society that we all live in. A society where sitting alone without doing anything- where there is not technology- must mean that something is wrong.
“It sometimes takes us a while as a society, and even as human beings, to come to terms with all of the possibilities and all of the risks that have opened up with certain kinds of technologies,” said Justin D. Barnard, professor of philosophy, who is “a reluctant participant of the digital age.”
Barnard’s name kept coming up in the process of this article. After meeting with him, I understood why. Barnard’s classroom is treated as a “sacred space” where he does not permit students to have digital devices out during class time. Instead, he said he encourages them to not bring them to class at all, put them away or not take them out until they leave the room.
Barnard teaches his students at the class’s own pace, so he tries not to use power points when he teaches. This allows both Barnard and his students to put pen to paper. This creates an atmosphere for his students to dive into their own thought and opinions without the help of technology.
“Technology is an inescapable aspect of the human condition. We are tool making creatures,” said Barnard. “I want students to learn a mode of engagement in terms of their thought life, that slows down, to learn to attend to others and learns how to attend to what we are talking about carefully and then learn to think together as a class.”
Ashley Blair, acting chair and associate professor of communication arts, believes that technology is a tool. If it is used correctly, then it could be a great thing for education.
“I think there is a lot of benefit to mobile technology,” said Blair. “There are many things that we could not do earlier now, than we could before.”
The attention span of Americans has decreased in all areas, and Blair says this causes repercussions in the classroom, whether you have your phone out or not. Blair believes that the tool of technology is not necessarily a good or bad thing, but instead it is how the tool is used. She says she believes that it is not the tool’s fault.
Everyone has the same twenty-four hours in a day. Everyone also uses those twenty-four hours in a different way.
“What you are doing is a manifestation of what is important to you,” Blair said.
The way a classroom operated many years ago looks very different from what it looks like now. We have many different tools that we are able to use, changing the way we interact with those around us.
“When I walked into a classroom twenty years ago, people were talking to each other,” said Blair, reminiscing on her first year of teaching at Union. “Now, some people are talking to each other, but a lot of people are interacting with their phone.”
The hour that you spend in class is special to that particular class. Once time is gone, it cannot be taken back. While in class, the importance of paying attention is crucial because in order to redo a class period exactly as it was taught is impossible. The time spent in that particular class only comes once every few days.
Like we were all once told to do in kindergarten: make friends with the person next to you. Focus on the task in front of you and stay open-minded, willing to learn something new. Put the phone down before you miss an opportunity to get to know someone or learn something truly exceptional.
“I think there is a loss there,” Blair said. “Why get to know the people sitting around you in class if you can talk to the person who is already your friend? But the person sitting across from you in the classroom may have potentially been a close friend, but you won’t know because your focus was not in the physical space that you are in now.”
Photo courtesy of Neil Cole
Right on point. I’ll be sharing this article with my friends and family.