Stop the Technology Inquisition

Stop the Technology Inquisition

When I was an undergraduate History major at Tennessee Wesleyan College, Dr. David Duncan had us read a book called Galileo: A Life by James Reston. It tells the story of how the astronomer and scientist used a telescope to form the conclusion that the earth was not the center of the universe, which was a very dangerous idea in 17th century Europe. He published his discoveries and was persecuted by the church, until he recanted his views in order to avoid torture and possible execution.

The problem for the church: he was right.

The longer I teach, the more I feel like the Inquisition, fighting a losing battle against progress, striving in vain to hold back advancement, clinging to out-dated beliefs just because “that’s the way we’ve always believed.”

And I fear that in the end, I will end up looking like the old church, with egg on my face.

What I’m referring to here is technology. Not the desktop computer, projector, and smart board that hum enticingly in my classroom, but the cell phones, iPods, and other devices my students carry every day.

I feel like I’m fighting every minute of every day to rid the school of devices that the kids want and the parents want their kids to have. So not only am I fighting the cell phones, I’m fighting the kids, and also the parents.

A few months ago, I came across a young man, a sophomore, in the hall texting. I didn’t feel like an argument, so I just snatched the phone out of his hand and told him to pick it up in the office at the end of the day, which is the county policy. But when I handed the phone over to the assistant principal, I got a shock. Because the picture on the screen of this young man’s phone was one of our girls, 15 years old, completely naked and in a very X-rated pose.

Well that complicated matters. The assistant principal called the boy’s mom in, and all four of us met that afternoon after school. When the mom asked why she had been called in, Ms. Sarshuri took out the phone and handed it to her, pointing out the disgusting picture.

The mom looked at the picture, closed the phone, and handed it to her son. “Is there anything else?” she asked, looking at us disdainfully. Ms. Sarshuri said, “Aren’t you concerned that your son has pornography in school?”

“That isn’t pornography,” the mom said. “That’s just his girlfriend.”

I was amazed. She didn’t care in the slightest. I wondered if she would have cared more if she had been the mom of the girl in the picture.

Just the other day, we had another interesting run-in with a cell phone. We have a handful of kids that get caught with phones in class all the time. The one that holds the record is Michael, and last week he got caught texting for the 8th time this year. The school board policy says that the school is supposed to keep the phone for a period of one week, and when Michael found that out, he was livid.

Sure enough, at the end of the day, Michael’s mom was raging at the principal about her rights and the rights of her son. She swore she would report us to the county supervisor of education.

I guess she didn’t realize we were following the supervisor’s policy.

Anyway, the next day Michael showed up with a brand new cell phone, bought for him by his mom the evening before. He was very proud as he told his friends about how his mom had marched into the office of US Cellular and purchased a brand new phone for her poor, victimized son.

It angered me a bit at first, but I felt better when one of the Math teachers took up the new phone later that day.

Recently I’ve begun to wonder if we are overlooking a powerful tool for teaching. Many of my students have cell phones with wireless internet, video and audio recording capabilities, digital cameras, and numerous programs that could be used by creative teachers to encourage and enhance learning. My kids carry iPods, digital cameras, tiny video recorders, and mp3 players, all of which could be used by innovative educators to teach class.

If only we weren’t so concerned with hunting down and destroying this evil technology.

I don’t have enough computers in my room to have my kids conduct internet research. But if the students with smartphones were allowed to take them out and turn them on under my supervision, all my students would have internet access at the same time.

I would like to have my students do mini-documentaries instead of research papers, but we don’t have a single video camera in my department.

But if the kids were allowed to use the recorders they have, we could make it happen.

But we can’t do that can we? Why? Because someone’s phone might buzz in the middle of an Algebra class and get on a teacher’s nerves?

I spend a lot more time on phone patrol than I would just telling a kid to silence their phone.

The other day I put a difficult Geography question on the board, and offered extra credit to anyone who could come up with the right answer.

I immediately looked up and there was little Mr. Brandon, working away under his desk on his new smartphone. I walked back to him and put out my hand. He looked up sort of mischievously, and said, “Mr. Cole, you really shouldn’t take up my phone.”

“Why not, Brandon?” I asked.

“Because I was just looking up the answer to that question.”

“Did you find it?”

“Well, I had to text the question to a website, and they’ll text the answer back to me.”

The phone buzzed in my hand, and Brandon said “There it is.”

I looked down, and sure enough, they had texted him the right answer.

I said, “So, why shouldn’t I take up your phone?”

He grinned and said, “Because I had to pay a dollar to get that answer.”

I gave him back his phone.

So why are we so reluctant to allow the kids to have technology? I think we’re scared of a lot of things. We’re scared they’ll capture a fight on video, put it on YouTube, and make us look foolish. We’re scared they’ll stop respecting us if we relax the rules. We’re scared to turn away from the rules we were raised with. And more than anything, we’re scared of the destructive potential of technology many of us don’t understand.

If we allow our students to have their technology, will some of them use it to cheat?

Sure, but many of them try to cheat without technology.

Will some of them take videos of fights and other bad things that happen at school and plaster them on the internet?

Sure, but they do it anyway. And if a kid chooses to do that, the fault lies with him, not the school. And not with the technology itself.

Let’s stop acting like the Inquisition, and try to figure out how to make use of these powerful tools our students carry around in their pockets. In a cash-strapped economy, wouldn’t it be nice to have computers and internet provided free of charge by parents?

We have it already. We just have to stop being scared.