A Smartphone-Free Campus: Progress Report
Wavemaker Conversations is a platform where curiosity meets hope, which is why I am excited to provide the following update on a story I reported here in May.
A small, college preparatory boarding school in Williamstown, Massachusetts — The Buxton School — had just announced that it would become a smartphone-free campus. No smartphones at all — not for students, not for teachers, not for administrators.
The goal, in part, was “to interrupt . . . the compelling immediacy of the ‘respond now’ culture that smartphones not just enable but essentially demand.”
This weekend, nearly two months into the experiment, The Wall Street Journal has featured Buxton’s smartphone-free leap on its home page.
The Associate Head of School, John Kalapos, told the WSJ that when Buxton made the announcement:
“Everyone was crying. Kids were yelling at us . . . . Parent feedback was really mixed.”
And now, two months in? According to the WSJ, “students said the ban hasn’t been as bad as they feared. Teachers said students are more engaged in class.”
A couple of anecdotes:
. . . Emilio Martinez Buenrostro, a 16-year-old sophomore . . . says, he’s gotten used to not being glued to his screen all the time. It’s nice to see other students walking around campus without looking down at their phones, he adds.
Bea Sas, an 18-year-old senior at Buxton, says it has been a relief. Now, she can go on strolls or study without being bombarded by notifications and the pressure to respond to texts.
As for what it was like to be reunited with their smartphones for a recent four-day weekend at home, you can find out by reading the entire WSJ article here.
To learn about the thinking that went into Buxton’s bold new policy, and the tipping point that led to it, please listen to my conversation with the school’s Director Emeritus, Franny Shuker-Haines, by clicking the Spotify podcast player below.
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If you prefer to read less and watch more, you can subscribe to my new YouTube channel here, beginning with one of my favorite conversations ever, with the recent MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Grant winner, Smith College Professor Loretta Ross, on Calling In The Calling Out Culture.