The Personal Electronic Device (PED) policy is a policy banning any use of any personal devices in school, including (but not limited to) phones, personal laptops, tablets, wireless headphones/earbuds, and watches (if used for anything other than checking the time). Naturally, this policy was met with backlash by students who wished to access their devices.
Controversially, I don’t believe that the policy was inherently a bad idea. Teachers I have spoken with expressed a lack of control over students’ activities during class, and some teachers already had similar policies of putting phones at the front of the room in years past. Though I believe the PED policy started as a good idea, the execution has been excessively strict, rushed, and ineffective.
Though many devices are technically banned by the PED policy, I will focus on three: headphones, cell phones, and laptops.
Banning earbuds is one of the least-discussed issues and is the policy I see enforced least. Through various conversations with teachers, this ban is the one I consider most important, but I have yet to hear the reasoning behind it.
The most likely justification for the policy is that staff don’t wish to have students listen to music during instructional periods. Though I understand this, many teachers enforced and banned headphones in their classrooms during lectures and instructional periods in past years without a specific policy enforcing it. When teachers could enforce it on a class-by-class basis, they could also give students the chance to listen to music or block out the class during individual work times. The ability for students to hone in on their work through music or simply block out noise was something that many students found beneficial.
In addition to the ability for students to focus on their own, many teachers utilize videos as a tool for students to learn independently. As a result of banning personal wireless headphones, some teachers have spent their money to have wired headphones in their classrooms. Teachers shouldn’t feel forced to spend their funds on this due to the enforcement of the PED policy.
I’m in phone pocket number four in multiple classes. I’m happy about this, as four is my lucky number, but most students are unhappy that they have phone pockets at all. Access to phones feels vital to many students who feel the need to have contact with the outside world in case of an emergency, quick access to communication, or just don’t want hundreds of dollars of handheld technology to be out of their reach.
Though these requests aren’t unreasonable, studies have shown that individuals focus better when their phone is out of reach. I believe that the desire to keep one’s phone with oneself is not unfounded or unjustified, yet I don’t believe the mandate to keep phones out of students' hands is bad.
North Mecklenburg High School, however, hasn’t fully succeeded in reaping the potential benefits of distancing students from their phones. I wanted to keep my phone on me until I was taught the psychology behind better focus when away from one’s phone — none of my teachers told me this or offered this knowledge to me. Teachers would say that it was “just policy,” as if that is enough to make a generation of students tied to their phones understand how this could help them.
Additionally, those who do not wish to focus will not, regardless of whether or not they have access to their phone. If North Meck had provided more suitable answers and explanations, perhaps the benefits would have been more profound. As is, the poor execution leads to my doubts as to the value of this ban.
The ban on personal laptops has been the most detrimental to my school experience. Though not all teachers have thoroughly enforced this policy, I have not pushed my luck — my laptop is decently larger than Chromebooks and covered in stickers. As a result, I’ve been stuck on the school Chromebooks and have many thoughts.
The ban is intended to keep students on task. Students on their personal computers are more likely to be off task, unable to be banned with Dyknow.
As I have mentioned before, those who wish to truly be off task will remain so regardless of the precautions taken. For this reason, the ban is fundamentally flawed. In multiple classes, I can see from where I am seated that other students on their school Chromebooks are off task: on YouTube, playing unblocked games, or even just doing work for a different subject.
Furthermore, the ban is detrimental overall to students. By making it necessary for every student to have their own Chromebook, the school took multiple weeks to get new freshmen their Chromebooks, causing some teachers to have to replan previously virtual assignments.
Additionally, Chromebooks at the beginning of the year only had 4 GB of storage. Due to the number of programs (most of which are unneeded) that are downloaded onto our Chromebooks automatically, the storage was already almost full. You only had a couple hundred megabytes if you were lucky. Opening the storage menu on a computer at the beginning of the year would give you a red line and a warning stating that the Chromebook would become unresponsive if space was not cleared. If your Chromebook was working slowly, unable to function, or randomly shutting down and lagging incredibly, this was likely the reason. The first month of school was greatly impacted and upwards of ten minutes were frequently spent solely to log into Chromebooks rather than being able to do work.
Though this issue has since been resolved, and we now have 16 GB of storage available on our school Chromebooks, Chromebooks still pose multiple inconveniences in our school day. We must log on again whenever our Chromebook is shut; there is no easily accessible sleep mode. This takes up time that could be spent on work. Additionally, many Chromebooks have issues that cannot all be fixed. My spacebar is jammed, often preventing me from typing things accurately the first time, yet this is my second Chromebook already due to my first one becoming unable to connect to any WiFi. To ask for a new Chromebook would be unreasonable, and yet I and many others still have to deal with these inconveniences and hindrances to our work that would not exist if we were simply allowed to use our laptops.
The PED policy has benefits on some fundamental levels; however, due to poor implementation and extending this policy too far, North Mecklenburg has failed to find the benefits that this policy could have had, and in some regards has hindered their students more than helped them. 🆅
The opinions expressed within this piece are solely the author's and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of North Mecklenburg High School or the Viking Voice.