Drunk that her students prefer their cellphones to her, Marie (1), a teacher in a Sarthe high school, ordered a jammer on the internet. She has been using her “toy” for over a year and a half.
Just type “cell phone jammer” into a search engine, and the object of the crime appears. Fed up with her students handling the keyboard “under the hood”, she decided to do the same. “I activate it with classes that annoy me, I hide it with a notebook, usually. Cellphones in class are a real problem, and the students have lots of techniques, they hide it behind a bag, a pencil case, in the pockets of a baggy, “she said.
The principle is simple: the signal blocker sends waves which block network reception. “It’s very funny, the students all tend to move closer to the windows, hoping it works better,” Marie jokes.
The use of a wireless jammer in France is punishable by a fine of 450 euros, as only prisons and theaters are allowed to equip them. Marie bought a small one, at the scale of her class, “although it does not work well in the back rows,” she jokes.
The small forbidden box cost him 60 euros, an investment. “My students don’t know I have one, of course, so they try to get their cellphones out anyway, I don’t do that to annoy them a bit and it works,” says the teacher.
Marie has never been grilled by her young people, although some have been suspicious. “It’s weird, it’s only in your room that you don’t get,” dared a group of girls. And in these cases, she feigns innocence: “Look, I don’t know.”