Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

I read an interesting piece in The Morning, a little newsletter The New York Times e-mails out every morning.  Now, before you think I’ve lost my conservative bonafides for reading the NYT, consider the following:

1. It’s good to keep up with what the enemy is writing and thinking and
2. Even a stop clocked is right twice a day.

In this case, I’m considering one of those rare “stopped watch” moments.

Now that I’ve reassured you of my commitment to conservatism (perhaps engaging in another kind of ideological purity test), let’s consider why I’m softly endorsing this particular piece.  It’s a report about the growing trend of banning cellular telephones in schools.  These bans are sometimes based in individual schools or districts, but in a few cases they’re bans instituted by State law.

The writer of the newsletter makes an excellent point:  if smartphones had been around when he was in high school, he wouldn’t have learned anything:

From my perch behind the students, I can see how many of them are scrolling through sports coverage, retail websites, text messages or social media, looking up occasionally to feign attention. It’s not everyone, of course. Some students remain engaged in the class. But many do not.

I would have been in the latter group if smartphones had existed decades ago; like many journalists, I do not have a naturally stellar attention span. And I’m grateful that I didn’t have ubiquitous digital temptations. I learned much more — including how to build my attention span — than I otherwise would have.

Yours portly agrees.  I flunked the first quarter of AP Calculus BC as a senior because I somehow missed how to do derivatives:  the fundamental basis of calculus and a very easy calculation to perform (although if you asked me to do it now, I’d be at a loss—that was twenty-two years ago!).  I wasn’t scrolling through Instagram—it didn’t exist yet—or watching YouTube—it also did not exist.  I didn’t even have a cellphone until I was 21, and only got one because it was cheaper than maintaining a landline in my crummy grad school apartment.

So even without the endless distractions of an infinite digital world, I somehow missed the ten minutes of the class in which Mrs. Grooms explained how to do derivatives.  Who knows what I was doing; I was probably doodling, or just zoned out (my family knows that I have a tendency to do this regularly).

Imagine if I’d had even my Gameboy at school—and was allowed to play it, overtly or otherwise, in class.  I would have learned nothing.

One giant leap forward:  imagine if I’d had a smartphone, with access to endless entertainment and information.  Sure, I might have learned something from the latter, but I was an unusual kid who liked reading encyclopedia entries.  Even I would have succumbed to the siren song of mindless apps.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.