Antoine Vella is a respected colleague and friend of mine who is not normally given to attention seeking. He’s the last person you’d expect to see a mugshot of on the front page of The Times, least of all for having slammed a laptop ban on his students at University.

Simply put, we stop students from using laptops because we can- Mark Anthony Falzon

Given that the internet can also be accessed on smartphones, he should probably have taken University to task for providing WiFi in the first place. But never mind.

I’ve mixed feelings about this. On one hand I suppose it’s a lecturer’s duty to do everything they can to encourage students to pay attention. That includes paying attention to “boring” lectures. Scholarship is 99 per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration on the best of days, and both students and their professors have to live with that.

There’s another reason why students don’t have my full sympathy on this one. I’ve a growing and violent dislike to the contemporary belief that the only thing that’s worth living for is posting silly pictures of oneself on Facebook, tongue poked out at all times and preferably vomiting a composite of alcohol and half-digested paella (‘partying’ I gather it’s called). That’s fun, everything else is boring.

That said, my attitude at University has always been that the general rule of living with people applies. In this case to wheel out my tuppence worth and let students do as they please as long as they don’t disturb me or their colleagues. University students are adults and ought to be treated as such. I don’t think I should be spending my time policing their attention.

Does it work? Yes and no. I’m under no illusions that the smiles and chuckles of my laptop-bound students are due to my wit and comic-relief abilities. Still, 10 years down the line I can still say I enjoy lecturing above all else, and that I owe this pleasure to my students.

That’s as far as concerns University. The general point goes back to a situation that took place around AD 30. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” must rank as Jesus’s finest line. And the most widely-applicable too, not least in this case.

It’s one thing to bash University students for fiddling online when they should be paying attention, quite another to put hand on heart and say out loud that you have never spent an hour (or 10) flitting from one useless webpage to another leaving a trail of pointless comments, when you should have been working. That applies to Vella and to myself, among others.

The Gospel-literate will be quick to point out that Jesus went on to say that adultery was a sin anyway, stoning or no stoning. Which changes everything.

I quite honestly can’t understand what’s so special about the lecture situation. Why, in other words, we seem to think it’s wrong of students to distract themselves, even as we distract ourselves all the time. And declare that the Great Distraction (also known as the Net) is the best thing since the wheel on top of that.

Maybe I’m just especially boring and/or pick the wrong company, but I can hardly have a coffee with a friend these days without their checking their smartphone (I don’t have one) a million times. It’s not even considered rude anymore.

I swear, two weeks ago someone told me they felt bad to be on holiday because they had no ‘regular’ (i.e. every few seconds) access to the Net. Point is, why should we expect adult students in a lecture room to behave differently?

As I said this changes everything, in two ways. First, this whole business with students and laptops becomes an issue of hierarchy and power more than anything else. That doesn’t make it wrong (hierarchy and power have their rightful place, especially within institutions) but it’s good to recognise it for what it is. Simply put, we stop students from using laptops because we can.

Second, the issue becomes a much broader one. Vella’s point that online access in lecture rooms spoils the substance could usefully be applied elsewhere. I’ll stick my neck out: I think the internet is occasionally wonderful, sometimes alright, mostly rotten.

It’s easy to lapse into a well-trodden suspicion of new technology. I well remember one of our professors telling us that the next lecture would be all about sex.

He had nothing to worry about truth be told, his lectures were among the best I’ve ever attended anywhere. His was simply a humorous and self-deprecating take on the inspiration/perspiration equation.

That was a time when the word ‘laptop’ brought to mind bodily fluids and when ‘smartphone’ meant a telephone that wasn’t black.

Disclaimer in order, it wouldn’t do simply to accept that the internet does great things to our lives, just because everyone says so.

We might instead want to ask ourselves a few questions. Are better books being written? Has the standard of political discussion gone up? Are we cleverer, whatever that means? And such.

I have no easy answers. What I do have is a gut feeling that the fixation with being everywhere and talking about everything at all times is proving a major distraction. I mean generally, not just to students.

Ironically it’s Vella himself who comes to my rescue. Having presumably spent the morning reading and rereading everything that was being said about his little matter, he posted the following on The Times online at 13:37:

“Knowing that many young people nowadays have short attention spans, the presentations are designed so that students do not have to stare at the same picture for more than 35 to 45 seconds ...”

‘Students ban sketchy Powerpoint from classrooms.’ Now wouldn’t that make an absorbing headline?

mafalzon@hotmail.com