Index – Belföld – András Bencsik to the teachers of Madách: Let them know and organize the lessons without mobile phones

As we also reported on the Index, the Ministry of the Interior fired the director of the Imre Madách High School because he refused to take away students’ phones in his school in accordance with the decree restricting the use of cell phones in schools introduced at the beginning of August. Although each school can decide on its own whether to comply with the law, the Ministry of the Interior nevertheless dismissed director Csaba Mészáros, saying that he did not comply with the law and that such a person “cannot lead a state institution”.

In HírTV’s Monday evening Vezércikk program, András Bencsik explained how they feel about the decree, Madách’s resistance, and digitalization and modern education in general. According to the presenter, Róbert M. Kovács, “if a teenager has a mobile phone, it’s the holy grail that he won’t use it for education, but for chatting and playing”, so he agrees with Balázs Orbán’s previous statement that the ban points in the right direction.

According to András Bencsik, there is a minority in the Hungarian teaching community that is “easily susceptible to snobbishness, snobbery and rebellion”, so he fears that Madách will not be the only school that resists the provisions of the law. According to the editor-in-chief of Magyar Demokrata, teaching thinking is much more important than having a child “tick out on a mobile phone that 2×2 is 4”. Thus, he considers the decree to be a “decision of strategic importance” and the school’s resistance to be “undermining and troublesome”, which is why he put it this way:

Bálint Botond from the Pesti Srács agreed with this, explaining that children currently use the programs on their mobile phones rather than the students’ mobile phones – “and I put it delicately” – so he would focus on physical, manual writing and skills.

According to Levente Boros Bánk from the Nézőpont Institute, “his opinion on the subject is quite radical”, as he spoke about the fact that there is no place for phones in school, and then sent the following message to the teachers of the Madách high school:

Screw me! Organize the lesson so that you don’t have to use a mobile phone!

He then waxed nostalgic about the time when they were students and didn’t need any phones to study – let’s say, there weren’t even cell phones then. “The teacher came in, handed in the material, we learned,” he summed up the essence of the school.

You can watch the entire broadcast below: