I tend to ignore the latest news buzz as it tends to be over-sensationalized entertainment meant to get people on the Internet riled up.

News outlets are so good at it that I have to applaud their efforts. They’re doing what the National Enquirer wished they could’ve done twenty years ago (although I still maintain the Enquirer hired the best headline writers in the business).

Today, everybody was going non-stop about our provincial government’s educational mandate to ban cell phones in the classrooms. As of next year, the ban would be in place and it would be up to each individual school board to enforce it in a way they see fit.

Really, the announcement was a whole lot of nothing.

We live in an age where you can learn whatever you want, whenever you want, from wherever you are in the world. We are also entering an automation revolution, which will have an even greater impact than the industrial revolution did for the past hundred and twenty years.

Our education system is still modeled after the industrial era, although many teachers do their best to innovate within it.

I will readily admit cell phones are a huge distraction, but not just for students. Adults can barely get a handle on them as well (imagine trying to ban them in the workplace) and I have many concerns with the unethical development of apps and digital systems that were designed to be addictive.

Will banning cell phones be helpful? Sure, maybe.

However, it misses the bigger picture.

We should be tackling issues of how to reform our entire education system for the world we currently live in and the one that’s coming.

For starters, information isn’t scarce to the point where it relies on a teacher to deliver it to as many students at once. Information is readily available, but what’s needed, is a guide and filter of that information.

My students love to aggravate me with arguments about why the Earth is flat. They’ll spend copious amounts of time looking for new points just to see the look of frustration on my face. It always ends with me shaking my head and asking if any flat Earth theorist has ever been into space.

I know they do it mockingly, but it will only be a matter of time before I get a student who actually believes the Earth is flat.

We already have well educated adults (from the “golden era” of education) who are strongly against vaccination and refuse to listen to any other argument about it.

Then there’s the entire gamut of fake news and outrage stories that may not actually be entirely true.

On the other side, the copyright of many works are in the public domain (and more get added each year) freely available for us to study: literature, poetry, music… even movies now.

You can Skype the International Space Station, invite guest lecturers into your room digitally and 3-D print a prototype for a project.

That’s the education system we need to start building upon.

If banning cell phones is a step towards that vision, wonderful. If not, then it’s just a meaningless political gesture.