Phone-free education: Catholic schools rise to the challenge

CNA Staff, Aug 28, 2024 / 06:00 am

As K–12 students trickle back into school this fall, educators hope they may find it easier to focus on school, connect with their peers, and deepen their faith — all thanks to a phone-free education. 

Across the U.S., legislators, superintendents, and heads of schools are taking steps to give children and adolescents a phone-free learning environment. As many as eight U.S. states are now requiring that school districts restrict student phone use in an attempt to improve the lives of young students.

Catholic schools around the U.S. are rising to the challenge as well, with some enforcing phone-free policies for a while.

Why go phone-free? 

A Pew Research study in April found that more than 70% of high school teachers say that students being distracted by cellphones is a major problem in their classrooms. Enforcement of phone policies becomes increasingly more difficult as students get older.

But phone policies usually aren’t just about reducing distractions.

All-day phone bans and lockable phone pouches are designed to give students a “phone-free” day at school, as experts and educators cite concerns about healthy social development and mental health.

“There’s a growing body of evidence on the effects of smartphones on adolescent development, learning, socialization, and communication skills — all things that matter in a Catholic school,” explained Thomas Maj, who heads St. Mary Catholic School, a phone-free Catholic school in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Jonathan Haidt, a fierce proponent of “phone-free schools,” highlighted the negative effects of smartphones on children and adolescents in his book “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,” which became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller after it was released in March.

Children are moving from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood with drastic mental health results, Haidt, a psychologist, argues in his book. He found that the iPhone, the front-facing camera, and social media have instigated a mental health crisis for children and adolescents who have grown up with them. Instead, he proposes solutions such as making schools phone-free and developing a social norm that children should not be given smartphones until age 16. 

Many Catholic educators agree that phone use is more than just a behavior problem. 

“The smartphone tends to be an experience blocker,” said Kyle Washut, president of Wyoming Catholic College, a phone-free campus. “It interferes with our desire and ability to interact with unfiltered reality. And it has deep, negative effects on our ability to be present to the people and community immediately before us.”

“The imagination is under attack by the most devastating weapon ever deployed against it: the screen,” added Daniel Kerr, president of St. Martin’s Academy, a phone-free Catholic boarding school for boys in Kansas. “Screens render the imagination weak and ineffectual by outsourcing it almost entirely.”

Phone-free policies at Catholic schools are often undertaken in light of the Catholic understanding of the human person.

“It’s instructive for us as Catholics that we can’t receive the sacraments via Zoom, FaceTime, or an asynchronous platform: Do we really believe that Catholic education is entirely different?” said Kevin Somok, principal of St. Jerome Academy, a phone-free classical K–8 school in Hyattsville, Maryland.    

Phone-free school days 

St. Mary’s High School in Colorado Springs went phone-free last fall for behavioral, social, and faith reasons. Phones must be off and out of sight all day — lunch and breaks included.

“By definition and creation we are designed to be social, to engage with others,” Maj explained. “Putting phones away, a barrier to social interaction, allows us to meet foundational characteristics of a Catholic and Catholic school.”

“Students are more engaged by default,” Maj said. “There’s no phone available, so they may as well pay attention.” 

In the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, there is a renewed emphasis this year on the “no cellphone” policy, which has been in place for several years. The Arlington Superintendent of Catholic schools, Joseph Vorbach, said the distracting nature of smartphones has “driven a focus on tighter universal restrictions.”

Their policy is all about living up to the mission of Catholic education.

“Parents make great sacrifices to send their children to Catholic school and the time available to form students in faith and reason is relatively limited,” he said. “Doing more to eliminate the potential distraction of the smartphone advances the mission of Catholic education.”

Kathleen McNutt, head of the Bishop Ireton High School in the Diocese of Arlington, said the school’s no-phone policy is about recognizing and embracing “the dignity of the human person.”

“When devices take over the human experience and personal connection, the human person is demoted and their dignity is reduced,” she said. 

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The high school has banned cellphones during the instructional day since 2020, and has since revoked a rule allowing phone use in lunchroom spaces. The policy is strictly implemented, and any phones seen out are confiscated, with escalating consequences for breaking the rules, McNutt explained. This year, they are implementing a no-smartwatches policy as well.

“The old-fashioned wristwatch may come back in style!” McNutt said. 

McNutt said students are now more engaged with one another and other adults at school. 

“They are healthier, they are less stressed, they learn to think for themselves, and the classrooms have less distraction,” she said. “There is no drawback to a phone-free policy.”

St. Jerome Academy in Maryland has been phone-free for more than a decade, and students rarely use computers in the classroom. The school has developed a parent and student culture that “normalizes a largely technology-free childhood,” principal Somok explained.

Somok said the policy makes St. Jerome students “less isolated.”  

“In the classroom, students engage in seminar discussions, listen attentively to their teachers as they read aloud, recite poetry, and produce beautiful renderings of natural objects,” he said. “In the dining hall, they talk to each other and look each other in the eye more than they would if they were scrolling through Instagram or watching Netflix. On the playground, instead of drama surrounding group chats, students play schoolyard games.”

“We want to give our students ‘something better to love,’” he said, citing the school’s 2010 educational plan.

Somok highly recommends that other Catholic schools follow suit. 

“Students deserve some freedom from screens so they can experience the world as it is,” he said. 

Low-technology semesters

Other Catholic schools have had a low-tech model designed to immerse students in study and in nature since their inception.

Wyoming Catholic College (WCC) takes things a step further than a simple “no phones out in class” policy by requiring students to surrender their phones at the beginning of the school year. Students begin their time at WCC with a three-week backpacking “detox,” going into nature and leaving their smartphones behind.

“The quiet and times of boredom allowed by the smartphone fast means that our students aren’t distracted all the time, and this allows for an ability to be present to the spiritual reality of God’s presence and to be attentive to their own thoughts,” WCC president Washut told CNA. 

WCC students report deep friendships, while professors report better classroom engagement than other schools, Washut noted. One student, Dominic Brown, a senior from Michigan, said the no-phone policy has been “a great blessing for our school’s community.”

“The phone seems to have a mysterious tendency to grip our attention with more tenacity than the living, thinking, breathing person standing in front of us, evidenced by the sheer amount of time we spend using it,” he said. “Yes, certainly much time spent on phones is spent in communication with others via texting or group video games, but is that really a suitable replacement for a face-to-face conversation?”

“Here at WCC I am free to engage any one of my fellow 190 students in a conversation or activity at just about any point in the day, and it is wonderful,” he said. “I love them and I love this school!”

When asked if this is something other Catholic schools should implement, Washut said the move toward phone-free schools “is a decided improvement.”

“Now is the time for our Catholic schools to take the lead in responding to this crisis in youth formation that is so clearly tied to the smartphone,” Washut said. 

St. Martin’s Academy in Kansas has a similar program that enables students to “fast” completely from technology. Students spend the day in study, prayer, and daily chores on the school’s farm.

“One of our core commitments at St. Martin’s is to help heal the imagination of our young men,” academy president Kerr told CNA. “By imagination we don’t mean fancy, we mean that deep part of the intellect that, along with the will, forms the heart.”

Kerr said the elimination of screens on campus is “the single most impactful pedagogical intervention here at St. Martin’s.” 

It’s an intervention that he thinks all primary and secondary schools should make. 

“The result is a young man who is more attentive, more empathetic, more resourceful, has far deeper friendships, less anxiety and general neurosis, and far greater intellectual independence,” he noted.