Undoubtedly, the ban on smartphone use in secondary schools drew a collective, exasperated gasp from teens all over Singapore when it was announced late last year. The student-led objection was immediate; how else were they to send reels to their peers across the classroom, or film said shorts themed after whatever transient trend has engulfed TikTok?
It might be hard to fathom, but there was a time when we didn’t have the luxury of doomscrolling to keep us occupied, both in between classes and after the school bell tolled. If you’re on the receiving end of this electronics embargo, it’s not the end of the world. Here’s a glimpse of what a typical school day looked like back then, without the constant buzz of Telegram pings and Instagram DMs.
No changes here, lessons pretty much started around the same time as they do today, around 7.30am, which meant we had to be well on our way to school at the crak of dawn. Unless you hitched a ride from your parents, much like most working adults on the Little Red Dot, public buses and trains remained the de facto mode of transport for students.
Here’s where our commutes differed. After tapping in with our superior, pre-SimplyGO EZ Link cards, we couldn’t muffle the rumble of the bus engine or the clanging of MRT trains against the tracks with our favourite tunes on Spotify. It would be a couple more years till music streaming platforms took off, but that didn’t stop us from jamming out en route to school.
Image credit: Ventura County Star
It might sound absurd, but before our phones could do everything and then some, we used to have separate devices for listening to music, and Walkmans and iPods were all the rage. I remember whipping out the former on the daily, as dubiously downloaded tracks like JB’s Eenie Meenie and Replay by Iyaz awakened me from my groggy stupor.
Believe it or not, not-so-smart phones existed before the era of iPhones and Androids, and we also got caught up in our fair share of handphone-related mischief. Of course, not all of us wanted to immerse ourselves in a good book during the silent reading period that most schools had before morning assembly, so we passed the time through other means. But, I daresay we earned the right to avoid the monotony of reading.
Image credit: u/LemoLuke via Reddit
You see, discreetly texting your friends required much more finesse when your phone came without a touchscreen, as you had to rely on buttons on a physical keypad to do the job. In fact, a single “LOL” required you to punch 3 buttons a total of 9 times, and still, the most skilled of tactile texters could send out messages without having to glance at their digits.
On a slight tangent, students of today have the option to do their reading via eBooks through Personal Learning Devices issued by schools, which is a godsend. Throughout my 4 years in secondary school, when physical reading material was a must, I’ve seen egregious substitutes for books when students neglect to pack theirs.
Think issues of Reader’s Digest torn down the spine in half to “share” with a forgetful friend and stray pages of newspaper reporting week-old happenings. We sometimes even busted out ol’ reliable: the very textbooks that we were already going to flip open in about 20 minutes’ time when lessons started.
Honestly, I think the new rule of students not being able to use their smartphones during recess is a bit much. It’s the only pocket of time that they get to take their eyes off the whiteboard and worksheets, so what they do with their 40 minutes of reprieve should be up to them, all within other more reasonable school rules of course.
Image credit: @indeponline via Instagram
Eating without being able to watch videos on the side is a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but we still managed to make our recess count without the aid of smartphones. The more active dudes would grab a quick bite before sprinting over to the field to have a short kickabout or the basketball court to impress their eye candy with flashy dribbles. And yes, they would return back to class with uniforms that were sopping wet and skin slick with sweat.
As for the girls, they couldn’t yap their way through geography period, so they let it all out during recess, sparing no juicy detail when it came to who was allegedly dating whom. The stories must’ve been ultra-captivating; I just checked in with my colleague, and she can remember her lovelorn friend’s crush 15 years on, full government name and all. Blogshops were also mighty popular back then, and I recall seeing some entrepreneurial classmates packing orders during their free time to make some extra pocket money.
Image credit: SocialBarrel
Looking back, some of us only received our first smartphones later on in our secondary school journey, and even then, they were limited in their capabilities, especially data-wise. Affordable mobile plans with tens of GB of data were unheard of, so we had to get by with a meagre gigabyte or 2 a month. I remember rationing data like wartime provisions; forget to turn it off before loading a YouTube video, and you’ll have angry parents on your tail for racking up an insane phone bill.
With most of the school day behind us, you would think the remaining few periods would go by just like that, but on the contrary, it was the last hour or 2 that were the most gruelling. The post-lunch coma was brutal, and as the teachers droned on about algebraic functions, all we could think about was hitting the malls right after school.
Again, no smartphones meant no secretly booting up Instagram Stories to catch up on your friends’ escapades in class to while the time away. No-look texters could get by with working their magic under the desk, away from the teachers’ gaze, to SMS their mates, but for the rest of us, we resorted to a more archaic means of communication – passing notes.
Image credit: Getty Images
The thrill of passing around handwritten notes was unmatched, especially if you were chatting up someone you fancied. Larger friend groups also got in on the act too, turning scraps of paper into full-blown chat rooms to talk about anything under the sun. Chat logs would go on till lessons ended, or when we were caught in the act because Jun Jie was a tad slow on the draw passing around the makeshift group chat.
If texting wasn’t your thing, we’d also take extended toilet breaks to converse face-to-face. Exchange a couple of darting glances towards the classroom door, ask to be excused to the toilet, and you were soon joined by your BFF for an impromptu lepak session.
Image credit: Reddit
I’m not sure what went down in the ladies’, but sometimes a trip to the gents’ was truly eye-opening. Students who were bored out of their minds would fling wads of wet toilet paper onto the ceiling, and even conduct sparring matches complete with referees, so if you were a poor lad who genuinely had to go during one of those, best of luck.
It’s 2pm, which means school’s finally out, so unless you’ve got remedial classes or CCAs, you’ve still got the better part of the day to catch up on homework or binge-watch the latest season of Stranger Things. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the wonders of streaming services at our fingertips, but we did have our own means of entertaining ourselves.
The movies were a hotspot as we could catch flicks for cheap – flash your pass for student discounts, and you’d be able to snag a ticket and popcorn bundle for well under $10. LAN shops also drew in students by the masses, but you had to change out of your uniform before they let you in. We’d spend hours gaming the afternoon away, queuing up rounds of DOTA 2 and L4D2.
Image credit: Pinterest
Meanwhile, the arcades also saw a healthy amount of students looking to blow off some steam. Besides the game cabinets, the neoprint booths in particular were widely popular amongst teens who wanted a cute photo memento scrawled with heart-shaped doodles.
By no means are we glorifying going against your teachers during these trying, smartphone-less times with our “creative” ways to pass the time in school. Heck, we’ve done our time in detention for some of the shenanigans we got up to, and we just didn’t have the means of recording the whole fiasco to plaster all over the Internet.
Food for thought: perhaps the best way to feel the hours fly by effortlessly is to actually listen up and pay attention in class. After all, no amount of TikTok tomfoolery will help you ace your O-Levels, but a little note passing when the classroom tea’s getting extra scandalous never hurt anyone.
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Cover image adapted from: @indeponline via Instagram, Getty Images, Ventura County Star
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