For a long time now at Francis Holland Regent’s Park, our pupils have accepted that mobile phones should be out of sight and mind during the school day. Recently, we have doubled down on this intention by introducing Yondr pouches, in addition to physically taking in mobile phones for most year groups. Ivor Place is now a mobile phone-free site for everyone, including pupils, staff (except in staff-only areas). The liberation from addiction to tiny screens and their distractions enables our pupils to maximise on all the wonderful opportunities available to them at school.
As a result, conversation continues to flow. We walk and talk, we interact and look at one another rather than down at our phones. We aim to ensure we maintain and strengthen those all-important social and inter-personal skills. At lunchtimes and breaktimes, our corridors and spaces are alive with conversation, and every time I walk through the school I am treated to greetings, small talk and sometimes longer discussions, which invariably make me smile. Courtesy and kindness are commonplace here and we truly believe this is because we are enabled to talk to one another. As Oscar Wilde rightly said, conversation is “the bond of all companionship”.
We are born to interact and to engage with each other and the art of conversation is certainly not lost at Francis Holland Regent’s Park. Our girls have strong eye contact and are not reticent to speak to staff or raise concerns. We all work hard to foster a strong culture of oracy in our school. The removal of mobile phones from teenagers at school is not just a policy; it is a clear demonstration of our commitment to encouraging young people to talk, to converse and engage with one another, face-to-face. In a world that can be so polarising, it is essential that we should listen to, and respect, the views of others, and when necessary, disagree with them. Such is the art of conversation, but social media can be too one-dimensional to promote it. Precious and vulnerable young minds need to be steered away from the harm that can come from ‘doomscrolling’ on their phones.
How long will it be before we take a stronger stance nationally to protect our children from the harm that we know social media can engender? Australia has already taken that bold step, and we applaud the increasing number of parents here who are refraining from gifting their children smart phones, favouring ‘feature’ or ‘brick’ phones instead. Bravo, I say. There is a place and time for technology, and an appropriate age for social media. A young mind has to be nurtured and developed in the right way, and young people need the right role models. Rather, social media can be detrimental to the well-being and mental health of our children. So, until such time that there is further regulation of the design, supply and marketing of mobile phones, as well as the ensuring of greater protection for our children from the potential harm of social media, we, as a school, will continue to promote the art of conversation and keep mobile phones at bay.
KATHARINE WOODCOCK
HEAD
