This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I think this is a tough one to weigh in on depending where you come from. If I lived somewhere where the news talked about school shootings a lot, I might want my child to have a phone.
Go after the companies making addictive applications instead.
When I was a kid in school, you had to go to the office to use the phone.
My school at least still had a payphone near the cafeteria we only got rid of in 2011.
How would it help for children to have phones during a school shooting? Everyone on the staff already has one.
For real. What are they gonna do if their kid specifically calls them directly? Go all Rambo on the shooter?
Just make them leave it off. Anyone caught using a phone gets it taken away the rest of the day.
That's what we did with anything that was distracting when I was growing up. You can have it on you, but if they see you using it. It goes into the principal's office until EOD.
Yeah the issue with this is that it becomes a major pain to enforce.
Tones of schools have no phone policies but no one enforces it.
Students won't give them up and parents get upset because they can't contact little Timmy or because his 1500 iPhone is in someone's desk.
You don't necessarily need to take it away, there are other avenues of punishment. Detention, Saturday school, no extra-curricular participation, suspension, etc. I was in high school right as dumb cell phones started to become a thing and those were our punishments if we were caught with phones out. We were allowed to have them, but they had to be either off or on silent, and in our bags (same as CD/MP3 players.) We were allowed to have them out to check them only during lunch and before and after school, or if we had to make a call, in the main office. I completely agree that kids shouldn't be using phones AT ALL during class time, but there's ways to allow them to exist and punish inappropriate usage that doesn't require teachers taking them. Teachers shouldn't be taking phones, that's a liability risk and not worth the effort.
Go after the companies
Sir this is a Merica.
As a mom of two in a country where school shootings do happen far more frequently than anywhere else in the world, the US, I fully support completely banning phones from schools. The benefit to my kids education overall far outweighs the minuscule chance something would happen where they need their phones or a shooting took place. I say this also as a former American student who’s school did go on lock down a few times for active shooters in the area, like the time a local bank got robbed or when they found a “kill list” some kid made. It just doesn’t make sense to me to degrade education across the board in the very very off chance my kid, or even myself, was at the location of a school shooting.
It's not that hard. You keep it in your backpack, and never take it out the whole day while school is in session.
Bring back dumb phones
Landlines
let the mobileks get dumber so the content creators can get smarter
as a parent, I would say what matters is geo-location and text to coordinate pick-up or plans. there is no need for younger kids to have a full fledged phone if one could be developed that serves those functions. I'm thinking 90s flip phones with GPS. It really sounds like a gold mine for some company to supply these limited devices given the market for them.
Someone is downvoting everything but I agree. I try and keep my helicopter parent impulses under control, but it is nice to know exactly where my kids are. My son (12) has a locked down old iPhone and Apple makes it pretty easy to make it practically a dumb phone. We literally have it set up so that he has to ask for permission before using any apps, with the exception of calling and messaging. (Even messaging is iffy; we want to be able to text him but it opens up texting with friends.) He doesn’t need it at school so he doesn’t bring it, but as he gets older, I’m sure it’ll start to go with him and I’m not upset about it. If he wants to go somewhere with a friend right after school instead of going straight home, it’s fine with me as long as I know about it. Without a phone, it’d be hard for him to make such plans on the fly, and let’s just say that planning ahead isn’t my ADHD-kid’s strong suit (yet—we’re working on it). As long as the expectation is set that he doesn’t use it during school, I think that’s okay; it can just live in his backpack until school is over.
Someone is downvoting everything
Indeed - three top level posts got downvotes from the same two accounts (with the second likely being an alt) within a minute.
What's wrong with a 12 year old texting their friends? I had unfettered internet access by then and I turned out fine.
My position on this is really weird because I'm in support of laptops being in classrooms for educational uses. However, I'm against cell phones being in classroom.
That being said, as someone who grew up in a school system that didn't allow the parent to communicate with their child or a teenager, meaning that they couldn't call the school to have them relay a message, I am firmly against a straight ban period on school grounds. I was given a phone because my parents' work schedule was very fluid and could change within an hour or two. And on more than a handful of occasions, my mom would call the school and be like, hey, you need to relay the message to get on a different bus because there's no one going to be home, And they just wouldn't relay it. It also helped if I chose to go to a friends house after school
I'm also disliking how they skewed the results. If you read the actual study, you'll see that they merged the kind of agree strongly agree and the kind of disagree strongly disagree categories to make it a binary choice, but then chose to omit the six percent of the people who said they didn't care or had no strong opinion.
they also removed any results where the person chose the first option or the last option on every question. And I dislike any type of automated data sanitation method like that, because while they did randomize the first and fourth answer, every time, there's always the possibility that someone legitimately answered everything as either the first or last answer. My own vote could be stated that since I strongly agree that the cell phone shouldn't be in the classroom, but strongly disagree that it should be straight banned. So if question one and question two had the polarity of question one and question 2 flipped, where one was strongly agree and one was strongly disagree, it's entirely possible I would have been removed from the survey as a fraudulent result.
edit: removed couple sentences that drifted from topic some and fixed a repeated line
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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 if you were lucky 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.
When I was in highschool I had an app to help calm me (recommended by my therapist) because I had such severe anxiety problems. I know there are things you can do without an app but it was helpful when I was panicking so much I could hardly think. I don't think a blanket ban is appropriate. Phones aren't inherently bad and it really depends on how they are being used. It makes more sense to revoke phone privileges from individual students if they can't use them properly.
Digital devices will always be a potential distraction, even with just simple calling and messaging. What amazes me most though, is how far we'll stretch to avoid regulating the actual actors causing the most harm (social media).
The logic is stupid. There are adults that are just as addicted to social media and the Internet as much as any kid would be. What changes once they reach 18?
more ranting
The real issue isn't being tackled or solved. This is yet another thing where we're trying to solve the symptom but not the cause. The real issue is that the software or the platforms don't take into consideration, by design, the well-being of the user.
We're being forced to do what these stupid corporations like Meta, Google, Reddit, OpenAI et al aren't doing already but should actually be doing. They don't give AF because their whole objective is to make sure you are addicted and they can then harvest your data, feed you scams, etc.
This is pretty much like how the big corporations push the blame on the consumer for wasting plastic even though it's the fucking corps choosing to sell their products that way in the fist place.
If software was designed with a kill-switch that could enforce better habits, this all wouldn't be necessary. All we're doing is delaying the inevitable and forcing them to seek alternatives that will be abused in the same manor social media or the Internet would be.
Why the fuck do they still sell cigarettes despite everybody knowing full well that it causes severe health issues?!
Can't make this shit up!!!
P.S. - If the schools wish to put in place this kind of ban, then they have the authority to do so. Fine. That doesn't fix the broken education system. Yes, it is broken.
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.
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
I agree. Leave them at home. The safety argument is bullshit.
Nope. As a dad I want to be able to reach my kid when need to and I want her to be able to do the same
Call the school
That’s been possible since way before cell phones were invented. Call the school and have them give your kid a message. School children on their phones all day long is why your kids can’t read, do math, or pay attention to anything longer than 5 minutes. Also, cyber bullying and negative social media influences are brutal and are contributing to rising suicidal ideation and attempts.
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.
