A video showing a middle school in central China’s Henan Province forcibly disposed of students’ cell phones has made a sensation on Chinese social media since it went viral last week.

Seen in the video, a teacher uses a hammer to smash a bunch of mobile phones on the playground of Longhua Middle School in Nanyang City in Henan Province while another teacher speaks out the owners of these phones and the confiscation dates in front of all students, hoping to let them remember not to use phone during study.

However, violently breaking the mobile phones into pieces apparently is not the only way for the school to distract them from the electronic temptation. The video clip also showed that another teacher dealt with some confiscated phones by sinking them in water one by one.

Some netizens thought it unacceptable to treat students’ property in this way with the video clip circulating widely online.

“I was startled when I heard the news. Though the school said parents had been informed, this extreme disposal is inappropriate. [The school’s behavior] is potentially telling students to solve any problem by means of violence,” @Shangguanvbingxun commented on Sina Weibo and urged the school to put an end to their “educational model.”

A student, identified with an assumed name of Liu Jingsong told Beijing Youth Daily that there were an ad hoc group of teachers who took charge of students’ discipline on campus.

“I was not informed when my phone I put in the drawer was taken away,” Liu said and showed a picture in which around 100 mobile phones had been confiscated a year ago and then destroyed.

In response to the public doubt, the school asserted that the punishment was based on a regulation on proper use of mobile phones on campus which all students had signed but clarified that most students could fetch their phones at the end of a semester and some would see their phones destroyed because the phones had affected their academic performance or campus life.

“If you had not signed, teachers would have been very fussy about you,” Liu continued to express his views on the regulation. 

Some other students who had the similar experiences to Liu reported that their phones were confiscated even when they were making a phone call to their parents.

The “violent educational method” described by some netizens however in teachers’ eyes is something reasonable. A teacher from the middle school defended what the school had done was to encourage students to make an all-out effort in their school work.

A netizen with the screen name of @Luobin7006 on Weibo echoed the teacher’s argument against using phones on campus, commenting satirically “Let’s see your feeling on the day when your child is reading at senior high school but concentrating on phones every day.”

It is said that the local education authority has asked the school for clarification over the video.

In fact, there is no doubt that it has long been debated as to whether middle school students should use phones at school as the country has been experiencing a technological revolution with over 1.3 billion mobile phone users. The 4G users in the country have reached over 700 million and the country is about to enter a 5G ear next year. In such rapid development, people find it hard to resist temptation from technology, not only the children.

Weibo users who identified themselves as teachers have given out a good answer – “if a phone noticeably causes students to have a sharp drop in academic performances, they had better stay away from it.”