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Hmmm, could the inventor of the telephone have imagined the invasive species his invention would become?

Canadian Alexander Graham Bell is credited with the invention of the telephone back in the 1870’s. (There were earlier pioneers in the field but Bell was the first to file a patent.) I wonder if he had any notion of the metamorphosis his invention would undergo over the years.

The cause of my musing is the steps the Ontario government is taking to battle the distractions cell phones represent to students. Back in April, the province announced that students up to grade six , must put their cellphones away for the entire school day. Kids from grades 7-12 are only be able to use their phone in between classes or during lunch – not during class time.

A brief foray into cell phone history for context on how we arrived at this dilemma:

In April 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first ever cellphone call on the streets of New York. His invention was a brick-sized device weighing over four pounds!

In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x, the first commercially available handheld mobile phone was released. Some sources now report that there are more cell phones than people in the world.

On July 1, 1985, in Toronto’s Nathan Philips Square, mayor Art Eggleton made the first cellular call across the Cantel system to Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau. It was the first cellular call in Canada.

Back to the issue at hand. School boards are now grappling with how to put the province’s new directives into action. As is always the case with guidelines, translating them into effective and defensible actions is no easy task. Students are not likely to be cooperative given that their cell phones give them access to social media which is a mainstay of their lives.

I do not envy educators who must now instruct students to put the devices out of sight. Students who fail to comply, and to turn over their cell phone to the teacher, get sent to the principal’s office who in turn has to consider a range of options to address the student’s behavior. It is a significant new burden for educators at all levels.

My how the times have changed in one generation. Back in my secondary schools days, the technological advancement principals were dealing with was the availability of pocket calculators. They were allowed in schools but could not be used during exams. I bought one, with money earned at a part-time job, simply because it was a cool thing to have.

Quite frankly, the bigger issue for school principals, from a distraction viewpoint, was the miniskirt fashion trend. Girls were sometimes sent home from school because their skirt was too short. They were admittedly a significant source of distraction for adolescent boys!

Bell’s invention and the doors it opened is the technological equivalent of the caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis. Over the years, Bell’s caterpillar has morphed many times over into a WiFi butterfly – an invasive species that gives educators nightmares as they try to keep students focused on their learning.

~  Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

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Tags:   Alexander Graham Bell · metaphor · Michae Robert Dyet · School cell phone banNo Comments