Leader: Yes, for classrooms without mobile devices

To be or not to be on mobile is not the question. Nor what should be called a mobile phone-free school. The point is, the mobile phone has no place in the classroom.

This is a leader. The leader expresses the position of the VG. The political editor of the VG answers the commandant.

KrF wants one National ban Against cell phones in primary and secondary schools. Education Minister Tunji Brenna (AFP) says no. She believes this should be up to the individual school to decide for themselves.

The same thing was said by Margarete Hagerup (H), member of the Parliamentary Education Committee, in the political district at nerk Wednesday Radio.

But the ban proposal was first drafted in the Conservative Party.

Already in 2018, Mathilde Tybring Gede here at VG wrote that the mobile phone “distracts and destroys students in the first place”. She wanted stricter rules for cellphone use in school, but was skeptical of a national ban.

Five years later, she still had doubts that national rules were the best. Together with the former Minister of Digitization Nikolay Astrup And the leader of the Dissolution Committee at the 2023 National Meeting, Peter C. Froelich, has called for the Conservative Party to call in its new principles platform for a nationwide ban on cell phones in primary schools.

We even doubted the same. Like former Minister for Children and Families Kjell Ingolf Robstad (KrF), who during his tenure as Minister was a progressive supporter of all types of screen use in schools, we have allowed ourselves to be persuaded by new and relevant research that instead unequivocally states that the smartphone is an Distracting and sometimes disruptive in children’s daily school life.

And since the Conservative Party’s national meeting this spring justified the rejection of the proposal for a nationwide mobile phone ban, we here in the leadership have previously argued that this should be up to the schools in the respective municipalities to decide.

It is a responsibility that principals and teachers can abandon. Both educational and social arguments say that pupils should be protected from mobile phones during school hours.

According to another UNESCO report Is there a direct relationship between the use of mobile phones in school and the poor performance of students? The United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization recommends keeping smartphones out of schools.

The report documents that the heavy use of smartphones not only reduces the ability to learn, but that spending too much time in front of screens also negatively affects the emotional stability of children. France and the Netherlands have both imposed national bans on cell phones in schools in the wake of this. in Denmark a Opposite.

One PhD thesis At the Norwegian School of Economics similar results are emerging from schools that have banned smartphones in the classroom: grades rise, students perform better in exams, and bullying decreases.

Hardly anyone would disagree that cell phones have no place in the classroom. Mobile phones also hinder the development of children in the schoolyard. It should be completely uncontroversial for students to hand over their mobile phones when they arrive at school, and take them back when they come home.

Whether this arrangement is called a mobile hotel or a ban is of semantic interest only. The general point here is that all schoolchildren have the same right to mobility-free classrooms on an equal footing throughout the country. It is a national issue.