At a cocktail send-off for my current crop of grad students, I suggested that next year, the classroom during scheduled lectures would be a no-phone zone. I told them that I’d had it with visiting faculty bemoaning the discourtesy of students brazenly swiping, scrolling and texting while teachers with well-prepared lessons and vast experience vied for their attention.
Before I tell you how they reacted (some of you will see this coming), I should share a few things. I teach aspiring film, television and game composers at the post-grad level. Our class is small, rarely more than twenty, so unlike those cavernous university lecture halls, no student is more than a living room’s length from the instructor. The instructors are not your typical worn-out adjuncts, but accomplished professionals, sometimes even Oscar or Grammy nominees, and in many cases, potential employers of the students. Finally, this is the first truly Gen Z class I’ve had. All but a few are shy of twenty-five, and a number are straight out of undergrad programs and quite possibly still virgins.
They were aghast—and I think this is a proper use of that word—at my suggestion. “You can’t do that!” was probably the mildest response. One called it a gross violation of personal space, another an illegal confiscation of private property. Even after I explained that I wasn’t talking about taking away their phones, but only about turning them off for the duration of the class, they were defiant. No, they didn’t just want to remain in possession of their phones, they wanted to be on them, sending and receiving messages, checking email, and for all I know, the current value of their Bitcoin.
I had touched the third rail of a generation. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.
Now, Substack is a forum that allows and invites comment, so I hope that some of you, whether you’ve ever taught a class or not, will douse me with your greater wisdom, because I was (and here’s another word like aghast that gets used too much but seems to fit here) dumbfounded. If there’d been fifty of them instead of fifteen, I might have been scared. The looks I received said, “This is War!”
When did this happen? This presumption of the right to intrude, the right to assert one’s primacy in all places at all times—the right to be rude. Because it really is a prime example of rudeness to be otherwise engaged while someone is trying to get through to you with valuable information. A few protested that they were ‘multi-tasking,’ something at which they claimed their generation was especially adept. “We can listen while we text,” was one thing I heard repeatedly. Despite the dubiousness of that claim (multi-tasking is mainly a myth—when the arrow of attention is directed to a task, the rest can be be, at best, peripheral), it doesn’t matter. Rudeness is rudeness. The fact that we can do something doesn’t mean that we should. Before this encounter, I would have thought that this was something universally understood by all but tyrants, sociopaths and Donald Trump. Evidently, things have changed.
It was only later, in the wee hours, that it hit me. For them, the phone was really and truly an extension of themselves. Not just an extension, but an inseparable part. One student even said that he’d be helpless without his phone. Like a prosthetic arm, invested by the mind with the sense of a limb, its detachment would render the owner maimed. Years, maybe decades away from Elon Musk and Ray Kurzweil’s perfecting the technology, my students had already uploaded their souls to the black box.
Yes, I’m aware of the argument that the smartphone is an emergency device, a lifeline to family or rescue services. But c’mon—nobody needs to be rescued from a classroom unless the subject is trigonometry. And family matters, along with girlfriends, boyfriends and BFFs, can wait, as they have for eons. The human spirit is forged, at least in part, by learning how to wait, and by not knowing everything, everywhere, all at once. Philosophers and social scientists like John Vervaeke talk about “the crisis of meaning” in our times. Like Pontius Pilate, we all shrug and say, “What is truth anyway?” and don’t hang around for an answer. I think that of equal urgency is the “crisis of attention.” Attention is the royal road to learning, and if you accept any of the tenets of Buddhist or Hindu practice, to wisdom and transcendence.
It’s not that we can’t manage a stock market report, a miniseries, a steak in the fry pan, and a call from mom at the same time. It’s that we won’t do any of them well, and whereas the stock market, the miniseries, and the steak won’t care, mom will have to suffer another bout of heartsickness. Our bifurcated, trifurcated, quadrafurcated attention hurts the ones who care for us. Teachers, or anyone who sets out to share something precious with us, are among those people.
There’s a group of teenagers in Brooklyn that calls itself the Luddite Club, and according to the New York Times, “promotes a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology.” They are, in some cases literally, throwing away their phones, or switching to vintage flip phones, which can more truly be characterized as emergency devices. They revere technological renegades like Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and are fans of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano.They meet on hilltops and in forests. And they are surviving. Godspeed, Luddites. The time may come when you will save us all.
It's been too long since I read one of these. When your students do pay attention, they will take your words to heart, I'm pretty sure. I hope, if it's not happening at this very moment, they will in hindsight. Whenever there is space for it. Mark
Andy you are teaching your students a lesson that they will soon experience in the real world of working for someone or for their own projects down the road. Focus or as Bzelle put it, undivided attention, is the key to the best you can be. Stay strong Brother.