Ontario's Cellphone ban 2.0 is the Real Distraction

From a Canadian Educator in the trenches

Image from the Calgary Journal

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By Igor Stravinsky (Teacher; commentator)

I can tell you from personal experience that electronic devices are the number one distraction in high school classes these days. But the new cellphone ban (the devices were already “banned” several years ago by the same Ford government to no effect) is the true distraction on the Ontario public education landscape. 

By (re)banning the devices, the Ford Government appears to be taking action, at zero cost to taxpayers, to improve learning. It's a win-win! Will it work? We'll probably never really know because, like all education system initiatives, there is never any attempt to quantify the problem to establish a baseline, nor is there any follow up down the road to ascertain the effectiveness of the strategy. If learning improves in any measurable way in the near future, the ban will be given at least part of the credit, if it doesn't, people will say the ban prevented things from getting even worse. After all, things can always get worse.

But the big benefit to starting out the school year with this re-banning for Ford and his new education Minister Jill Dunlop (let's hope she lasts longer than her predecessor who quit politics after 10 weeks on the job) is that it is itself a convenient distraction. 

Under Ford's supervision, the public education system has gone totally woke, and is now going academically and behaviorally broke. Woke school board policies are driving the system into the ground, not cellphones, which primarily impact kids who struggle to learn for a variety of reasons. The highly motivated and academically strong kids aren't really distractible. They are laser focused on their goal of getting high grades and moving on to success in life.  Cell phones were never a problem in grade 12 University level math classes, but they sure are in those new de-streamed grade 9 and 10 classes.

That's because 90% of the kids in those classes are usually checked out of the learning. They are either way out of their depth and completely lost or bored by doing repetitive tasks that don't challenge them at all. That's what happens when you throw 30 kids with drastically different prior learning and ability into the same classes. Is banning cellphones, assuming it can actually be done- and that is a big “if”, going to address that? Of course it won't, which means kids are going to find other distractions, act out, or both. 

Declining academic standards, expectations, and performance, along with disorderly, disrespectful, and violent behavior are the real problems in the school system and the reason for these problems is ill conceived DEI policies like de-streaming and a woke-inspired aversion to discipline for all but the most egregious offenses (if then). Ford and his erstwhile sidekick Steven Lecce created this situation by handing the education system over to community activists determined to eliminate any measurable differences in academic and disciplinary outcomes for black and indigenous kids with zero regard for how that will impact overall learning. 

Meanwhile the teachers’ unions and the Ontario College of Teachers are also totally woke-captured, so they are not about to say anything. Individual teachers know to keep the mouths shut or face discipline. 

This cellphone re-ban won't fix any of that but it will distract people for a while. Meanwhile Ford and his new minister can think up some other distraction for when people realize this was all a mirage. 

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Todd Smith tells Doug Ford to Take this Job and Shove it

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