Phone Policy at Mission High School: Should it be Stricter to Avoid Distraction??

The phone policy at Mission High is definitely not strict enough. Sometimes people even have a second phone to work around the system. To prove this to you, I am going to compare the phone policy at Mission High School to my school in Germany, and make it clear that the phone policy has to be stricter and more equal, so that students can be more concentrated and motivated without the distraction of a phone.

My name is Maya Schmitz, and I’m a 16 year old from Germany. I’m currently doing an exchange year in San Francisco, where I will attend Mission High School until the end of January. I want to compare the phone policies at my school in Germany, the Bischoefliche Marienschule Moenchengladbach, to Mission High School’s policies.

Mission High School has a cell phone-free classroom policy. That means that students must keep their phones off and stored in their backpacks or teachers collect students’ phones. If a student breaks the rule, the phone may be confiscated and repeated offenses can lead to disciplinary actions. Some teachers are strict and enforce the rule consistently while others are more relaxed. For example some students even use a second phone during class and some teachers don’t say anything.

There were a lot of situations in my first couple weeks, when students would have a second phone in class and they were talking about the “news” that they just saw on their phone and the whole class got distracted. One time, a girl in my class announced that they were going to come out with a movie for “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and all the girls in the class got distracted. Students couldn’t be aware or concentrate on what the teacher was talking about, so it definitely impacted their academic work. Even experts like Dr. John Piacentini, a psychologist at UCLA, says that removing cellphones from classrooms can have a positive influence because phones are often more harmful than helpful in school. Above all, I noticed that students aren’t particularly interested when teachers say something about putting away their phones. Therefore teachers need to make the phone expectations clearer, and the school needs to be more consistent.

At my school in Germany the rules are much stricter. Some teachers require us to hand in our phones at the beginning of the day and we only get them back at the end. If we are caught using a phone without permission it is taken to the principal and we receive an entry in our file. That is what happened to one girl in my class, Sophie, a junior at Bischöfliche Marienschule Mönchengladbach, she got caught by a teacher in class and is still in trouble over it. The teacher said “school is not for scrolling on Instagram and watching short videos, it is for learning something new and making friends.” Only with special permission are we allowed to keep our phone in our pocket and the rules depend on the teacher but it has definitely been stricter since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Germany students don’t take out their phone because they are too afraid of the consequences. When you walk through the school hallways in Germany no one has Airpods in or a mobile phone in their hand. Everyone knows how to deal with not having their phone and it makes the school function better because when people do have their phones in class they get distracted and they forget how to concentrate. It is also good for students’ phone addiction because a lot of people have a big problem with their screen time.

In general I think both schools have good intentions. But I still think that Mission’s phone policy is not strict enough because some students don’t take it seriously. On the other hand the phone policy in Germany is too strict because we can’t even use our phones during lunch. However, a really good thing about it is that people get the chance to talk to each other because they have nothing to do otherwise. So when I’m walking in the cafeteria everyone is talking and almost everyone is involved in a conversation so no one is alone.

All in all I would say that a mix of both systems would be great. Students should be allowed to keep their phones but if someone uses it during class the consequence should be strict and consistent in every class, and every teacher has to do it equally.