The Ministry of Education yesterday said it plans to propose a regulation banning students’ use of mobile phones on campus except for learning or emergencies.
The legislature in October last year held a public hearing, in which mandatory regulations on smartphone use at schools were suggested, as teachers had difficulties managing students.
To deal with smartphone addiction among students, the ministry has convened an interagency meeting to discuss amendments to its Guidelines on the Use of Mobile Devices on Campus at Senior-High School Level or Below (高級中等以下學校校園行動載具使用原則), expecting to complete the draft before the spring semester.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
The ministry’s Department of Information and Technology Education official Tsai Wan-lin (蔡宛霖) said that guidelines promulgated in 2019 stipulate that mobile devices must be turned off at school except for learning under the teacher’s guidance or emergencies, and students should be prevented from engaging in activities irrelevant to learning with such devices.
As representatives at the interagency meeting suggested stricter management of mobile devices on campus, the ministry would continue to consult expert opinions and other countries’ policies to revise the guidelines, Deputy Minister of Education Chang Liao Wan-chien (張廖萬堅) said.
A possible solution is to allow confiscation and custody of students’ smartphones by schools, he added.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
Representatives of different groups would be invited to discuss them once the amendments are drafted, it said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) cited a survey by the Ministry of Digital Affairs as saying that the severity of smartphone addiction among junior and senior-high school students is second only to that of college students.
As smartphone addiction can negatively affect learning, many countries, including the US and the UK, have promulgated regulations on students’ smartphone use, she said.
The Los Angeles Times has reported that California passed the Phone-Free Schools Act requiring high schools within the state to develop policies limiting or banning smartphone use during school hours by next year, with classroom lockers or magnetic pouches used to lock in students’ smartphones.
Meanwhile, EdYouth cofounder Lee Ruei-lin (李瑞霖) said today’s generation of students are digital natives born to live with smartphones, and they would find it intolerable to be banned from using the devices at school.
Lee cited a senior-high school student as saying that he would bring two phones to school, allowing the school to confiscate one phone while keeping another with himself.
Confiscation of smartphones is not an effective solution to digital addiction, he said, adding that the key lies in understanding students’ learning needs, enhancing the sense of meaning and guiding them to leverage digital tools in their learning journey.
A survey conducted by a student group suggested that most parents and teachers are supportive of restricting on-campus smartphone use, while half of junior-high school students and up to 90 percent of senior-high school students said they disagreed with the policy.
National Federation of Teachers’ Unions chairman Hou Chun-liang (侯俊良) said most teachers would support the ministry’s revision to the guidelines, as it would bolster students’ learning and class management.
However, feasible supplementary measures should also be established to address some students’ or parents’ special needs, and handle contravention of the rules, he said.
Smartphone addiction should be handled by employing counseling resources rather than mandatory rules, Hou added.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS