The Exception`to the Partisan Rule
Lawmakers worked together to find a solution to the phones-in-school problem. Why can't they do it again?
I was one of the early voices against phones in school.
It was the early 21st century, and I was in the middle of my short career teaching high school. Our school was holding a special faculty meeting to decide on our policy regarding student cell phones, which would be determined by faculty vote. Options included banning phones during school hours, making students keep phones in their lockers but allowing them to use them between classes and at lunch, and letting students keep their phones with them but making them put them away during class.
The smart phone era was still several years away. These were the days of flip phones, whose capacity for distraction was mainly limited to text messages, selfies and basic, built-in games.
Still, I argued in favor of the ban. Being able to send texts and photos, play games or even just fiddle with a device was enticement enough for students to pull their phones out during class. And even just having access to their phones in-between periods increased the probability that students would be tardy to the next class.
But, mine was the minority position. It was our school principal, in fact, who swung a large number of teachers in the other direction by invoking studies that supposedly showed that students with phones were more likely to survive in the event of a school shooting or other emergency.
Incidentally, subsequent research has found that there are hazards associated with possession and use of mobile phones during certain emergency situations that may outweigh their benefits. For example, people may feel the impulse to contact their loved ones during an emergency at a moment when they should be running, hiding or taking other focused action. Or they may receive inopportune calls when their phones are unmuted, revealing their hiding places to attackers.
But, alas, these studies were yet to be done and, thus, unavailable to cite. And so, students at our school were allowed to keep their phones on their person, even though they were ostensibly forbidden from using them during class. However, before long, students were wringing additional concessions out of teachers, such as permission to use their phones during the last five or ten minutes of class time. By the third quarter of the school year, phone use was rampant in classrooms except for the portions of classes devoted to direct instruction—and sometimes even then.
Then, in 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone and changed the game forever. Suddenly, student phone use was no longer limited to texting, taking pictures and playing simple games. Now, kids were equipped with powerful, hand-held computers that gave them access to virtually the entire Internet.
Across the country, educators in that era concluded that the fight against phones was a losing battle. So, many schools leaned in and tried to repurpose phones as educational tools. The simultaneous introduction of widespread Smartboard use in the classroom made this a natural transition, and, for a time, it seemed like the companion technologies were opening a vast, new educational frontier.
But, this was before the explosion of social media. As the online world evolved, students had universes of content at their fingertips to divert their attention from the school-related websites that they were supposed to stick to.
In the 2010s, educators started to see that they were still losing the phone battle, even though they had conceded long ago. Schools realized that surrender had been the wrong course and that they had to take back the ground they had ceded.
Influenced by the work of scholars such as Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge in the late 2010s and early 2020s, a bipartisan consensus began to form around opposition to phones in schools or at least the need to regulate them. Thus, the issue has come full circle, as 39 states have established some form of regulation against phones in schools, and 18 states plus Washington, D.C. have enacted “bell-to-bell” laws, forbidding student phone use while school is in session. The other 11 states also have pending legislation on the matter.
The anti-phone movement has united lawmakers with as disparate politics as conservative Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of the dark red state of Arkansas and liberal Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy of deep blue New Jersey.
“Everyone is a parent” Haidt explained to the magazine edition of Politico. Everyone has kids. That’s it—everyone sees this.”
“I’m living this real time, right now,” Sanders affirmed to Politico.
Murphy echoed Sanders. “We’ve seen it with our own kids,” he told the magazine. “I bemoan the fact that if we got bell-to-bell in New Jersey, and we had that 15 years ago, how that would have changed the trajectory of how our kids interact.”
Politico called opposition to phones in school the “only one true bipartisan issue left,” speaking to the state of our riven politics. But, if the publication looked closer, it would see that the approaches lawmakers followed to reach agreement on this issue were easily repeatable. And beyond that, they were almost, dare I say it, anti-partisan.
The two sides accepted the sincerity of each other’s positions, which in this case were aligned: to improve students’ educations. Democrats could have charged Republicans with seeking to bring back the draconian, traditional model of education. They didn’t. Republicans could have accused Democrats of wanting students’ undivided attention so schools could more easily indoctrinate students with liberal ideas. They didn’t.
Also, critically, the parties approached the issue as a problem to be solved, not a victory to be won. Students’ access to their phones during school was making the task of keeping them on-task impossible. After careful analysis of the matter, considering the impact on all the stakeholders—students; educators; parents; society—a large bipartisan majority of lawmakers have concluded that the optimal solution is to restrict phones during school.
And neither party used the issue as a way to score political points. Instead of working against each other as adversaries, they worked together as partners.
The parties established a replicable template to harmoniously tackle policy problems. In a nutshell, seek solutions, not victories.
It worked once. Why not try it again?
Portions of this post have been adapted from my book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down. Buy the book here. For the time being, it is only available digitally. To read, download the Kindle app to your phone, your iPad or tablet, your Kindle device or your computer.