Sir
Schools can only do so much in the battle to limit the amount of time that young people spend on mobile phones (‘Ban mobile phone use in schools’ 2nd February 2019). It is parents, not schools, who are responsible for purchasing mobile phones, and, whilst one can accept that children may need to carry a mobile phone as part of their personal safety, there is no need for this to be a smartphone which facilitates full, unfiltered web and social media access. In contrast, where schools allow or supply tablet devices or laptops for educational purposes, responsible institutions usually provide full web-filtering and a device management system that allows the teacher to monitor and take control of the pupil’s tablet.
Yours faithfully,
Mark S. Steed
Director
JESS, Dubai
This book is not about managing SmartPhone usage; it is about the steps that an organisation can take to improve the efficiency of how teams work, one by-product of which was that employees achieved a better work-life balance.
On one level it is the heart-warming story of how it took a Harvard Business School professor to get a group of highly paid workaholic consultants (Boston Consulting Group BCG) to turn their undoubted organisational talents inwards to achieve the simple goal of having one 'predictable night off' a week.
In essence there were two components to the 'Predictable Time Off' (PTO) project:
A collective goal of Predictable Time Off
Space for Structured Dialogue
Interestingly, the primary value of the PTO project was not that the employees ended up with more quality free-time (although in most cases that did happen), rather that the process itself set up a dialogue within the teams that in time fostered a mindset that challenged the status quo - challenging long-established ways of doing things and exploring new ones. The PTO process was a vehicle to change the culture of the organisation by opening up new methods of communication within project teams. PTO was an indirect way "to get people to challenge their beliefs about what the work requires as well as to cause people to actually make changes to how they do their work." (p.129).
Reflecting on the four years of the project, the author writes,
"What we have done at BCG is break the cycle of responsiveness and create a new system where all the components are now congruent around a new culture focused on getting the work done in ways that minimise the bad intensity and maximize individual's control." p.203
As one BCG partner summed it up,
"The value of PTO is in fighting that assumption that work-life balance and effective case teams are mutually exclusive. Because they are not." p.205
The obvious problem with this research project is that it is based around an acknowledged extreme of organisational behaviour where working away from home four nights a week is their form of norm, so people working in gentler contexts will have to translate accordingly.
This is an interesting and necessary piece of research. However, the book is in the overly repetitive style characteristic of many American business books, taking a simple message and story and milking it for all it's worth to the point that it justifies publication as a book, rather than as a pamphlet or magazine article.
When is the right time for my child to have a mobile phone?
Mobile phones play a key role in ensuring pupil safety travelling to and from school. Young people need phones to be able to communicate with parents to arrange pick-ups or to keep them informed when the buses and trains are running late. They afford a degree of protection to the lone traveller and thus give reassurance to parents. Once your child is involved in after-school clubs, particularly ones that involve pick-ups after it has got dark, it makes sense for her to have a cheap, basic phone for emergencies.
There is no doubt that parents come under considerable pressure from their children who argue, in time-honoured fashion, that “everyone else has got one”. As with other areas, such as parties, curfews and alcohol, parents need to establish good lines of communication with other parents, so that they are not all played off against each other.
What about 3G mobile phones with Internet capability?
The problem with phones that have internet connectivity is that young people immediately have unrestricted internet access. On the positive side this will enable them to look up useful information and to support their learning. However, it also means that they will be able to get onto social networking sites, such as Facebook.
Mobile devices with Internet capability [either through dialling up or through Wifi] are here to stay – indeed they are going to be ubiquitous. We will not be able to restrict what our chidlren are doing with them, so we need to ensure that they are cybersafe and need to educate them to use them wisely. Parents need to consider if their child has sufficient maturity to make positive use of a phone with internet capability, whilst avoiding the inherent dangers and temptations.
Do pupils use them too much?
Young people love chatting – they always have. Many of those of us who are now parents sat for hours on the family phone chatting to our friends. Today young people just have more ways to chat: talking face to face, texting, on their mobiles, on MSN, on Facebook and so on. The most significant difference is that, rather than chatting in the relatively public place at the bottom of the stairs, it is all much more private – away from parental eyes and ears. What is interesting is that young people communicate much more now by the written word than ever before.
A few final thoughts:
The best way for parents to retain a degree of control over their child’s use of their mobile phone is to limit the amount of credit that he/she has on his/her phone. A package that has unlimited number of texts, may appear attractive from a financial perspective, but it does give a green light to your child to spend an enormous amount of time texting.
Pay-as-you-go contracts are best for young teens. Ultimately they give you greater control over your child’s use of the phone. If the phone is in your name and you top up with small amounts at the time, you will monitor how much your child is using the phone and also be able to have regular conversations about his/her phone use.
This blogpost was based on an article written for the GSA MyDaughter website
