Banning Laptops in Class: Why Professors Are Dead Wrong

Although normally averse to citing the GW Hatchet in any form, (my apologies to Emily Cahn) a November 12th front-page story caught my attention. 

In "Professors call laptops a class distraction," writer Madeleine O'Connor reported that some professors have passed sweeping policies banning laptops from their classrooms. Prompting this drastic action is the entirely accurate assumption that students (often in large lecture halls) are engaging in activities other than copious note-taking and listening with rapt attention. Some of these rogue tendencies include, but are not limited to, browsing Facebook, posting on Twitter, checking email, reading blogs etc.  

In the course of the article, one political science professor - Chris Deering - even managed to brag to O'Connor that he is quite keen on detecting when someone isn't giving him their undivided attention. 

"I don't have to be looking at somebody and I can tell that something's going on. My peripheral vision is just fine," he said. 

How impressive and profound. 

I would be compelled to ask: has Deering yet come to the realization that he is a professor of higher education, not some high school teacher stuck supervising snotty kids in fourth period study hall? This type of absurd fascism, where teachers are obsessively breathing down the necks of their pupils and handing out hall passes so that they may go use a toilet, is reserved for lower rungs of American education, not prestigious universities. 

This is barely a complex issue. In sum, if a college student (who was presumably admitted on some notion of academic merit) wants to wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and arrive at a 9:35 a.m. lecture all with the intention of "screwing off" and failing to take adequate notes, then that's their prerogative. When that individual receives a well-deserved D+ on the midterm for a total lack of initiative, they have nobody to blame and no tenable logic to rely on. 

One of the great things about America is that we live in a free society where laziness is not rewarded; the shrewd and the driven are the ones that lead and achieve. How are we supposed to prepare individuals for the real, working world if we shamefully and constantly infantilize them? 

And finally, in response to the often utilized assertion that laptop use is "distracting and unfair" to the students that are actually determined to learn and receive their true tuition's worth? Simple nonsense. Not I - nor any friend or acquaintance with whom I have ever shared a course - has ever been significantly impacted by a fellow student's in-class laptop shenanigans. If anything, they benefit from it. After all, in a lecture of 200, that's one less number to compete with...

- Jared Pliner