“Kids are walking around with two smartphones – one that doesn’t work, they give it away for safekeeping, and the other one they don’t take apart in class.”
This is what Diyan Stamatov, director of 119 School in Sofia and chairman of the Union of Managers in the National Education System of Bulgaria, commented on his Facebook account on the proposal to ban phones in schools. He also wrote:
“Parents are counting on the introduction of an institutional ban to solve their problem with children’s long ‘activities’ with mobile phones. They would like to be the good heroes in this complex situation, and the institutions – the schools and the education ministry – to be the bad cop.
The expectation from the introduction of the ban on mobile phones in schools is that there will be calm in the system and the learning process will become even more rational. Surely the effect will be better concentration, better quality and fewer distractions.
There are also expectations of a drop in violence, because cyber aggression, which is the new fashionable aggression, would decrease dramatically, as perhaps 2/3 of children’s time would not be screen time. And what happens in the home environment remains entirely the parents’ responsibility.
Banning phones in school would be a signal to the entire parenting community that screen addiction is dangerous to eyesight, normal posture, and natural social communication. Hardly anyone is unimpressed by how children can no longer make long complex compound sentences.”
