Starting this semester, before settling down, the students of the Elementary School "Savo Pejanović" must put away their mobile phones.
"We will work better, study better and have better concentration in class," believes Đorđe, a student of that school.
When asked how much time he spends on the phone a day, he says that when he finishes school and does his homework, he is on the phone "literally all day."
"Sometimes in our class, when someone is on the phone, the teacher warns him and takes it away. That's why I don't think it will happen again, when children have to leave their phones behind," says Damjan, one of the students.
However, as she says, last year, the teachers never reprimanded her for the phone.
"But my friends do. I think it really distracts them from class and because of that they are sometimes not as successful and don't learn some things and then it's harder for them to learn the lessons at home," she says.
Petar also believes that phones should be left behind.
"Because a lot of time is spent on them, so that there would be a greater focus and that the lessons would be followed," he says.
"There will be less mischief in class, because children often play games or play loud music, it distracts other children who want to follow the lesson," emphasizes student Nikolina.
Milica thinks that the boxes are a good idea in order to reduce the use of the phone and focus on teaching.
And without phones, the teachers and the director point out, classes will be of higher quality, and students' concentration will be better.
"If he were lucky, the phone wouldn't be needed at all, but when they do, with the approval of teachers and parents, we didn't want to be too strict in banning them because sometimes they are necessary and no one denies that. However, there are many abuses, distractions, children are not focused on monitoring. Someone sends a message to someone, it simply disrupts the course of the lesson and distracts from what is the teaching topic and dedication and thought activity," says Maksim Drašković, a teacher at that school.
"At the meetings of departmental councils, we found out that students disrupt classes by calling on the phone, taking pictures of each other, recording teachers, rewriting tests, getting assignments that they send to others so that by the fourth hour everyone has a solution. In order to eliminate such anomalies, we made the decision not to take away the phones, but to put them in boxes, which are numbered from 1 to 30, that number represents their number in the diary," said school director Zoran Đukić.
Both the administration and the teachers hope that this move will bring the children closer together and encourage them to make more real friends instead of likes and followers.
Bonus video:
