Disconnect…

Holidays bring with them the tantalizing opportunity to pause, to honour a different rhythm and to disconnect from technology – even partially.

The current ‘unplug movement’ addresses the relationship between technology addiction and poor mental health. Detoxification from our wired life is an essential part of living in 2023 where the push of a button, obsession with image and inability to delay gratification are trademark. The rise of wellbeing as a focus in all forums – within and outside of schools, reflects the need for – pause.

You may not all be aware that Fairholme staff operate under an email communique curfew – one that has been in operation for the past decade. At least once per term all staff are reminded of protocols around emailing colleagues – this is about preserving and respecting one another’s right to pause and to disconnect from this highly wired environment. It is rare for a staff member to ever communicate outside of a 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday timeframe – even rarer for this to occur during holidays. Always, an email sent outside this timeframe will be prefaced by an apology and will contain urgent content required prior to the next school day.

For your interest, I share the conventions that we adhere to, so respectfully.

email@Fairholme College

1. Write Hot. Edit Cold.
2. Emails need to be respectful and timely – more than two paragraphs generally indicate the need for a real time in-person conversation. To author an email essay to a recipient constitutes ‘management by monologue.’
3. It is our right to answer emails at any time; our responsibility to be judicious about when we send them and how they are written.
4. Always ask – Would this be better to talk about in person, or by phone?
5. Consider: Is it important to send this outside of a 7am – to 7pm Monday to Friday timeframe.
6. Does the recipient need to be thinking on this outside of school hours? 

In thinking of the wired world, I am drawn back to mid-December of 2017. I am sitting in a food market in Lisbon, Portugal. A Mum, Dad and tennish year-old son are sitting at a table beside me in this buzzing, vibrant place. It is midday and I am relishing the sights, smells, and differences. That is, until a familiar scene unfolds beside me – the tennish year-old boy begins to wriggle, desperate for mum and dad’s attention.

Engrossed on their iPhones they do not notice as he squirms, pulls faces, and eventually, pushes against the table to make it rock. His parents do not move, respond, or react. For a few excited minutes I am delusional and imagine that I am observing the world’s most skilled parents making a deliberate choice to completely ignore their son’s behaviour. Alas, they are so attached to their iPhones, they have forgotten where they are, or who they are with: they have forgotten that their son is with them. Eventually, their tennish year-old son is able to rock the table hard enough to spill their drinks and scatter their platters of finely sliced pork. The rocking has been constant for minutes, not a word has been spoken until, in this deliberate gesture … he finally gains their attention. Hell, hath no fury than two parents whose social media activity is interrupted. The scene unfolds dramatically: a chaotic mix of yelling, hitting and tears. I optimistically will them some deep breathing which (Dent, 2016) reminds us, creates some much-needed serotonin – the calming neurotransmitter. Whilst tennish year-old ‘Miguel’ had chosen his attention-seeking behaviours unwisely, I wonder how things might have unfolded without the presence of iPhones.

So too, it’s years ago and I am sitting in a restaurant in Toowoomba and watching a marriage proposal unfold. I am conscious of how I am being addictively drawn to the romance of the scene. Nonetheless, I attempt to practice what I see as the requisite privacy for such a situation (my mother’s manners mantra were on repeat in my head). Flowers, a sparkling diamond, champagne, tears – the scene unfolded as you might imagine. And then … mobile phones were retrieved, photographs taken and shared. For the next thirty minutes that couple, newly engaged, deeply in love, did not acknowledge one another. Heads down, fingers swiping and typing frantically, they shared their news online.

Wired. Excited. And … totally disconnected from one another. Again, I wondered how things might have unfolded without the presence of an iPhone. Yes, our devices keep us connected but emotionally they keep us disconnected: such is the tension that we traverse, daily – often unknowingly. Our worlds are lived on gadgets, unless we permit ourselves time to observe the gift of ordinary days, days not filled by gadget checking, and social media diversions, where we privilege connection at a human level. Blaise Pascal wrote in the 1600s of ‘man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone’ and foreshadowed our impulse to ‘turn to something else’ (Kagge, 2017, p. 37) leading us with addictive magnetism to the age of noise: social media noise.

Here’s to the holidays ahead – a time to privilege connection through disconnection with technology: it is time to pause. Book in hand – I intend to do just that.

Dr Linda Evans | Principal

REFERENCES

Dent, M. (2016). The Power of the Parental Pause »



Kagge, E. (2017). Silence: In the Age of Noise. Trans. from Norwegian by Becky L. Crook.

China: Penguin.