Although my children are now well into adulthood, I was heartened to read the recent Argus articles regarding some schools’ and Brighton and Hove City Council’s position over smartphone usage in the classroom. When my children were in secondary school, smartphones weren’t really a thing and if they were they did not have the functionality and plethora of communication apps that now fuel our reliance on instant communication and information at the expense of curiosity and activity.
Two recent TV documentaries have brought this into sharp relief for me. Season two of Educating Yorkshire follows on from series aired twelve years ago where the teacher who now heads Thornhill Community Academy inspired and enabled a young boy with a crippling speech impediment to recite a poem for his English GCSE and go on to be a public speaker on the power of teaching. This time, much of the tone has been around the efforts the school are making to stem the tide of some children malignantly abusing social media, especially messaging apps. It seems endemic and permeates every aspect of school life. Given how damaging the overuse and reliance on the more negative aspects of mobile phone technology is to children’s mental health and learning, the position articulated by Councillor Emma Daniel to encourage voluntary restrictions seems both eminently sensible and essential.
The other documentary which showed the flip side to what’s possible for young people is Field of Dreams. This, the third in the series hosted by former England cricketer Freddie Flintoff, has him and two other coaches literally walking the streets of some of the country’s most deprived areas, trying to encourage young boys and girls to take up cricket, a sport few have heard of let alone harboured an interest in. A cynic might say that Freddie plays on his celebrity, but none of the children seemed to recognise him or know who he is. Unsurprising given how long he’s been away from the game, his TV projects not being for their demographic and the fact those he is trying to engage would no more watch a test match then walk on the moon.
What Freddie does though is play to his working-class roots to dispel the notion that cricket is a posh sport. He chats to the young people on their level, persuading them to try just one practice session then brings them on, including playing matches against the most elite public schools and even police teams. In the beginning, all four teams that he has taken through this process, from Preston, Liverpool, Blackpool and Manchester, have been truly dreadful, not just in their cricketing prowess but their behaviour too. But through his resilience and by truly listening to the young people, Freddie has built their sporting skills, respect for each other, team spirit and, in some cases, leadership potential.
He has transformed four teams of people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds to not only be able to play cricket but become thoroughly engaged and responsible young adults. He has even had them helping refurbish club houses, pitches and acting as ambassadors amongst their own friends and communities, bringing more young people off the streets to the game. The first cohort toured India, some are now mentors and coaches to the recent cohorts and there is hardly a mobile phone in sight.
How often do we hear of sports clubs, drama groups and youth activities folding or struggling to survive from lack of interest and therefore patronage? It would be churlish to put this ambivalence down to smartphones, indeed I’m sure all the Field Of Dreams’ players still use them regularly, but to help our youth in the real world, shouldn’t more adults, where they can, strive to follow in Freddie’s footsteps by showing those with apparently little opportunity and chance in life that they can aim to be whatever they want to, have choices and tap their huge potential.
Educating Yorkshire and Field of Dreams are not programmes about smartphones or even cricket; they are about how young people can be guided, encouraged and motivated, even in the most apparently hopeless situations, to achieve the seemingly impossible by drawing on the vision and dedication of committed adults and peers rather than through a smartphone screen.
I originally wrote this for my weekly column in The Argus, published on Monday, 29 September 2025.
