I can’t imagine sending my kids to an American school where phones are banned. I’d be terrified with all the school shootings.
And the schools themselves are just doing it because they’re scared to death someone will record something in the school get they’ll end up in legal trouble.
My disagreements with the policy are twofold, but I was a weird kid. And I am a weird adult.
Firstly, when my social studies teacher or my American history teacher tries to pass state propaganda as fact, I want to have the internet available to find sources either that confirm what I’m being taught or refut it. And similarly when our chemistry class can only provide a poor, hazy image of what we’re doing, I want to be able to go online and get a better one.
We didn’t have the internet when I was in school in the eighties, and instead, we had shitty textbooks and a state mandated syllabus. It was evident, even then, that we were being indoctrinated with an agenda, and being denied informed consent.
And as a naïve kid, I believed my schooling and grew up Republican… Eventually, I’d learn how much bullshit was spoon fed to me, and that our school districts, in fact, do not have an agenda to equip students for adult life, rather are instruments of control.
And secondly, the internet provides lifelines online for kids at risk, such as neurodivergents, LGBT+, kids in dysfunctional homes. And they should have access to them. I didn’t have those resources, and I believe my outcome is worse for it.
I get it, regarding bullying. Social media harassment is a problem, but by comparison I was cornered and outnumbered three to one by kids twice my size. Kids do not require social media to hurt. Since it was their word against mine school administrators sided with my assailants. Every time. I’d work out later they just hate weakling kids, and believe I should be able to hold my own against such odds.
I can assure you kids will be bullied anyway, just as sex trafficking increased when SESTA / FOSTA cut off internet resources to sex traffickers (and killed personal ads and ended online sex worker support groups.)
But then, I’m neurodivergent and was in that gap in which I was quite bright and interested in learning, but had testing difficulties so I wasn’t eligible for gifted programs. The mainstream school district wasn’t intended for me. But then there wasn’t a place for me at all.
The US state education districts are not being run in good faith, prioritizing obedience over critical thinking skills, ideological doctrine over factual history and enrichment of companies and administrators over paying faculty and budgeting learning materials. Restricting students from their own resources is yet another admission that the US does care what happens to students, and reinforces the notion that schools are not institutions of learning, but detainment centers to lock kids up and keep them out of mischief until they are legally responsible for their actions.
But as I said. I was a weird kid. And my schools assured I would never live it down.
American history teacher tries to pass state propaganda as fact, I want to have the internet available to find sources either that confirm what I’m being taught or refut it.
In high school we had a mandatory senior year “Americanism vs Communism” (AVC) class, if ever there were an obvious propaganda slot - taught by retired navy no less. In reality, he didn’t know much about Communism and had the good sense to keep his mouth shut about it, basically taught freshman Civics all over again.
The problem I have with your position is: you can find anything and everything on the internet, from stone cold facts to complete fiction and everything in-between, and especially with AI assistance in building websites it’s becoming harder than ever to differentiate between the two. Now, you get some 9 year old who lives in a 3 generation Faux news viewing household, hears “the facts” from all his family and all their friends every day, armed with a browser full of shortcuts to all the “Best” websites - I, as teacher, absolutely do NOT have time to knock your head off and screw it back on straight, nor would that be a good thing for me to do career wise. FAR FAR easier to get 45 minutes of captive time to say what I want to say - which may or may not be fed to me by the state censor board - and at least give you one perspective instead of having open debate with 30 children and their website “sources” every day, all period long. Having said that, maybe 10% of classroom time should be devoted to intelligent, safe, thoughtful internet research of the topic at hand - but not every time a child thinks they have all the answers.
Our AVC teacher was about 5’4" - MAJOR Napoleon complex - he didn’t give a damn about the anti-communist propaganda, his (mostly failed) goal was to instill respect and discipline in our about to graduate teenage minds… That was his core driver every class every day all 90 days that he “had us.” Lots of teachers have these personal agendas, they’re not all bad, and it’s actually an important part of your education to experience some diversity among your teachers like that - you never know when you’ll meet someone more or less like them in real life, and having that school experience might just teach you how to work better with the versions you meet in real life.
Your doom-scroll will always be waiting there for you at home, if your parents allow it. If you’ve made it to 18 years of age and still feel repressed, you’re welcome to make your own way in the world and discover the truths, lies, and half truths that await you all on your own. I’ll submit: if you’ve got enough skepticism to fact check your teacher in class, you can probably resist the brain washing without needing instant gratification from “sources you trust.” And, classroom time isn’t for you to convince your 12 year old peers how wrong that tool at the front of the room is, you’ll have plenty of time outside of class for that.
My concern is that, as I said, they lied to me and I believed them. My first logic and critical thinking class was in freshman college, where I learned that media literacy is about checking multiple sources that don’t like each other very much. The facts that are consistent between them are most likely the actual facts. I was the sucker who got owned by the indoctrination system.
Media literacy became super important in the aughts during the George W. Bush administration. The White House started giving preferential treatment to correspondents that covered only approved stories and kept the US in a positive light. (It marked the beginning of the end of free journalism within news agencies) Foreign sources started covering the extrajudicial torture programs and the use of PMCs in Iraq and the International War on Terror. It became really important for Americans to cross examine sources to determine for themselves what was really going on.
Today, it creeps me out to hear kids talk about the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war and the international war on terror, and cite as fact details where I distinctly remember otherwise.
In the present era, we have huge swaths of Americans in FOX News silos, since FOX, like an abusive domestic partner, encourages its viewership to cut off all other sources. We need to be teaching media literacy in grade school. We should be teaching how to use the internet as a tool and not a substitute for social interaction.
When the US proscribed alcohol consumption from 18 years to 21 years, the rate of alcohol related crime and DUIs didn’t change, rather they just got older, and more people were imprisoned for it because they were old enough to know better (allegedly). If we cut off internet access to kids until they’re 18, or even the current proposals to raise the age from 13 to 16, it only means kids will be less experienced and less prepared at a later age.
And kids who are diverse, and fit outside the white, straight, normal mainstream, presently are utilizing resources on the internet to help them cope in a society that doesn’t like deviance very much. These resources literally save lives.
I think an education system that actually took itself seriously, and intended to teach kids in good faith will be able to not only handle kids having internet access, but will be able to integrate its use into education, better preparing children for adulthood.
But also, as I said, I am an outlier. I’m neurodivergent and I’m queer, so I do not have the pulse of the children of the US. In the way I assume not all men are in concurrence with the manosphere, I also submit not all children are daft and need to be taught in single syllables without distractions. If they are, we should get rid of school sports leagues. I suspect more kids would benefit from internet access and robust training in media literacy (including social media savvy) than would be aided by a device ban in school (or by age-gating social media).
Note: There are actual studies about the harms social media has on kids, and the scientific consensus is that harms are significantly less than what is being claimed to promote age verification. It’s looking a lot like the same moral panic that occurred about video games, violent movies and television. But then big social media companies like Facebook, X and Google would enjoy the reduction in competition from smaller sights that would result from an AV mandate, hence they are lobbying to mandate locking up the internet.
Was this never a thing in the US previously?
I distinctly remember from my school days (Western EU) mobile phones were to remain off and in backpacks.
And those were still the days we you just had this relatively dumb flipphone that could litterally only call and text and had a potato camera as it’s main novelty.
There was no access to internet, much less AI’s that can do your entire homework for you and they were already annoying to deal with for a teacher. Can’t imagine how that is now.
Yeah, when I was a kid growing up in the US, no cell phones during class was the standard. If you took it out (or if it wasn’t on silent and rang during class) you got a warning, then next time it would be taken away and given back at the end of class or end of the school day with escalating consequences for repeated violations.
In the late 70s / 80s we didn’t have cell phones, we had pocket electronic games - and that was just obvious: lunch / recess time only stuff, duh. Cell phones have that nasty “safety communication lifeline” hook that single purpose electronic games don’t have, but in reality they’re just 10,000x more addictive entertainment widgets than those old pocket games ever were.
I think a lot of U.S. schools got lazy about enforcing “phone off and put away” in class - to the point that kids feel like it’s a right. Same thing actually has crept all the way up into the armed forces even on deployment. If anybody were to ask me where we need to start drawing the line, I’d say right there: if you’re forward deployed at sea, you do NOT get unfettered access to a personal communication device that would have been the wet dream of every spy of the last century. Hell, if you’re enlisted at all you should have an armed forces standard issue phone for all your communication needs, complete with a pre-enlistment acknowledgement that all those communications ARE recorded and you WILL be held accountable for EVERYTHING you communicate through them. Personal phones should be locked down and even less accessible than firearms, because they ARE more dangerous to the missions.
Cell Phone bans hold up great until a school shooting happens and no one can call for help… then it’s all: “why didn’t anyone call for help”, “phone bans are dangerous to our kids”, “the trans kids are to blame”, “bitch bitch bitch transphobic bitching etc etc etc”.
And considering it’s America… School shootings are basically the Republican legally required National pastime. – Republicans actually get boners thinking about all the dead kids and they even get extra horny thinking about all the ways they can blame those deaths on LGBTQ+ folk… despite the fact that most school shooters lean towards right wing extremist philosophies… if you can even call pure evil incarnate a philosophy.
Had a friend in the most expensive private school in my area. They had phones banned over a decade ago already.
Probably because richer parents have more mental bandwidth to worry about children’s digital footprint and neural development rather than survival.
Thus I believe extending this ban to public schools is only fair. Distraction-free and surveillance-free environment for children shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for few.
I teach middle school in a state with a cell phone ban. We had our first year with the phone ban last year, and I thought it was an improvement.
Phones can be very detrimental to the school experience. For one, it is very difficult to teach kids who are already unwilling or resistant to learning while they have a piece of technology they are literally addicted to in their hand. Secondly, phones and social media contribute to a lot to the bullying, violence, and general misbehavior that occurs at schools.
My school district also provides all students with an iPad, so they have their own school-provided tech. In my experience, this comes with their own problems though. I often feel like I am playing “whack-a-mole” keeping kids off their iPads (playing games, etc.) during instruction. It’s nice to be able to incorporate technology into lessons, and it definitely is more convenient for teaching, but I don’t think the trade off is worth it. For example, the cheating with A.I. was off the charts for me last year.
This coming school year, I am looking to incorporate more paper and pencil assignments into my teaching. A lot of my students seem to favor assignments where they aren’t using their iPads. I think most agree that these kids’ eyeballs need a break from the screens.
Also, to people with concerns about the phone ban, students are allowed to bring their phone to school. My state’s law states that the phone must be turned off and in the student’s backpack during instructional hours. Students may be on their phone at school before and after classes start. In the event of an emergency, no one is going to care if the students get their phone out their bag to call their adult. So, kids will retain access to their phone. In fact, most of the students carry their phones around in the pocket and none of the teachers generally care as long as the student isn’t blatantly using their phone during class time. If a kid is caught using their phone during class time, they have to turn it in to the main office for the remainder of the day will escalating consequences for repeat offenses.
Also, I’m sure it varies from teacher to teacher, but I am very understanding when a kid needs to contact a parent/guardian. I will always allow my students to use the phone in my classroom, call a parent from the main office, or use their cell phone in the hall as long as the kid asks permission and explains the situation.
I agree with all your points, but want to add one: cheating with AI should be redirected to effective use of AI as a tool. I would approach a writing class topic like this:
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Welcome… as our first assignment you are going to switch off all technological assistance and write a paper for me on XYZ, just using what you know off the top of your head here during class. Turn this in and keep a copy.
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In classroom, tech limited to non-AI research - read and cite original sources, improve your paper with the research, check all of your assumptions, correct them when appropriate, cite backup when you find it. Does your conclusion change? Again, freeze a copy of this iteration.
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Homework “use AI” (with no instructor direction as to how). Write the paper using all available technological resources (including AI) now, provide helpful starter links to AI resources that “can help,” then compare that to your previous versions.
Instructor / teaching assistants now grade papers 1, 2 and 3 with maybe 10% total weight in the final grade for each.
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In classroom guidance on how to use AI well, with copious embarassing examples of AI used poorly (names withheld, but students might recognize their work…)
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Homework: for any students who turned in “less than ideal” papers in 3), try again. Fail again. Fail better this time.
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In classroom pop-quiz: just like the first assignment, switch off all technological assistance and write the paper on XYZ just using what you know during class.
Grade 5 and 6 for points, 30 points for 5, and 40 points for 6.
In mandatory attendance schools, some will do more poorly on 6) than 1), that’s just the nature of the setting. Those who want to learn should be able to improve along the way, rather dramatically.
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How long have you been a teacher? Just curious. I agree with your points, and they also make me glad I left the profession after 15 years. I taught internationally and in both private and public schools in the US, and cell phones were a scourge at all of them. AI is the bigger issue in my opinion, and I’m super happy I quit right when it was taking off. Teaching is becoming more and more pointless, and everyone is getting passed along, etc. There needs to be an overhaul on standards to become an administrator and teachers should be required to have masters degrees. I couldn’t believe how many teachers I worked with who weren’t curious about anything—didn’t read, didn’t study, and were not that intelligent. In fact, it got to a point where I just left the profession, and life has been infinitely better since.
This will be my 6th year working in education.
I agree teaching often feels totally pointless. I have to remind myself, as a teacher in a low-socioeconomic status school, that I could very well be one of the most responsible and accessible adults in some of these kids lives and take solace in that. I try to at the very least be a positive male role model (the boys need one) for my students even if they aren’t necessarily always learning the content I’m trying to teach them.
I totally agree on your last point as well. The standards to be a teacher are way too low. I work with several adults that should never be allowed to be responsible for educating children. Those people make all the rest of us look bad.
Keep up the good fight, and since you seem like a thoughtful intelligent person, don’t forget you can transition out of the profession. When the inevitable furloughs, increased class sizes, further lowering of standards, etc happen, don’t let them convince you that you have to stay a teacher. At some point the parents of the kids have to step up because they are the most influential, even if the kids have shitty home lives. The parent-child bond is different than the teacher-student, and its a shame so many parents are shitty, but that doesn’t change that they are their parents.
everyone is getting passed along
In the US that was codified into “No Child Left Behind” - one of the worst things to happen to US education, ever.
Totally. But that has been around since Bush, and 15 years ago it wasn’t as bad as it is today. It’s no child left behind on crack now. It’s absolutely insane. A lot of the blame lies on the obnoxious parents and admins who have no spines. Oh, and the shitty teachers who don’t teach but babysit. The whole industry is fucked.
that has been around since Bush, and 15 years ago it wasn’t as bad as it is today.
Real change takes time. Trickle down started with Reagan and it’s still getting worse.
no child left behind on crack now.
Revenge of the Nerds came out in 1984. 40 years later we’ve got revenge of the stupid and proud of it. NCLB started the threats of de-funding failing schools, now we’re just defunding all the schools.
obnoxious parents and admins who have no spines. Oh, and the shitty teachers who don’t teach but babysit. The whole industry is fucked.
Those issues were around in the 1970s, and probably for hundreds of years before as well - I just didn’t experience any of it personally until the 1970s - both my parents were young teachers. Obnoxious parents aren’t actually as bad as apathetic parents in a lot of ways and apathetic parents have dominated throughout history - 90%+ Admins with no spines, admins who serve the almighty dollar first last and always - I met plenty of those throughout my schooling from 2nd grade through my Masters’ degree. Shitty teachers who just babysit, plenty of those 50 years ago. And to hear my parents tell it every day after work in the car, the whole industry was fucked then too. Sexism and racism was alive and well in Florida in those years I was in school, intolerance for gays was the norm, complete denial that lesbians actually existed was another norm… there has been actual progress on those fronts, but now the revenge of the proudly stupid is trying to push back. And the proudly stupid were always there, they just didn’t have enough self-esteem to stand up for themselves as a group in the past.
Y’all need to go read /r/teachers to learn what a scourge phones in classrooms are. The teachers are begging for an outright ban.
That subreddit paints a realistic picture of what it’s like being a teacher, but I find it overly negative. While there are a myriad of reasons why education in the U.S. is in a bad place, there are also a lot of fulfilling and heartwarming moments to being a teacher that don’t get brought up over there.
I think you just described every internet forum perfectly.
Right. Probably correct
I, too, am generally in favor of virtuously-sounding limitations placed upon demographics I am not a part of and never will be.
But a demographic they all were and most will one day not be. Yes, there are overly parented kids; and yes our system makes the stair step function of responsibility incredibly steep. But there will be plenty of time for scrolling and phones, screens in general in classrooms are not the curl all we thought they were.
I mean, are phones conducive to learning? If not then forbid their usage at school and bloody enforce it. I think the fact phones became common place for kids so quickly and so early in their lives coupled with just the general insanity of American schools so often being under attack, the schools have just lost any agency to restrict them given their usage is already rampant.
It’s the parents that are the problem. The problem is, when schools try to ban them, parents flip the fuck out. They become apoplectic at the idea of not being able to instantly reach their kids at every hour of the day. A surprising number of parents install tracking apps on their kid’s phones. They have them tagged like wild animals under study.
So schools are stuck compromising with unenforceable rules. Instead of banning phones entirely, they’ll ban kids from having them out in class. Which of course never works, as the kids just take them out as soon as the teacher turns their back.
Which of course never works
If the students are such great ninjas that they are never spotted, then how would a total device ban work?
Kids are not good at hiding what they are doing. If a student is successfully getting away with something like that, it’s because the teacher doesn’t want to deal with it, not because they hid it from the teacher. I chaparoned a field trip of high schoolers. I saw for myself how they are so bad at covering up what they think they are covering up.
The ‘teacher doesn’t care’ is of course a real problem. A fair number of teachers are perfectly happy to let them quietly stare at a phone, because any non-disruptive misbehavior is no skin off their back. More work to engage and punish them and the phone user on mute is not bothering the teacher, so teacher doesn’t care. In theory they should be looking after the best interests of all the students, but in practice they got a lot of kids to look after and if the parents aren’t doing their bit, then the teacher can only do so much to make up for it.
It’s darkly hilarious that parents are demanding that schools allow their kids to be stupid and the schools are just like “okay, we can’t do anything about this.”
What’s even the point? Shut 'em down if they’re not going to enforce any rules.
At that point, it’s probably more healthy to send little Bobby down into the mines, at least he won’t have time to melt his brain on a screen.
as the kids just take them out as soon as the teacher turns their back
When I was in school the teacher’s were seizing the phone if they caught you with it in class and sometimes require your parents to pick it up after school
Yup same. Then a few phones went missing, parents threatened to sue because cell phones were insanely expensive back then, and the school told teachers they couldn’t do that anymore. 🤷♀️
Did the teachers stole the phones or how did that even happen? 💀
Nah, pretty sure other kids took them when the teacher wasn’t looking.
I live and teach in a state that implemented a ban. Results after year one were marginal improvement. Many just did the “hiding” trick more than before. A number didn’t think we’d notice them hunched over whispering to their watches. It was rather comical when they would do that.
I propose we build all new school buildings as giant Faraday cages.
Headline: Americans support a measure that won’t fix anything and sounds good on paper
My kid is not going to the murder factory without a phone. I’d be happy to scream at someone in a room over it. Guarantee my kid’s safety or they’re bringing a phone.
Not to be a jackass but what will their phone help with in this supposed murder factory? If ur so worried about a shooter or something, it’s not like the phone puts them in an invincibility bubble or something.
Exactly. In these situations, the exact last thing schools want is a bunch of parents showing up to try and get their kids out. It sucks for the parents, but it’s one of those situations where by trying to help their kid, they’re putting a lot of other children in danger. If a bunch of parents run into a building with a shooter and escort their kids out, now you have the nightmare scenario of trying to track down scores of kids that have gone who knows where. Plus now there are more people running around the building who the police may mistake for the shooter. Oh, and a good number of these parents would want to show up with guns of their own. Now you have multiple random armed people running around the school.
You do not want parents running into the scene of an active school shooting.
They wouldn’t call their parents, they would warn the other kids on the other side of the building
Schools have alarm systems for a reason. You can get the exact same effect without sacrificing educational quality. You can set up dedicated active shooter pull alarms if you wish. And every classroom has a phone in it. You can have a system where a teacher enters a code on the phone, and an active shooter alarm throughout the building.
I just see a lot of backwards logic here. You’re starting with your conclusion of “let students keep their phones,” and then trying to find a reason to justify that.
My logic is more along the richness of the messaging capabilities; are you aware how ineffective it truly is to have a standardized procedure for a school shooting? It’s not just bullets to worry about, it’s bombs too, and there’s plenty reason to have a device handy to communicate that.
Why not just have the teachers make a phone call? You have wall phones in every classroom. There’s zero need for the kids to have phones.
Yes, you can find niche scenarios where every kid having a phone may be useful, but we’re already talking about very rare events. We’re sacrificing our children’s education for the sake of minute physical safety risks.
There are dozens of teachers, teacher’s aids, and staff in a school. They can all have cell phones. You’re just starting with the conclusion, “let’s find reasons for kids to have phones,” and working backward from there.
IDK man how could having 300 portable, accessible ways to call 911 in a shooter emergency possibly help in that moment?
C’mon guys help me figure out this MENSA-level brain-twister.
Ah yes, let’s flood the 911 lines with panicked kids and then their parents too. Making sure no other emergencies can call 911. Isn’t it great every single other type of emergency a person can have will magically be put on hold until the school situation is cleared up…
Oh, and there’s going to be some kids who will think they need to give regular updates, so they’d likely put themselves in danger in order to “just help”
You do realize there are wall phones in every classroom, and each teacher can carry their own cell phone, do you not? You’re talking about dozens of people who have the ability to call 911. Past a certain point all you’re doing is saturating the 911 line and preventing ambulances and fire trucks from getting to other unrelated emergencies.
Having students alert 911 in that situation is insane. Their priority should be either running away or hiding, neither of which is helped by getting on a phone call. If that’s the point hire someone whose job is 100% just doing that and make everyone safer for it.
How else are the kids going to call a waymo to get away?
He can call me and I can come help. It’s not much, but it’s something that gives me peace of mind a little bit.
Not the be that prick, but how? If there’s an active shooter, you’re not bulletproof just because you’re a parent. Or are you storming in and going to start shooting yourself? Really curious what your plan is.
Don’t see why they can’t just have locked down WiFi networks so only staff and school equipment can use it and then have some sort of localized cell phone jamming that automatically turns off if a fire alarm or other alarm is triggered for emergencies.
In the US this isn’t legal. Signal jammers are outlawed period, you can’t even use one in your own private residence. The FCC is super clear on it’s legality. Any form of signal jamming period that can disrupt a communications signal such as a cellphone or wifi signal on US soil is a felony. They have even gone as far as fining companies who sold devices that could potentially have been used to signal jam over the restriction. In the US the only time you can use any device that has the capability to block signals is by a federal agency on a case by case basis
They actually
havehad (its been replaced with a much shorter excerpt that only mentions classrooms in a passerby) a FAQ about signal jammers where they explicitly mention it’s use in the school environment.I am a principal or school teacher and would like to use a jammer to limit cell phone calls and texting during school hours. May I do so? No. It is a violation of federal law to operate a jamming device within the U.S. Cell phone jammers do not distinguish between social or other cell phone conversations and an emergency call to a family member or a 9-1-1 emergency responder. In an emergency, use of a cell jammer can pose a threat to both students and staff by preventing communications with police or emergency services. In other words, jammers, even if carefully targeted, create risks of interference outside their intended zone of operations and can thereby disrupt critical communications by public safety providers, as well as the legitimate communications of passersby.Yeah, this is a problem that needs to be addressed when the school is being built. It flabbergasts me that it already isn’t standard practice to construct classrooms and schools as big Faraday cages.
That’s the real way to address that. You can still have a locked down wifi network for educational purposes. But you make it so the kid’s phones simply do not work inside the building at all.
Ignoring whether or not that would be considered against the intent of the law as well, I personally think cost, zoning and safety requirements are going to be killer on any type of plan like that and is likely why no districts that I know of have attempted it.
I’d sorta think this is a good idea but I’m not really down for putting cellphone jammers or anything like that on school property. Freedom comes first.
The solution is to fund schools better for better education programs and more staff who would be able to handle rule infractions better. Harder to use your phone in class when 3 staff members are around engaged with the kids.
Freedom does not come first in all cases. There’s all sorts of rights that get curtailed when you enter a classroom. For example, while Tinker v. Des Moines does protect certain nondisruptive exercises of free speech on school grounds, schools still need to have wide leeway to restrict many kinds of speech that would otherwise be perfectly legal outside school grounds. For example, many kinds of speech that would be perfectly legal outside schools will get you disciplined for bullying. Students may be allowed to wear nondisruptive things like armbands, but if a student insists on holding up a giant protest placard in the middle of their math class, the school can restrict that.
Solutions like “fund schools better” are empty platitudes.
How are they empty?
Have you been in a school? It’s heavily understaffed, talk to any teacher they will say the same thing. Fund schools.
And just because rights become limited because you make an agreement with the school to alleviate some of those rights, doesn’t mean this is a good idea. In the event of a crisis, system failure, a nefarious actor, it opens up so many variables to play with. It’s a dumb idea to establish technology like that on campus when the better solution is to just hire more staff and hire better trained staff and engorge curriculum with more engaging lessons.
On top of that, whatever amount of money to establish and upkeep these I promise will eventually fail as kids will figure out some way to bypass it. They always do. Waste of money.
It’s an empty platitude because it’s a lazy solution. “Just throw money at the problem.” I AM a licensed substitute teacher in my state. I’m familiar with the behavior of kids in educational settings.
The citizens of a school district can only support a tax burden so large. And those resources need to be shepherded carefully. And every dollar spent has an opportunity cost. For example, you could pay to station a paraprofessional in every classroom. They could help out on various tasks and also help police student device use. But they themselves will often have their attention drawn away. There’s just no practical way to keep continuous eyes on every student. Instead of the kids pulling out their phones when the teacher isn’t looking, they’ll wait until the paraprofessional is helping one student out and the teacher is writing something on the board. And then you also have to consider opportunity cost. Instead of having classrooms with 30 students with 1 teacher and a paraprofessional, you could could have classrooms with just 20 students.
My solution to this is to build school buildings with Faraday cages built into the walls. It would be expensive to retrofit existing schools this way, but it would be very cheap to do during construction. Schools tend to be renovated every several decades or so, so do it when the opportunity arises. You can line the walls and ceiling with grounded metal grids behind the drywall. Once installed, there is zero ongoing operating cost. You simply make it so cell phones don’t work in the building at all. You can still have electronic devices; but the only way to connect will be through a heavily locked down wifi network.
And with this, there is no way past it. This isn’t a filter or a jammer (which would itself be illegal.) There’s no bypassing the laws of physics. The kids can bring their phones all they want. They simply won’t receive a signal inside the school building. If they need to call their parents for a ride at the end of the day, they can walk outside and make the call there.
Can we just ban them in general? We used to be a proper society and had our phones on the kitchen walls with 25ft cords.
We used to be a proper society
When was that?
Back in the good old days when homosexuality was a felony, the cure for autism was an ice pick lobotomy, and certain people would be killed for being caught in nice neighborhoods? Proper society.
To be fair, I think I need that lobotomy to deal with the US as a whole right now…
Minus the lobotomies, that’s still happening.
The ice pick has evolved: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37313441/
Jesus, show us on the doll where the bad man hurt you why don’t you. Can we not have a joke about anything benign these days without someone coming along to make it about the wrongs of society? And before you say it, yes, the things you mentioned were wrong.
Chill out, I wasn’t making a statement about race relations, intolerance, bigotry, or medical ignorance. It was just a joke about long phone cords.
You must be a miserable bastard to spend much time around if this is how to react to such things in real life as well.
Imagine a world where teachers weren’t geriatric and taught their kids digital literacy instead of digital luddism.
I mean, shit, homework was invented as a fucking punishment and so many studies have shown it has diminishing returns after a certain age. Yet here we are, perpetuating a system designed explicitly for controlling kids - not teaching them.
But yeah, phones are the problem. The internet is the problem. Definitely not how kids are taught to interact with them, no sir. While we’re at it, just get rid of PCs at the school - that way the district can save money on their IT department. They can access social media from the PCs so I don’t see the problem.
One of the more chilling moments of the '90s for me was when they put the child safety restraint seat laws in at federal level. Now, I had a newborn and a toddler at the time, and I was voluntarily putting them in the best safety seats we could get, but to me what those laws were was training the populace, from the earliest ages (up through age 5 I think) that they MUST COMPLY with the OVERWHELMING FORCE of adults bigger than them and submit to being physically restrained the whole time they are in a car. It’s like they were prepping the population to be less resistant to arrest and physical restraints.
I always thought homework was some employers’ wet dream about getting their employees to not only work for the company while in-office, but also to work all night long too. And I know some “go getter carreer oriented” people with aspirations to management who did exactly that for decades. Personally, I rate my work product and volume as “optimal” with around 30 hours a week of focused devotion to task, beyond that I do more bad work which has less total value than if I just did the 30 hours and knocked off to let my brain rest, refresh and reset to do another good 30 hours next week.
Digital literacy doesn’t do much when it comes to tech engineered to hook you and grab your attention. It bypasses the frontal lobe entirely.
At this point I don’t even know anyone who managed to use something like Instagram “occasionally” or in controlled manner. It’s way too addictive for this, and usage spirals out of control pretty fast.
I do agree with you generally though, schools should only use evidence-based interventions or none at all, no exceptions. In healthcare rolling out a drug without randomized control trial would be called heresy.
But when government does it, it makes it mandatory for all kids immediately, and then ignores increasing pile of evidence how it’s bad for decades
I don’t blame the teachers, I blame the system. I know too many teachers who have been yelled at by admin for daring to teach in a way the kids can learn because it’s “not what you’re supposed to teach, stick to the curriculum.”
It’s tough.
Kids are going to use their phones for random bullshit in class no matter what if they are allowed, but phones in general can be a fantastic learning tool used in the classroom.
I wonder if we might eventually see schools distribute phones like they do laptops, even though that in itself is rare. It would allow the school to lock them down during school hours. Maybe include some option to buy out the phone/number when a student leaves.
A common complaint of not allowing phones is that students can’t contact their parents quickly in an emergency or vice versa. A locked down phone with “emergency contacts” fixes that issue.
