- cross-posted to:
- usa@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- usa@quokk.au
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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.
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.
Same, and I feel like that should be the only phone available. Us older millennials didn’t have phones, these kids don’t need them either during school. Now I’m not against them used at lunch time or breaks, that’s there time
To be fair there was infrastructure then that doesn’t exist now. Most phone boxes are basically just public urinals now for example, I mean they always were but you could usually expect a phone to be in there too. People were also used to remembering numbers, but the only numbers I remember these days are my own and various landlines from my childhood which have been disconnected for over a decade as people did away with traditional landlines, then the VoIP bridge replacements which just became a way to receive international tech support scam calls more efficiently.
I personally want to see smartphones curtailed more generally; if I had absolutist power a lot of the adtech sector (at least surveillance-based behavioural recommendation algorithms) would be legislated out of existence on public health and democratic integrity grounds for example. I’d like to see e-ink smartphones become a wider market segment too, as these inherently break a lot of ‘dark patterns’ and also make short form video content less viable in favour of text content. I don’t think we can just take smartphones off kids and dump them at eighteen into the psychological manipulation engine that is the modern adtech sector without wider structural reforms to our relationship with smartphones and the internet.
I honestly think it would do a lot if all sorting algorithms were made open source.
We would quite quickly have mapped out how their algorithms work and which companies are the most predatory
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?
A parent is more likely to go rambo and be helpful than cops or teachers, just look at past school shootings where cops didnt do jack sht
The cops definitely need to act quickly. But no one is helped by a bunch of parents wandering around the scene of an active school shooter. Hell, half of them will bring their own guns, now you have multiple people without school credentials wandering around armed on campus. And the police have to chase after them instead of the actual shooter.
This is one of those cases where by trying to help your own kid, you’re actually putting them and a lot of other kids at increased danger.
I’m a man with a very particular set of skills…
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.
Every school in America is currently trying this approach, and it is failing miserably. It’s not as easy to enforce as you imagine.
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.
Are you suggesting a phone would stop the shooting?
I was thinking about a shooting that happened in Norway. Some of the children called their parents. It didn’t stop anything horrible from happening, but they left the world knowing they were loved.
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
You would need to make them dumber/more controlled. A dumb phone with unlimited texting is still going to be a distraction.
Maybe spamming children should be illegal
I’m talking about kids texting each other.
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.
Good question, if you’ve turned out already you did not grow up with the intense constant social media environment. I haven’t seen anyone mention kids filming each other in school with the associated prank culture and social judgements. Remove that from the learning environment.
Texting is not the problem, it’s addictive apps and the fact that they are filming and posting each others childhoods. I’m too old to understand how that can be made right.
I actually have hope gen z and gen alpha will have constructive ideas how to moderate these forces while retaining what is beneficial, like connection to friends (texting).
Oh, nothing inherently wrong, but we’ve already had a couple of incidents of bad behavior. My kid got mad about something and sent some angry messages to a group chat that included racial slurs. It was a big learning experience to say the least (for all of us). Since then they’ve learned to unsend their messages, it seems, so while I can say my kiddo learned something, I have to hope that he also learned the things I needed him to learn. Being a parent is so much fun!
Kids used to go outside and shout racial slurs at the park, damn kids just texting them these days
I just talk to my kids and it works just fine
Talk? Like, vocally? Eww, so old school.
There are options for that. Like Gabb phones and such. No Internet or social media mostly just talk, text, and geolocation.
I’m completely ignorant of “Gabb” phones. I’ll have to investigate. Also, I should probably add that while I’m a parent my kids are now grown so my opinions on this are dated. They all have full fledged smartphones at this point… and jobs… and lives. LOL
No kid wants that.
Ban the phones and make the kids do as we always did. Hide it and use it strategically when the teacher couldn’t see.
thats fair, but of course its not the kids who are buying them.
Flip side is that kids are resourceful - given a dumbed down device that is only supposed to be able to do texting, it wouldn’t be a month before every one of them was running custom firmware to connect to fully encrypted peer to peer social networks run by kids with audio alerts set at a frequency that adults can’t hear and multiplayer games LOL.
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
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.
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.
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.
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, I would vastly prefer your solution, but it’s much more difficult to step in and police every social media company such that they aren’t working against the user. This is basically a band aid, but a band aid is better than nothing imo
I mean I’d rather have my kid have a better education over all if they’re addicted to their phones or not.
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?
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.
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.
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?
Do I need the ./s?
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”
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.
I still fail to see your reason why removing the kids’ phones is going to solve anything. From my perspective you’re working backwards to justify a ban using outdated logic.
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.
My plan is to get any kids I find out, that’s all I can do. Doubt I’d bring a weapon, way too high a chance I’d hit a friendly target instead.
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.
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).
Devil’s advocate take: was the phone app the only way to ease your anxiety, or was it just an option that was recommended due to the trend of trying to have our phone do everything?
I could have had a note and a texture thingy (I would rub the screen and textured case to self soothe) although the phone is more discrete cause everyone has one.
Removed by mod
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.
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.
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.
If you have any concern about “fair” - you haven’t experienced much of real life.
Witch-hunting is a historical example of mass behavior potentially fueled by moral panic. The current trend towards banning phone use in schools is another.
So you’re saying witches were real and there was actual scientific evidence to back up the existence of their powers?
