Phones empower. Schools control. Do the math.

Banning technology is a form of self-preservation for schools

A phone next to a tall stack of books/AI generated

I’m still fairly young, but even I remember the days in school when we had to visit the library and sift through textbooks to find answers to our questions about the world.

What an inconvenience!

By the time I graduated from high school, computers, smartphones, and other digital devices had become essential and ubiquitous. Surely, many older individuals have noticed the drastic technological evolution since their own school days—not just in terms of availability, but indispensability.

Though the knowledge surrounding us grows exponentially, the structure of our education system has remained mostly unchanged. Rather than mimicking the rapid pace of innovation outside the classroom, students today are often re-living their parents’ and even grandparents’ learning experiences with modest upgrades to the tools used.

Instead of writing down equations from a chalkboard, students now copy them from a smart board. Handwritten essays are mostly a thing of the past; now students are required to type them. Rather than being punished for whispering answers to friends, students are now punished for using AI.

Despite the real technological advances, the core philosophy of school has stayed largely static: students must absorb “foundational” knowledge (by force) in order to become functional members of society—so we claim.

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To prevent the ever-changing outside world from disrupting the rigid status quo within schools, teachers and policymakers often tighten their grip on students’ attention by banning technologies they find genuinely engaging. It’s a form of self-preservation—a defense against critique, change, and the improvements that come from it.

Schools frequently treat learning and enjoyment as opposites. If something is enjoyable, it must not be educational.

But that logic breaks down when you realize that learning is the act of discovery—and discovery relies on interest and curiosity. Especially when students are engaging with personal questions or problems about the world, discovery is not only productive but enjoyable.

Take the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. Millions of adults turned to the internet to learn new skills, explore hobbies, and even start careers. While adults used that time to grow and explore through technology, we simultaneously insisted that students wouldn’t—or couldn’t—do the same.

“The idea coercion is necessary for learning anything is just a failure of imagination. What is achieved through the use of coercion can always in principle be achieved without it. Yes: often we don’t know how. The problem is few even want to try—especially in education.”

— Brett Hall

The fact that states are now banning smart devices in schools perfectly illustrates the issue: an unwillingness to embrace change in education by using tools that are fully relevant to discovery, critical thinking, the workforce—and, let’s not forget, fun!

These devices are now officially labeled “distractions,” which just means students are more engaged with their devices than with the mandated curriculum. Remember, schools view disruptions from the outside world as hostile intrusions in their struggle for control over students.

We know this is about control—not logic, ethics, or practicality—because in most cases, these bans include exceptions for teacher-approved device usage. A “distraction” isn’t a distraction if it’s state-sanctioned; it's only labeled as such when students initiate use on their own terms.

It’s not the technology that’s unwelcome, but rather the students’ autonomy and interests.

This sends a clear message to students: your curiosity, especially when expressed through technology, is something to be managed and punished—not encouraged and supported. Over time, students learn to associate their natural desire to explore with fear, restriction, and, let’s be honest—boredom.

Technology should be empowering students to “figure it out”. Whether a tool is used productively depends on an individuals ability to solve problems—something schools were supposed to be nurturing.

Bans reinforce the idea that student interests are incompatible with an environment meant for problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration with others who share their passions—school.

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Beyond my frustration with banning the very tools students will need for life and work, my main concern lies in what this kind of policy reveals about our societal values.

Yes, I understand that integrating and maintaining technology in classrooms in a safe way is expensive and logistically complicated. But investing in students’ ability to use tech to solve real-world problems should be more important than our valuation of reinforcing an association between learning and boredom or fear.

Learning should be engaging, safe, and liberating—in both the literal and figurative sense.

For young people entering adulthood in the next few decades, understanding modern technologies—like AI, search engines, online safety, and digital communication—is far more practical than memorizing calculus formulas or obscure facts about the Byzantine Empire.

But again, the biggest barriers to change in education aren’t technological or financial at all—they’re cultural. It's about the values we place on student experience, and how willing adults are to let go of control in favor of progress.

Make no mistake: technology is valued, but only when it reinforces the existing hierarchy. What schools struggle with is a disruption of traditional power structures: If students are “distracted,” the reflex is to eliminate the distraction—unless the school controls how and when it’s used.

Only state-approved content. Only teacher-sanctioned problems. Punish everything else.

That doesn’t sound like a safe or inspiring place to learn, so it almost certainly doesn’t feel like one to students.

If we truly want to prepare students for the future and improve education rather than recycling the same “solutions” that have failed for decades, we need to give students the tools they’ll actually use in life. Clinging to outdated educational models while treating the internet—arguably the most transformative innovation in human history—and students’ own interests as mere distractions is one of our continued historical and cultural mistake.