Some of you may be old enough to remember the chilling 1956 science fiction movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Or perhaps at least the 1978 remake. Both stories were just science fiction fantasy. But today we are facing another invasion, and it is all too real.
I taught high school for many years. When I began teaching, classrooms did not have computers, nor did any of the students, and cell phones were not smart. My teaching career spanned the creation of the internet, the World Wide Web, and what has become an astounding array of portable electronic devices, the most insidious of which are the ubiquitous smartphones that can do just about anything from text messaging to sophisticated videography to encyclopedic research to providing easy and unlimited access to staggeringly graphic pornography.
I retired in 2019. One major reason I retired was the seemingly unstoppable encroachment of technology. I was, by the time I retired, a real oddball. Unlike most of my colleagues, my students still read printed books and articles, typed and turned in written assignments on paper, and wrote in-class exams in Blue Books.
The administration didn’t particularly like my Neanderthal approach to 21st-century teaching, but by the time senior administrators realized how resistant I was to the arrival of the techno-classroom, I was already on Medicare, and they knew I wouldn’t be sticking around much longer, so they grudgingly left me alone.
But it wasn’t just technology in the classroom that finally drove me out. It was, in particular, those damnable little electronic devices every kid owned. SmartPhones? iPhones? (Whatever they’re called. I do not own one myself.) Their misuse got so bad that I finally refused to allow them in my classroom. I could get away with such a policy because I was teaching in a private school and had a great deal more latitude to set my own rules than most public school teachers.
But it wasn’t only what was happening in the classroom that left me dismayed and despairing. Just outside my classroom door was a student lounge area big enough for a dozen or more kids. And for my last four or five years of teaching, every time I looked out my door, six or eight or 12 kids would be sitting out there. And every one of them would be holding a cell phone and staring at its tiny screen. There was almost never any conversation among the kids. Each kid was completely absorbed with whatever he was watching on that little screen.
The boys were no longer interacting with each other. It was depressing. And there was nothing I could do about it. I had some control over what happened in my classroom, but not in the halls, the cafeteria, the library, or anywhere else in the school. And those who ran my school seemed unwilling to tackle or even acknowledge the problem.
Last fall, September 2024, five years after I retired, I dropped by my old school one day just before classes began, and I noticed a big box of rubber-looking things, each about the size of an old VHS cartridge. When I asked what they were, I was told they are some kind of locking device for cell phones. This year, the boys have to put their phones into one of these pouches every morning, and while they get to keep physical possession of their phones, they are not allowed to access them during the school day.
I’m glad to see that my old school is finally beginning to deal with this problem, which is highly detrimental not only to the education of our youth but also to healthy socialization and the development of well-rounded and vibrant personalities. I think every school in our state and our nation should be doing everything possible to arrest and reverse the invasion of these brain-snatchers.
I know of no child psychologist or, mental health professional or experienced educator who has anything good to say about these insidious machines. Apparently, at least a few schools other than the one I taught at are slowly beginning to acknowledge this problem and trying to deal with it. But it is going to take more than “a few other schools” and a lot more determination to put a stop to this very unhealthy and destructive application of technology.
The threat is no longer posed by a fictional alien life form from a distant planet but by a real device created by our all-too-clever human ingenuity.
