Mobile phones and classrooms: the difficulty of navigating
In How to trap the universe in a spider web (2017), Tomás Saraceno let 7,000 spiders create a forest of cobwebs for months, which could be visited at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. This army, oblivious to the human gaze and its aestheticization, executed in each kick what Louise Bourgeois projected in her MotherThe spider, as a diligent, attentive, calm, precise, and subtle animal, capable of unraveling all apparent contradictions. Spinning a web that hunts prey and protects its young, a tenuous, almost invisible structure of great strength and tenacity, capable of taking root in trees, flying, or acting as a diving bell. However, only to the human mind, which knows through opposition, is it a paradox. In nature, all these attributes coexist seamlessly.
The recent Responsible Digitalization Plan promoted by the Generalitat represents an important step toward a thoughtful integration of technology in education. This plan recognizes that digitalization is not an end in itself, but rather a tool that should be at the service of learning, with the aim of reviewing the use of digital devices, generating reflection, and ensuring safe educational environments.
Evidence from recent years has shown that sustained or indiscriminate use of personal devices at early ages negatively impacts social life, academic performance, and mental health. In the school setting, phone use causes greater distraction, increases the time needed to refocus on a task after a non-school activity, and replaces time spent on healthy activities.
A vivid example is the noise complaints from neighbors after cell phones were banned in Australian schools. Can you imagine a silent schoolyard for years? Our experience also shows us that, when personal devices aren't part of the equation, young people turn to other forms of communication and entertainment, and maintain an attention span that is correlated with motivation, both essential for learning. It's always possible to embrace technological innovation and incorporate it as a resource while maintaining the educational purpose: building shared knowledge, building connections, and developing critical thinking.
It's necessary to train in digital skills, the Plan says, and it's true. On the one hand, these skills imply technical knowledge, which can be developed starting in adolescence with the non-individual use of devices and with a limited task, not throughout the entire school day. And on the other, they imply the ability to manage the enormous demand of the internet. It is in this latter context that an educational controversy arises between guaranteeing a safe environment and allowing students to learn directly from the reality they will encounter. This dilemma persists in education, not exclusive to the digital realm. Education is nothing more than deciding when and how, whenever possible, and showing models to sustain complexity, knowing how to sequence its development.
From this perspective, using a mobile phone and browsing the web involves a high degree of complexity. The stark contrast between the lack of effort required, the ease of access and usability, and the enormous difficulty of being able to choose which impulse to follow in a sea of dopamine stimuli is a challenge that requires many other skills. This last ability is merely a conjugation of the very purpose of education, of a life: to make good decisions and know what to do when they have not been successful. It is a complex faculty, indistinguishable from other areas. Expecting an eleven-year-old child to develop this faculty in the digital realm is as demanding as having him read Donna Haraway. He knows the alphabet, he is capable of decoding it: we could expect him to be competent at reading her, or that it is simply a matter of persevering in repeating his reading that will improve his critical and analytical skills. It is perhaps better to think that one learns to use a mobile phone responsibly by using a mobile phone. The points of arrival are not assimilated in the entire process. Thus, surfing the web—both on social media and the internet—is comparable to driving a car in terms of complex competency requirements and responsibility for the consequences. It may seem easy, but it's not easy.
We're also left with a fundamental question: what do we want school to be? We're often reminded that not embracing social trends is sterile and leaves us behind, but I'd like schools to live with the power to choose and not act from society as an imperative: otherwise, we'd be unnecessary. That's why they were created: to be a countercultural space, a period of performative reflection in which we must always remember that being able to do is not synonymous with having to do. Fortunately, school is like a spider: it can weave a universe or allow it to become trapped in an immense web.
