A small boarding school in the northeast is about to take a big leap — a leap, I believe, many of us parents wish we could take with our children.
[W]e have decided to become a smartphone-free school starting in September 2022.
This decision was not reached quickly or easily. For years, the faculty has been discussing the increasing impact that smartphones have had on our small intentional community. . . . [Our school] was designed to be a place where students learn who they are and what they are capable of in the context of community. [Our school] is meant to be a place that fosters conversation, that encourages bridge-building, that helps students see and understand all that they are capable of. But smartphones and the social-media apps they so brilliantly and relentlessly beam into our students’ lives are imperiling what [we do] and who we are.
This school, whose name I will reveal in a few days, had already worked hard to minimize the use of smartphones in class. But they felt they needed a game changer.
We have multiple customs about when and where phones can be used, and we have spent untold hours talking with kids about what else they could be doing with their time instead of scrolling, forwarding, group-texting, posting. But the technology is too compelling and is so embedded in our students’ lives that we felt we had to make and take a stand.
We are not alone in our analysis that smartphones—and the social media platforms they enable—are hurting today’s young people. Researchers, camps, peer schools, even the Surgeon General, agree that there is a mental-health crisis among young people, and we have seen from intense lived experience that smartphones in particular are damaging our students.
This school will still have Wi-Fi, laptops, and tablets — everything that enables students to learn, and to stay connected to their families and friends and social circles. However:
What we are trying to interrupt is the compelling immediacy of the “respond now” culture that smartphones not just enable but, essentially, demand.
What school is taking this leap to a smartphone-free campus — to a 24/7 existence without that addictive device in a pocket? Who are the educators behind it?
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This special edition of The Wavemaker Conversations Newsletter will feature conversations with two of the school’s inspired leaders. We will explore the tipping point that led them to ban smart phones — not only for students, but for the entire teaching and administrative staff as well.
We’ll discuss the powerful benefits they hope to achieve with this bold experiment.
Oh - and I’ll reveal a “dumb phone” — one that can only call and text — that was chosen to replace the smartphone on this campus.