A head teacher has announced plans to introduce a 12-hour school day in a bid to reverse a ‘100 percent phone addiction’ among his pupils.
At All Saints Catholic College in Notting Hill, west London, kids are expected to attend at 7 am and remain until 7 pm. Instead of wasting time on electronics at home, they will participate in dodgeball, basketball, painting, theatre, and cooking lessons.
Andrew O’Neill, who masterminded the scheme, said that smartphones were creating an apathetic and anxious generation.
The 42-year-old told The Times that he had found ‘some of the most shocking things I have ever seen’ on confiscated phones, including pupils blackmailing strangers and even catfishing one another, which involves pretending to be someone else online to humiliate another person.
All Saints, which is rated ‘outstanding’, banned its 900 pupils, aged between 11 and 16, from carrying phones in 2016 but allows the devices to be kept in bags or lockers.
Mr O’Neill, who is a former head teacher of the year, said that a number of pupils were falling victim to online crime, including cyberbullying, sexting, and blackmail.
The teacher added that he was also worried about children’s increasing inability to make friends in real life, often choosing to play online games into the early hours of the morning with those in other countries.
He said that his pupils were growing worse at making eye contact and holding conversations.
‘We have a long-term issue we need to solve,’ Mr O’Neill added. ‘If we don’t, we will have a generational problem with workplaces and society.
‘Some children are so apathetic. They don’t care about anything.
‘They are buried in their phones.’
The father-of-three said his children were only allowed ‘brick’ phones and smartphones, without any social media apps installed, for tracking their location.
Mr O’Neill added that he hoped pupils could experience a childhood like he had growing up in Barton, near Darlington, Durham, where children played outside rather than heading to their bedrooms to spend time on their phones.
The head teacher also said that parents had a responsibility to keep their children safe online and called for those who failed to do so to be reported to social services or prosecuted.
This is in response to the John Wallis School in Ashford, Kent, which implemented unique pouches for securing gadgets throughout the school day.
Regarding mobile phones, what he says is accurate. The school should mandate that students keep their phones in their bags during the day, even if they are turned off and not using them. However, a lot of students are so dependent on their phones that they feel compelled to keep them on their desks at all times and become agitated if their phones are not in their bags.
It’s a huge disruption trying to get kids to put their phones away, even in exams. It’s almost likened to a drug addiction, with similar withdrawal symptoms, and it hurts every aspect of their lives, and of course, we can’t control what they do or see online.
The main concern with extended school days is safety, as it is unsafe for children to go home from school in the dark during the winter.
Phone zombies are not limited to kids; they are present everywhere.
When youngsters didn’t have mobile phones, they would knock on their friends’ doors before riding their bikes for hours. You couldn’t call your friends or text them to find out where they were; if they got separated, they would just ride around to find each other.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 