I ban the use of electronic devices in all the courses I currently teach. I don’t usually justify or explain this policy with students, at least not in a lengthy, defensive way, because most of the time students seem to just want to get on with the course contents. And anyway, a policy is a policy, and this one isn’t that unreasonable. What can they do about it?
A couple of times, in class and out, I did have occasion to chat about this policy with students. Most students are annoyed by it. They are polite enough not to vent their displeasure to my face, but being an English professor, I know how to read between the lines. The ban creates friction, which seems like what bugs them the most. Why waste time and money and sanity ordering a used copy of the very specific edition (“what the devil is ISBN?”) that your professor is so keen on you using when a random PDF of the same book is just a click away, free of charge? Why download that assigned article from Canvas, JumboPrint it, and bring your own copy to your class when you can simply bring your own laptop? All of this boomer/Gen-X fondness for pen and paper is cringe, and even worse, a form of bigotry. I’m clearly on the wrong side of history. I have at least two rationales for my pen-and-paperism. First, I like the whole physical setup where I have a desk in front of me on which are scattered pens; sheets of paper; notebooks; and a lot of books; some open face-up, others open face-down, and many more books shut and stacked up. Ideally, my desk is running out of room, so this clutter cascades down to the floor, spreads until it hits the wall, and starts creeping up. I want to recreate, in a controlled way, a version of this setup in the classroom, with a hope that this messy setup will spill out of the classroom, seeping into a student’s private place of study.
The main purpose of this design is not to be more efficient; it’s to have a good time. Its main benefit is that it helps put you in a flow, a feverish dream state, totally dialed in, separated from other needs. You may not necessarily understand the book better or come up with better ideas for your mid-term paper, but you’ll surely enjoy the book and the process of idea generation more. As a bonus, you’ll have a fond memory of studying something this way.
I suspect most students do not like this setup, but that’s expected. The whole premise of education is that students often mislike things–that is, they like things they ought not to like. My job is to ensure that students cultivate a taste for something they don’t yet know how to like.
My second rationale is more palatable than the first. Even some of my students have agreed with me that the presence of just a few students with laptops in the classroom spoils the good vibe, vitiates the useful fiction that we are in something together.
Imagine visiting a museum with friends. Your experience is more intense, your appreciation deeper when you look at a painting there as compared to looking at the same painting on your 5K retina display in your room. One of the reasons that this is the case is that, in the museum, you look at the painting with the awareness that other beholders in the same room are aware that you’re aware that they are aware that you’re aware that… This mutual awareness makes the jointly-attended thing special. It also charges the room with a sort of special energy that motivates you to come up with opinions and consider them more carefully—more carefully because you may have to explain your opinions to those present in the room, who are presumably evolving their own opinions more carefully than usual because they too are aware that the others are doing so with the awareness that…
There is something at once competitive, collaborative, and pleasurable about this, with a result that you are unique, reasonable, and pleased all at the same time with your judgment. When things go well, something like this could happen in the classroom, but for obvious reasons the presence of electronic devices makes that harder. This is not a blanket recommendation. No need to yell at me that you need your laptop in your environmental economics course. Understood! But I’m in the business of helping students acquire a taste for a certain way of having a good time with literary works. So, if you want to enter into transactions with me, the price of admission is a closed laptop.
Artwork by Hayes Stewart