Today is the first day of school that the national telephone ban in secondary schools comes into effect. The first and second graders of Het Amsterdams Lyceum have known what that feels like for some time. They have not been allowed to use their phones in class for six months, nor during breaks or in the hallway. After much resistanceit seems to be not so bad in the end: “We just have crazy conversations during the break now.”
According to the headmaster of the Amsterdam Lyceum, there has been a lot more peace among the first and second graders in the past six months. A number of first-graders we spoke to six months ago also think the ban is less bad than expected. “It’s not very, very, very bad,” says a first grader. “It is annoying that you have to write things in your diary now, but I expected worse.”
A classmate has since written his schedule and homework on his hand. “Writing everything down in my diary is too much work for me. And this is going just fine,” he says. Another student adds: “I’m really not going to write everything down in my diary like an idiot, then I’ll just guess where I need to go.”
National ban
By denying students their mobile phones during breaks, the Amsterdam Lyceum is going one step further than the national ban on telephones during lessons. According to principal Tom van Veen, students would otherwise have to process too many stimuli in the moments between lessons, which would result in less attention and concentration during the lesson.
As of today, the third and fourth graders of the Amsterdam Lyceum also have to accept a school day without a telephone. Not all students are happy about this. “I don’t think you can make it better by making it even more boring at school. We can handle a phone during the break, we’re not that addicted,” says a fourth-grader.