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Ain’t Nobody Never Muted No Gadget BEFORE No Class!
The cyber-lure and lull in class.
The solutions are simple, though the problem is grand and manifests in many micro ways; it’s so common that it’s difficult to see. Digital distraction looms over classrooms like a heavy fog.
You see them ensnared by invisible threads, blocking hallways and doorways, halted as they stand, transfixed and feverishly glued to their phones. Many arrive with restless fingers tapping away on these small screens. Others make a beeline for the nearest socket upon entering the classroom, clutching chargers and cables like lifelines. Some arrive engrossed in video calls – often on speakers – their faces illuminated by the glow of their screens. Still, others refuse to dislodge and stash their earbuds; perhaps they are simply unaware or incapable? Few arrive untethered from the grasp of cyberspace, their connection to reality tenuous at best. Throughout the session, the anxious behaviours rarely subside, as I witness them struggling to break free from the digital embrace clearly holding them captive.
Upon arrival, most students sit and place their phone right on the desk in front of them, ready to escape into cyberspace at a moment’s notice. Then, come the laptops and tablets. Most have two gadgets or more – including smartwatches – anything to shield them from being here, and anchor them there in cyberspace. A larger part of the educator’s role now is to reach: S T R E T C H into cyberspace and teach students how to anchor themselves here IRL.
Ain’t nobody never muted no gadget BEFORE no class!
Arriving in class, they are poised and prepped by social media for distraction, and entertainingly so. Through hours of rehearsal, they get to pay attention to whatever they want with a mere swipe. This applies to messaging, social media and news, dating family and group chats, spam emails and university announcements. The F2F classroom environment is competing with all this lure of the cyberworld. In spite of this daily evidence, folks still feel we’re in charge of the focus of our own attention, according to psychologist Prof Sherry Turkle. Worse, all this constant craving and distraction is diminishing our capacity for empathy.
Once distracted, UNESCO reports that “it can take students up to 20 minutes to refocus on what they were learning” according to one study. Subsequent studies have confirmed the attention lull, as have bans on phones in schools. A 2018 study found “More frequent use of digital media may be associated with development of ADHD symptoms.” When students arrive at university classrooms, it’s a blur.
Despite our initial hopes, the pull of the wholistic virtual environment has ultimately pushed away F2F dialogue. What’s more, the passive attention paid to social media creates a deficit in our conversation skills. We easily get caught up in the loop of reporting and responding to ‘what google said.’ In Teaching Critical Thinking, bell hooks says smashingly: “we are living in a culture in which many people lack the basic skills of communication because they spend most of their time being passive consumers of information” (44). Like a group of friends out for a night using google reviews to dictate every step, too often conversation in the classroom is reduced to trading ‘what google said’. Little attention is given to who said what and, why. Or, less so, what one thinks.
A low tech class.
While there are endless Apps, and gadgets to get students involved in learning, the few hours spent in any face-to-face session can be a respite from such hyper-cyber-immersion.
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Killed with kindness #RaceEd
What does it say about the education sector that we don’t say what we mean? What does it say that I attended a conference on racism at universities that didn’t have racism in the title? “Racial harassment” is what they called it, as in Westminster Higher Education Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for Tackling Racial Harassment & Improving the BAME Experience in HE. Racial harassment? Racism. Name it. Own it. We’re nearly in 2020 and we’re still wrapping these issues in bubblewrap to make it more palatable for, dare I say, senior management at UK universities (overwhelmingly White). Should we draw a nail? Pop. Pop. Pop.
Arising from my bed at 5:45am to make a 7:30am(ish) train, only to arrive at this conference feeling a bit awkward. The whole delivery felt “preachy” from the get-go. Being lectured on race by mainly White middle class people brought me back to first year on my Creative Writing degree where I did a number of literature modules, delivered by a lecturer who talked about slavery like a trivial matter. That’s my family history you’re talking there!
As Vice President BME at Northampton, I’m facing more and more problems with the language and rhetoric we use around race. The sector lumps all Black and brown students together and calls them BME / BAME. What about the term people of colour? I, too, am guilty of using “people of colour” and do myself have issues with it. It’s probably the best of the worst.
The term B(A)ME is not homogeneous. Even among Black people, there is differences. i.e between African and Caribbean, as well as Black British people whose families come from those places. Even to call someone African; there are fifty-four different nations in Africa, each with their own languages, culture, traditions and so on. Nigeria alone has over 250 different languages. But we continue with BME and BAME. Racial / cultural identity matters. Do we lump all White people together? No. And I bet if you called someone from Belfast, English, they’d have something to say!
Watching Dr. Zainab Khan (Assoc. Pro-Vice Chancellor at London Met) speak was a breath of fresh air, telling it like it is. And having been to a few conferences like this, it seems to me that the sector is more set on managing racism than taking to steps to eradicate it. Both Dr. Khan, and Fope Olaleye (Black Students’ Officer at NUS) brought a much needed clarity to racism (not racial harassment) at our universities, as well as institutional racism. It was great to hear comments on Macpherson and Critical Race Theory too.
And in my opinion, best practice is the brutal, honest truth. Not statistics, but qualitative data. Real life experiences and true stories by people on the ground experiencing this on a day-to-day.
The Royal Over-Seas League private members club was our host. Plaques to Britain’s colonial past in what was then British India hung on the wall. Staff meandered in capes and gowns, and plums in their mouths. What’s more, it was six speakers before a Black or brown person came to the floor. As a Students’ Union, we did not have to pay to attend. But others did pay the three-figure entrance fee. And there sat problem number one, why do these conferences seek money for attendance? Are they cashing in on Black and brown trauma? Is there an argument of ethics to be had here?
During the half-day conference there were four non-White speakers. This did not occur until towards the end of proceedings, in what felt like a very shoehorned state of affairs. Again, I felt that I was being preached at on my own narrative of racism in higher education. Whitesplaining is very real, when White British people talk about racism like its their lived experience.
At an event, wherein, we discussed things like the ethnicity award gap, decolonising the curriculum and anti-racist learning, to have a conference of this matter in a place that was overtly classist and elitist with nods to a system which in itself was built of white supremacy, it’s quite difficult to not see the irony in it all. We also discussed institutional racism in the same breath as decolonial thinking. Ha! And really, all you can do is laugh.
White British people organising events on behalf of Black / brown people on themes that impact us more than them, on symptoms that were originally created by the White elite – in the jaws of colonisation and the whims of European empires. The times that made Britain “great” – imperialism in the tint of gold, glory and god, eclipsed by the Ritz in London’s southwest as I bump into austerity and homelessness, like cold corpses by Green Park.
In the making of Westminster Higher Education Forum Keynote Seminar: Priorities for Tackling Racial Harassment, the White middle class stands tall as colonialism walks with us in the present. The bellowing voice of White privilege. I know plenty of students that would have come to this. Alas, this forum fell into the trap that many discussions have fallen into. Well-meaning White people telling us what we ought to do about racism.
Whilst I made some valuable connections, the wider narrative of whitesplaining ran riot, like Robert Redford and Meryl Streep spread-eagled across the plains in Out of Africa. Diversity in panel discussions is a must. It was functional in concept, but the swaggering thoughtlessness in venue, entry fee and panellists left for a very awkward-feeling in the audience.
If these types of conferences aren’t done properly (from diverse panels to organisational competence), are we not just feeding the racist systems we want to deconstruct?
