France, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have banned cellphones from the classroom. Since a 2022 PISA study, calls for a ban have also been getting louder in Germany.
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00:00A small cultural revolution is brewing at this German school.
00:05Mobile phones, everyone's favorite addiction,
00:07soon might not be permitted here, for teachers and students alike.
00:12But it sparked real controversy.
00:14A complete ban is just never good.
00:18You need to make rules that are then kept.
00:22The kids that are always looking at their phones,
00:25you can see their grades suffer.
00:27Leiden?
00:29Banning mobile phones in schools has been a hot topic for years,
00:32and not just in Germany.
00:34Many schools have limited their use during classes.
00:37But what about breaks?
00:39At this school in Notdorf, they just went ahead and tried it.
00:43Pupils and teachers must leave their smartphones at home
00:46two days every week.
00:48It starts with young or middle-aged colleagues
00:51who protested as well, saying,
00:53no one is going to dictate to me when I can look at my cell phone or not.
00:58Especially here, in rural areas,
01:00you have to somehow see that your child gets to school or back home.
01:04That's why I think it's wrong to say,
01:06under absolutely no circumstances.
01:11The mobile phone ban is good,
01:14because during the breaks I'm actually using my phone a lot.
01:17Now pupils play more ball games and interact socially during breaks.
01:21That promotes concentration and the capacity to learn,
01:24especially by pupils who are weaker performers.
01:27But what about digital learning?
01:29Isn't that a contradiction?
01:33The way I see it, as a teacher,
01:35I have the responsibility to educate people.
01:38They can only do that if they're doing it in school
01:41and have a space available to them where they can make mistakes.
01:47Matthias Dirks is one of two media heroes at the school.
01:51His job is to promote digital skills.
01:54The state of Schleswig-Holstein plans six hours a week for that.
01:58But for a total of 1,000 pupils, there are only 60 tablets available.
02:05We'd like to become a digital school
02:07and work in a more digital way in class.
02:09There are lots of pupils who don't get any digital end device,
02:12like a laptop or an iPad or any other tablet from their parents.
02:17That means their cell phone is the quickest and easiest choice in class.
02:25Does that mean integrating smartphones in schools?
02:28There are already innovative approaches.
02:32I used to be in a school in Neumünster before I was in this school,
02:36and there they had a class called Information Technology in Minecraft.
02:40It was really called that.
02:42And once a week for 45 minutes,
02:44you created things in the Minecraft video game and learned.
02:50Afterwards, our teacher would grade it,
02:52and you could boost your creativity.
02:57There wasn't a cultural revolution in Nottdorf.
03:00Pupils and teachers can bring their smartphones to school again.
03:04Some say the experiment changed how they use their phones.
03:07But an all-out ban isn't planned,
03:09meaning Nottdorf is very much like the rest of Germany.