At 3.12pm on a sunny spring afternoon in St Albans, Yasser Afghen reaches for the iPhone in his jeans pocket, hoping to use the three minutes before his son emerges from his year 1 primary class to scroll through his emails. As he lifts the phone to his face, Matthew Tavender, the head teacher of Cunningham Hill school, strides across the playground towards him. Afghen smiles apologetically, puts his phone away, and spends the remaining waiting time listening to the birdsong in the trees behind the school yard.
And this is seen as a good thing, that a grown adult behaves like a chastised schoolboy on sighting the headmaster?
Yes, Reader, because the leader of any cult wields enormous power, and mark my words, this has all the hallmarks of a cult.
A one-storey 1960s block with 14 classrooms backing on to a playing field, Cunningham Hill primary feels like an unlikely hub for a revolution. But a year ago, Tavender and the school’s executive head, Justine Elbourne-Cload, began coordinating with the heads at other primary schools across the city, then sent a joint letter to parents and carers across St Albans: the highly addictive nature of smartphones was having a lasting effect on children’s brains. The devices were robbing children of their childhood. Could parents, the letter asked, please avoid giving them smartphones until they turned 14?
And obviously enough didn’t screw the letter up and hurl it at the nearest wastebasket with a muttered ‘Jumped up little pipsqueak!’ to prevent him going ahead.
A year later, it’s clear that St Albans is still far from a smartphone-free city for under-14s. And yet, something small and potentially significant has shifted.
Oh, really?
...in May, at the start of the summer term, Tavender and his colleague Elbourne-Cload convened a parents’ meeting. “It was the most well-attended meeting we’ve ever had,” he says. “About 80 people turned up; normally we get about 40 to 50. We tagged it on to the end of a meeting about reading – which is the most critical thing in primary education – and just eight people turned up to that one.” The teacher who was leading the reading session was disconcerted to see crowds of parents outside the door, all staring at their phones, waiting for the meeting about phone use.
How very dare they! Who do they think they are?
Tavender, with his grey V-neck jumper (an adult version of school uniform), grey trousers and greying beard, is not an obviously revolutionary figure. He talks about his fondness for watching golf. His delivery style is a bit wearily monotone, as if he’s reminding the room for the 15th time of what he considers to be acceptable behaviour in the lunch queue.
Well, not every cult relies on a charismatic leader, clearly…
“When you’re ready for your child to stop being a child, give them a smartphone,” he tells them, running them through a series of slides provided by Smartphone Free Childhood. “WhatsApp is the crux of all evil, in my mind.”
Anyone else would have said drugs, underage sex, knife culture, but no, a simple useful messaging app is the bogeyman, according to this idiot. 🙄
Most powerful is his readiness to talk about his own struggles. “I’m addicted to my phone. I absolutely am.”
Converts are always the worst, aren’t they?
By the end of the meeting, many parents have agreed to become ambassadors and work to persuade fellow parents to sign the Smartphone Free Childhood pact, in which they promise to delay purchasing their child a smartphone until they turn 14.
Yes, this is, after all, how cults work - hook in the newbies and send them out, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, to proselytise!
Six months after the Southwark initiative was announced, Mike Baxter, head at City of London academy, said pupils had been issued with mandatory phone pouches. Any pupil found with a smartphone out of its pouch and switched on would have it confiscated for a week. “We’re confiscating about 15 a week,” he says. The school is doing random bag searches. “You have to rigorously implement it.” Next year, the school will prohibit ownership of smartphones for all children in year 7; any child who comes to school with one will have it removed for a month.
Gosh, if only they took the same hard line with disruption and assaults….
But a quick walk around St Albans suggests that there may not yet have been a fundamental shift. Teenagers in school uniform queueing up for hot drinks in the city centre after school awkwardly balance iPhones, school bags and coffee cups.
The kids are alright...
