For first-year students at the University of Chicago Law School, it’s back to the basics – no phones, tablets or laptops will be permitted inside classrooms. Just good old-fashioned paper, pencils and pens.

Cue the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

In a statement released last month, law school officials said the decision was in response to the explosive use of artificial intelligence in education. Administrators aren’t ignoring reality but instead want to ensure its law students do the hard work necessary to establish a strong foundation in law before relying on advanced technology to help them practice even more efficiently in the future.

“We need to ensure that our students actually learn to think critically, strategically and independently without relying on AI,” they wrote. “But we also must face the reality that AI tools are already widely available to our students, and our graduates will be expected to be prepared to use them in legal practice.”

Our oldest son, Riley, who next week begins his first year at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, has already received similar notifications from professors in several of his classes. He’s been told to come with paper notebooks, not MacBooks or Chromebooks.

In a world seemingly obsessed with all things digital, it’s refreshing to see people in positions of influence and authority embrace once again and reinforce time-tested analog habits.

As students in the Pikes Peak region head back into the classroom this month, many of them are managing various forms of technology. Sadly, far too many are actually mismanaging the digital deluge that has become all too common in 2026. A recent Pew Research study found that nearly half all teenagers are “almost constantly” online. Just look at any bus stop or group of students with heads buried in their phones, and you’d believe it.

With two younger boys, ages 16 and 14, my wife and I have resisted their impassioned pleas for personal cellphones and tablets. When they gripe or groan about it, I remind them that I managed to survive 32 years without a mobile phone at all. It’s cold comfort.

Sometimes I wonder, though, if life was better when we were unreachable from time to time. If someone really needed to reach you, they’d call back. But it’s remarkable how quickly technology can transform everyday life. Back in the 1990s, there were over two million payphones in America. Today, there are fewer than 100,000.

Growing up, my mother used to have a little wooden cup filled with dimes on the windowsill over our kitchen sink. We were allowed to take one or two if we were going out and anticipated needing to call home from school, the library, the park or the movie theater.

Policies regarding the use of phones and tablets differ by grade and school district. Stricter rules are better than lenient ones, but it’s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. If I could wave my magic wand, no student in any school would possess any technology at all. They’d have something to write with and something to write in or on.

Every school would have payphones, and the students would have pockets full of dimes or quarters. If there was an emergency and they needed to call home or vice versa, the school secretary would be available to relay the message.

Lunchtime and recess would be devoted to conversation, not doomscrolling or sharing memes. The digital revolution is robbing our young people of basic life skills that we used to develop naturally over the years. Good conversation is an art, and it’s only cultivated by talking and listening. Sadly, that’s occurring less and less in schools. Instead of talking, students often text one another.

In this ideal analog school, assignments wouldn’t require computers to complete. It doesn’t make sense to discourage screen time and then require them to go online to do and submit their homework. Assignments should be completed using physical assets: pens, pencils, books, magazines, newspapers and loose-leaf paper.

Teachers and administrators should also be free to go old school. We don’t need daily or weekly e-newsletters, and we certainly don’t have to see weekly online progress reports. Technology can be a remarkable servant in the right setting, but a terrible master in the wrong arena.

Sometimes the best way forward is to rediscover what has worked so well all along.

Paul J. Batura is a local writer and founder of the 4:8 Media Network. He can be reached via email at Paul@PaulBatura.com or on X @PaulBatura.