Phones are leaving schools - but what will replace them?

September 1st is approaching and students will return to crowded classrooms, but for middle school students, the mobile phone, which has become an almost inseparable part of them in recent years, as well as of lessons and breaks, will be left behind.

Behind the new guidelines of the Director General's circular lies an aspiration that is hard to argue with - fewer screens, more attention, meetings between students, and less automatic scrolling at every free moment. However, as the start of the school year approaches, it turns out that the real debate is no longer just about whether the phone is harmful or distracting, but what will happen the moment it is taken away and who is supposed to deal with everything that comes after.

The students themselves do not deny the problem. Rotem Getraida, 17, from Petah Tikva, and Michal Tal, 17, from Hod Hasharon, from the National Student Council, agree that when a student sits on their phone during a lesson instead of learning, the teacher should have the authority to intervene. Their opposition begins when point-specific intervention becomes a broad policy of enforcement, confiscations, device storage, and involving parents.

"It turns teachers into complete police officers," they say. According to them, when teaching staff are required to deal with cell phones on an ongoing basis, part of the study time is wasted on arguments instead of teaching. "It takes time and it destroys the trust between teacher and student. There are difficulties in school anyway, so why add another focus of conflict? In most cases, when a teacher tells a student to close the phone, they close it. We are human beings after all, and we are mature enough."

For Getraida, the new chairman of the Student Council, the concern also touches on the relationship that the school is supposed to rely on. "At the end of the day, if we touch on the emotional event, the teacher confiscates the student's phone one day, fights with them, and brings their parents, and the next day the student needs to see them as an address for their personal problems," he emphasizes.

"A teacher is an educator. Even if they are a professional teacher, they can be a mentor to a student. I had a teacher in middle school who was a mentor and a role model for me. Why should the person who is supposed to teach me, expand my education and my areas of interest, become a police officer?"

Oren Ozan, chairman of the National Parent Leadership, who in principle supports reducing the use of cell phones, also warns about the damage to trust. "Students need trust in teachers. If the teacher becomes a police officer, the trust is lost," he says.

Ozan asks to distinguish between elementary schools, where restrictions on phones have already become relatively familiar, and middle schools - an age where the social world is more complex and the phone already plays a significant role in the students' lives. "We are in favor, we are very much in favor," he emphasizes, "but social solutions must be given to these children."

According to him, schools should prepare alternatives in advance - games, social activity, suitable spaces, and the presence of staff members who will help create interaction. "Taking their phones away and leaving them without that and without anything - the violence will only grow," he warns. "Without organized social activity, it will do more harm than good."

Dr. Rotem Eliyahu, a pedagogical instructor and lecturer at Seminar HaKibbutzim, welcomes the expansion of restrictions to middle schools. In her view, the break is an educational part in itself. "The breaks are a very significant part of the day. This is the space where children are supposed to talk, play, create a connection, and also be a little bored," she explains. "Therefore, I think this circular is definitely welcome. There is also a statement here about the place of the school - that it is not just an academic space, but a space for meeting."

But Eliyahu also agrees that removing the device is only the beginning of the way. "The fact that I took the phone from the hands of children who have been used to using it for years does not mean that other skills will return on their own. If we want to bring back skills of play, conversation, initiative, conflict resolution, and movement, we must also create an environment that allows these things to happen."

"Everyone is hiding in the bathrooms with the phones"

And there is also a much simpler question: is it even possible to enforce such a ban throughout an entire school day?

Tal tells of a school where a restrictive policy was already implemented. The result, according to her, was not necessarily less use of cell phones. "During breaks, you would see students just entering the bathrooms with the phone, because the teachers don't go in there. Everyone is hiding there with the phones."

Getraida estimates that in other schools, too, enforcement could erode quickly. "We are not completely moved, because we know that at the end of the day, both teachers and parents will not necessarily want to deal with it," he says. "We heard from students that in places where they tried this, teachers felt that enforcement took time away from the lesson and caused them to fight with students, and therefore sometimes they simply turned a blind eye."

Ozan agrees that teenagers will find ways to bypass the rules - an extra phone, a smart watch, or simply using it where no staff member is present. "The children today are very sophisticated, very smart, and they will know how to bypass this thing," he says.

Eliyahu also points to practical questions: what happens when a student refuses to hand over the phone? Where is it kept? Who returns it? And who is responsible if a device worth thousands of shekels disappears or breaks? "Policy cannot end with the statement that it must be kept in a safe place. Schools must also be given the conditions that allow this to be done," she explains.

The Parent Leadership is also concerned about the issue of responsibility for property. "We cannot support a move that has a danger to the child's and parent's property, because no one will take responsibility afterwards," says Ozan.

To this is added the burden on teaching staff. "Teachers are not lacking things to do," says Tal. "I talk to teachers at school and see that they already have several roles. It is better that this time goes to educational things and not to enforcement."

Eliyahu believes that here too, a distinction is required between enforcement and education. "If in the end we measure whether the phones went into the bag or not, that is compliance with policy, but it is still not educational work."

And what about the child who sits alone?

Behind the image of a group of teenagers sitting side by side and each staring at a screen hides, according to Getraida and Tal, a more complex reality.

"They tell us: lift your eyes from the screens, talk among yourselves, and create social connections. But most students talk to their friends during the break anyway," says Getraida. "And there are also those students who for some reason are on the phone. Sometimes it is very clear why."

They point especially to students who deal with social isolation or boycotts. For them, the phone may actually be a lifeline to the world outside the school gate.

"There are students who go through a boycott or who simply cannot integrate socially. During the break, they sit on the phone and talk to friends who are not at school or with parents, siblings, family. If you take that away from them too, they can find themselves completely alone," say Getraida and Tal.

Tal emphasizes that even for other students, not every free moment has to turn into organized social activity. "There are breaks when after several long lessons I just want to be on WhatsApp a little, talk to someone, or call my sister or brother who is in the army. It happened that I was at school and my brother suddenly called when he had an opportunity to talk. I could have missed those calls."

Eliyahu sees it differently. According to her, in an emergency, schools should be the address for communication with home. "If a parent has something urgent, that's what the school secretariat is for. My children also have cell phones, and if there is something very urgent, I don't think about contacting them directly, but through the teacher. That's how it should be."

"If they want to teach technology, why just take our phones?"

Within the debate also hides a wider paradox. The education system has been investing in recent years in expanding digital learning, in the use of tablets, online platforms, and artificial intelligence. At the same time, it seeks to place stricter boundaries on the students' personal digital device.

"At my school, we learn with iPads anyway," says Tal. "I don't understand the contradiction. If the ministry says it wants to teach technology and the positive things that can be done with it, why just take our phones? It feels like a band-aid. Instead of teaching us how to use technology in a correct and responsible way, they just take it."

Eliyahu does not necessarily see this as a contradiction. "The screens exist, they just changed form. The discussion is not yes screen or no screen, but when the technology serves me and when it is right to put it aside."

"Not about us - without us"

Alongside the debate about the content of the policy, the way it was accepted also arouses criticism. Ozan claims that the National Parent Leadership was not sufficiently involved in formulating the move.

"They had one conversation with us and that's it. They didn't come back to us, and after three or four months, suddenly on a clear day we see the circular," he says. "The moment the Ministry of Education comes out with this directive without giving tools and an operational plan - it will not succeed."

Students also ask for more space around the decision-making table. "We always say 'not about us without us'," says Getraida. "At the end of the day, when a decision is made about schools without giving enough space to students, teachers, principals, and parents themselves, this triangle is harmed."

From the perspective of Getraida and Tal, the more correct way is to grant broad autonomy to schools and educational staff - to intervene when a phone interferes with learning, but not necessarily to apply the same policy to a first-grade student, an eighth-grade teenager, and a high school student.

The test begins on September 1st

Ultimately, almost all sides in the debate agree on the starting point: the use of cell phones among children and teenagers has become a significant educational and social challenge. The disagreement begins with the question of what to do with it.

Do you take out the device to force students to talk to each other, or do you teach them gradually to choose when to put it down? And what happens at the first break where hundreds of children lift their heads from the screen but still don't know exactly what to do with the time that has cleared up?

"If a child or teenager has been used for years that in a moment of boredom they turn to the phone, you cannot take the device from them and expect that the next morning all the skills will return on their own. Changing habits requires time, mediation, experience, and alternatives, and that is where resources should be invested."

Getraida and the students are waiting to see what will happen when the guidelines meet reality in the corridors, classrooms, and courtyards. "Time will tell if this is a policy that will really change schools or if in the end it will be another headline that will not really be enforced on the ground," he concluded.