Based on my interactions with teachers, the administrative class that runs these schools are cowards who don’t want to deal with angry parents, nor the liability if the phones get confiscated and then stolen/damaged. There’s also a lot of parents who want to text their kids during the school day and get mad when they can’t. A lot of teachers have given up since the higher ups won’t back them up. This happened around 2015 or so, when smartphones became ubiquitous.
Comment on Why are US states, school districts banning smartphones in schools?
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 months agoAm I the crazy one? Millennial myself. We had cell phones and got detentions for using them in class. When did that stop being a thing? Why is this a question at all??
You’re there to learn. You sneak texts between periods. If we were caught our phone was given to the principal
OneRedFox@beehaw.org 4 months ago
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 months ago
Agreed, which is why I liked the princiyin the article and how he handled it
PlainSimpleGarak@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I’m an early gen Y. I knew maybe 4 people who had a cell phone, and only one of them could record a 30 second, shitty quality video. Kinda glad phones weren’t in constant use when I was in school.
Bldck@beehaw.org 4 months ago
In the 2000s and early 2010s, less of your life was lived on a cell phone or smartphone.
For kids now, it’s 100% of their lives. Post-COVID, the majority of social interaction between peers is through a social media app.
That means that close to 100% of kids are on their phones during the school day. If you aren’t, you run the risk of social isolation and FOMO.
Administrators can’t send a kid to detention for using their phone because ALL kids would be in detention every day.
Here’s one article that examines the problem
ahornsirup@feddit.org 4 months ago
As long as the phone isn’t used in class I fail to the the issue. There’s no need to ban phone use in general while on school premises.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 months ago
Read the article, the problem is that kids don’t care and don’t listen. Teachers asking kids to take their airports out during class, and receiving harassment back when asking. To me the kids proved they couldn’t handle it (not their fault, it’s an addiction device), but the school had to step in or it wasn’t doing its job
ahornsirup@feddit.org 4 months ago
And the kids that are this brazenly disrespectful and disruptive would be disrespectful and disruptive without phones too. Most kids aren’t though, no matter how much alarmist media wants them to be. It’s a good old fashioned moral panic. Punish the actual wrongdoers, leave the test of the kids alone.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 4 months ago
And why would these children comply with a phone ban if they don’t comply with anything else?
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
Schools are literally mini-prisons that feed into actual prison.
The important thing is not effective control but complete control.
averyminya@beehaw.org 4 months ago
There’s a fine line between being allowed to have your phone in school and mitigating its usage. I don’t entirely disagree with you, but I do think you’re being a bit too… Strong, about your stance.
When I was in middle school, phones were banned through and through. Weren’t allowed to be on, weren’t allowed out, etc. One day I think at lunch period, I was digging through my backpack while walking and the phone flew out of the bag. It was confiscated by the jerk volunteer and given to the principal, and I had to get it with my parents after school. It’s was embarrassing and I knew it was wrong because I had done nothing wrong. This fits to your point.
Everyone involved with a rational mind knew it was bullshit. However, this was also the same school that had major issues with gang violence. We had a (pretty reasonable) dress code policy that involved no local gang colors - no red, no blue, no purple. Phone were banned because there had been a driveby shooting that was called in by a gang affiliated student who got into an argument. From their perspective, they wanted to take no chances from insane 11-13 year olds who were already smoking weed and active in gangs.
I grew up in the ghetto where school is the only opportunity for people to get out of a terrible situation. My high schools graduating class was the first to have reached over 74% graduation rate in over a decade. This school (literally nicknamed Jail For Kids), had actual students with probation officers. We had multiple lockdowns monthly, almost all of which were due to people with weapons and police activity nearby.
The point I’m getting at is that, to an extent, schools absolutely mold and shape the status quo. However, it’s completely wrong to make the assumption that all schools feed into the prison industrial complex. In my area, school was the one chance a kid who grew up slinging had to get out, and for many in my class it was.
I agree with you that schools have a number of issues, but from what I’ve read here today I don’t entirely agree about your stance, from having grown up in and worked with schools like this as an adult. And to get back on topic, students not being allowed to use their phones during class is not a bad thing. During lunchtime, I agree a ban is too much, however I can also understand wanting to keep students socialized with each other. That 30 minutes during lunch doesn’t need to be spent on your phone, when you have the rest of your day at home to do so.
After Covid, in my area, this dynamic changed entirely. By the time I came back from college and started working, kids weren’t involved in that anymore. Middle school was completely normal, kids weren’t affiliated with gangs, had no idea what weed was, let alone the other stuff. But the one thing they all had in common was the debilitating addiction to their phone. You can’t go 5 minutes without seeing a child smashing their finger on the screen, in classes, during lunch, after school, on the bus. Just walking around with their eyes glued to their phone.
And I get it, I’ve been a screen kid too. I’ve always loved tech and games, still spend way too much time on it. But as a kid we had more options, our entire lives weren’t spent engaging through the phone, whereas now that is how you have to engage with others. When we had playtime growing up, only a portion of it was spent on the PlayStation and a majority of the rest was imagination and exploring. Then when we were done, I’d explore the Internet on a laptop with Neopets, Gamefaqs, or Gaia Online.
To me, it seems that the intent is pretty obvious. Students have had a really difficult time being properly engaged in school due to how poor quality the level of schooling had become from the changes after 2016 that were made from the Secretary of Education, then further floundered through Covid. When schools came back into session, the level of dependency to phones has grown exponentially, and these students abilities to go without have been shortened drastically.
If the one common trend among all these students is that poor support during a critical period of education led to the overabundance of cell phone dependence, doesn’t it make sense to consider banning it, to at least try and see if it results in a positive change?
From what I’ve read from you, it seems like the answer would be no, because it’s taking away the freedom. Which, sure. But shouldn’t we also make as many efforts as possible to prepare our students? If the options are 1) teach people or 2) let them ignore it and spend all their time doing nothing, wouldn’t we choose to avoid option 2?
The way I have experienced it, we need to allow for healthy technological exploration while encouraging the focus on school studies. Right now, I’m honestly more on the side FOR banning phones from schools because I’ve seen firsthand the way students use them. When I was in highschool, it was common for people to put in headphones and ignore the teacher, and it was common for the teacher to put them on blast for it. When I go to do my job at the schools, it is a majority of the students using headphones or their phone during class to ignore the teacher. The teachers can’t do anything about it, the parents don’t care, and so what options are left? We just let our youth grow up going to school for 12 years ignoring every part of it?
That’s a recipe for disaster. We’re already seeing the effects of this with Gen Z entering the workplace (and I don’t mean your standard retail or 9-5, I work in performing arts) and while many have been beyond amazing, there are a few who clearly are struggling. I worry this will be the case as more younger generations begin trying to navigate their career choices. As I said at the beginning, there is a clear line between trying to motivate the usage of phones in spaces where their presence isn’t needed, and outright controlling people. In my opinion, mitigating cell phone usage in students isn’t an attempt at control. It’s an attempt at giving students a chance to thrive.
Btw: I definitely think we should adjust curriculums to allow for more engaging education. For some odd reason, the usage of cell phones in certain classes is way, way down. For example, yearbook, art, music, and digitally related classes (hardware/software) almost none of the students pull out their phone during class. Almost as if having students engaged in something they are interested in is a way to mitigate them using their phones to entertain themselves. I can’t imagine why. (/////S)
Instead we are seeing further funding cuts to these programs, so that’s great…
Tl;Dr I don’t disagree, but I also do.
blindsight@beehaw.org 4 months ago
Phones in pockets are damaging, too, FYI. Children 15 and under shouldn’t have smart phones at all, ideally, but definitely not at school
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 months ago
It makes sense, I really like what this principal did, and he was fully aware that kids were addicted and were going to go through a withdrawal period. I think the pouches are a good thing, they may have gotten addicted during covid, but now is the time to end that and make sure the next wave of kids don’t suffer the same. I really liked the results:
renard_roux@beehaw.org 4 months ago
Thank [some deity] for video chats, those little bastards couldn’t spell to save their lives 😅