Six years ago, as officials at the Netherlands’ Calvijn College began considering whether to ban phones from their schools, the idea left some students aghast.
“We were asked whether we thought we were living in the 1800s,” said Jan Bakker, the chair of the college, whose students range in age from 12 to 18 years.
While the majority backed the idea, about 20 percent of the parents, teachers and students surveyed were staunchly opposed. Some were parents who worried about not being able to get hold of their children during the day, while a handful of teachers argued it would be better to embrace new technologies rather than shun them.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Still, school officials pushed forward.
“Walking through the corridors and the school yard, you would see all the children were on their smartphones. Conversations were missing, the table tennis tables were empty,” said Bakker. “Basically we were losing the social culture.”
Four years after Calvijn College became one of the first schools in the Netherlands to go smartphone-free, it’s no longer an outlier. As students head back into classrooms across mainland Europe, a growing number of them will be forced to leave their mobile phones behind; In France, 200 secondary schools are testing a ban while French-speaking primary schools in Wallonia and Brussels, in Belgium, have moved forward with their own prohibitions. In Hungary, a new decree requires schools to collect students’ phones and smart devices at the start of the day.
Italy and Greece have adopted milder approaches, allowing students to carry their phones with them through the day but barring their use in classrooms.
For those at Calvijn College, the sweeping tide of change is thrilling. From the moment they began requiring students to either leave their phones at home or lock them up for the day, school officials watched as the culture of the school transformed.
“Basically what we had lost, we got back,” said Bakker. “The students playing with each other and talking to each other. And a lot less interruptions in the lessons.”
Other schools across the country began getting in touch, curious about the impact of the ban. In January, the Dutch government entered the debate, urging schools to ban mobile phones, tablets and smartwatches from most secondary school classrooms across the country. The recommendation was recently extended to primary schools.
Late last year, as secondary schools across the Netherlands geared up to follow the recommendations, researchers at Radboud University seized on the chance to take a before and after snapshot of the change.
They polled hundreds of students and parents, as well as dozens of teachers, at two schools with imminent plans to do away with mobile phones on school premises, visiting the schools again three months after the ban was enacted.
About 20 percent of students reported that they were less distracted once smartphones were off limits, said Loes Pouwels, one of the researchers, while teachers described students as being more attentive and focused on their work in class.
“So I think in terms of cognitive functioning, overall it was a positive thing,” Pouwels said.
Many students also reported more real-life social interactions and that the quality of these interactions had improved. They also found a reduction in cyberbullying as students were offline more of the time.
Three months after the ban, however, not all students had embraced the idea. About 40 percent said that going phone-free had allowed them to better enjoy their breaks while 37 percent said they missed their phones.
“I am forced to socialise when I’m not in the mood, which is often,” one respondent told researchers.
At Calvijn College, officials have little doubt that the ban has been positive. When it was first rolled out, there had been talk of eventually allowing older students to incorporate phones back into their school day.
The idea was dropped after the changes they observed, said Bakker.
“That discussion is gone. Nobody is talking about that.”
Instead it has been replaced with a quiet pride that, when it comes to smartphones in classrooms, the school has been well ahead of the curve. “We went through a time when people were saying that we weren’t a modern school, that we were going back in time,” Bakker said.
Nowadays it’s the opposite, he added. “It feels like a nice confirmation that the trouble we went through was not for nothing.”
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS