Winchester College, one of the oldest and most prestigious boarding schools in the United Kingdom (operating since 1382), has decided to restrict students' use of laptops.
The initiative comes from the headmistress, Elizabeth Stone. In her view, it is impossible to fight for students' attention, fight the way technology weakens focus, ban smartphones — and at the same time use laptops for homework or classwork. According to the observations and research of the school's teachers, screens distract teenagers aged 13-18 the most. For example, they noted a sharp rise in online activity in the first minutes of the first lesson — that is, in the morning, as soon as they start studying, children immediately dive into the internet for their own business. Constant switching between online and offline tasks doesn't help concentration either: in the view of the teachers and the headmistress, this doesn't develop multitasking but merely blurs attention.
Now homework at Winchester College must be done by hand, with pen and paper. The exception is senior students (years 11-13 of study), and even then only if they can prove that using a laptop/tablet will bring them significant benefit. Teachers will also limit the use of electronic devices in lessons, giving more «analog», «paper» assignments.
Interestingly, the UK's policy as a whole is currently the opposite: here the aim is to raise students' technological literacy, so the use of screens in the classroom is not being restricted but, on the contrary, encouraged. That said, parents don't always agree with this view, as they increasingly note children's dependence on gadgets.
