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I very much think smartphones do not belong in the classroom.
That said, I also very much think that assault rifles don’t belong in schools. And until we can prevent that, we can’t really take away the only way for parents to figure out if their kid is dead or just traumatized.
The problem with this position is that your child being a victim of a school shooting is extremely rare. Phones are ubiquitous. You’re trading the risk of something that will likely not happen to any one student (and won’t really help anything anyway), for a near guaranteed risk of serious damage to many kids education.
I actually have a child, unlike some of the people downvoting you, and I agree with you. I’m not willing to watch my kid’s educational environment destroyed by smartphones all for the sake of some “but muh child” panic. My kid doesn’t even own a smartphone. Anyone want to tell me that I’m somehow risking their life? If there’s a shooter at their school, me knowing what’s happening in real time will not save their life.
As a footnote, the top commenter hinted that if someday we could solve the gun / danger thing, THEN we could remove smartphones. But the reality is that that panic will never be satisfied. There will never come a point when people say “I’m content that there are no dangers to my child during the day.”
Ban fucking phones in class. Maybe it’s just me living through my whole childhood without one just fine, but ffs people don’t even see how addicted to them we’ve become. Kids deserve a chance at at least a few years of life without that.
Flip phones still exist.
Are increasingly unavailable on basically any real phone plan and effectively require a dedicated purchase. Rather than giving the kid yoru old motorola you kept in the drawer.
Also, as 9-11 and other “holy shit” moments taught us, having a wide range of ways to communicate with people when EVERYONE is trying to call or even text people (SMS is a best effort protocol for a reason) is important.
Again, if we actually care about the children? Stop fucking shooting them to death. Maybe then we can figure out why they don’t need to be constantly connected to everyone they know.
Yeah a phone that can only calls 9-1-1 is basically a Uvdale special. It’s better for the kids to be able to teach the parents
There’sa lot of options, it’s getting more popular, search for feature phones
effectively require a dedicated purchase. Rather than giving the kid yoru old motorola you kept in the drawer.
Ah right, because smartphones don’t need to be purchased
A Light Phone or Light phone 2 is capable of doing literally everything you need from a smart phone without the bloat and distraction. It’s legitimate with most service providers as well.
There’s viable options out there that aren’t “flip phones”.
Light phones also cost 300-800 (!?!?!) USD and aren’t carried by phone providers who give people “a free upgrade” every few years.
Yes, there are the parents who buy their toddler a flagship iphone. The vast majority are just taking the phone they were totally going to recycle that has been living in the junk drawer for years and give it to their kid for emergencies and fortnite.
They can be used on each of the following carrier’s: AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon (except for prepaid plans and Number Share), Ting, Mint, US Mobile.
So, I’m not sure what you mean by providers who give “free upgrades”…
It’s cheaper than most smart phones and does everything you need it to do without games and social media.
The vast majority of phone providers (in the US at least, which is where this is pertinent) have heavily subsidized phones if you agree to an N-month contract. And while the price of that can come out worse, it is also a lot easier for underprivileged people to spend an extra few bucks a month for two years than to set aside that money to make the couple hundred dollar purchase (for better or for worse).
And if you are willing to actually talk to a CSR you can often get the price to pay off that phone completely negated. Which IS good if that phone plan is good for you.
To my knowledge, Light does not partner with any of the major carriers so that is not an option. So you are buying those phones, regardless.
The Internet loves to build this strawman of a first grader who has the latest top end iphone. And… some of those do exist. But mostly it is parents getting a phone either “for free” or actually for free because they agree to not leave Verizon or whatever for 2 years and giving the old one to their kid.
Imagine being unable to finance a sub-$100 purchase and having to pay for the entire thing in one go. Will the horrors never stop? Be better, America.
And so do AR-15s.
I mean, you could get social media companies to turn posting off during school hours, that’d sure take the wind out of the sales of most of the most blatant things students do when they pull their phones out in class
Little derps get their news from that shit anyways, let’s treat it the same as the 24 hour news cycle crisis and just make the companies stop for the parts of the day where people need most to be focusing on other shit. No airwaves, no airwaves occupying everyone’s eyeballs and sending them into doomscroll mode.
Honestly that could be a pretty good gimmick for a new social media company in general, you can write, snap, record, photograph whatever, BUT all posts publish in the morning or evening “editions” and comments are open for 2 hours after (you can go back and comment on old posts), I feel like it could be an artificial scarcity thing, if people only have limited time when they can use the platform in a day, they’ll make the most of that time whenever they’re able.
Got it. Fuck the “little derps”. Their blood makes great gun lube, huh?
ANYTHING to prevent people from actually approaching the real problem of the mass availability of firearms that puts children in a situation where they need to be able to say goodbye to their parents before they are sacrificed to the altar of the AR-15.
Nobody’s talking about giving guns the Elizabeth Baathory skincare regime but you chief.
But sure, kids being restricted to call text and messaging during school hours is EXACTLY the same as just asking them to line up against the wall for the shooter.
This wasn’t possible 10 years ago so why does it matter today?
Besides, the cops are just going to arrest you if you try to go in, they have to stand outside and let the shooter play themselves out shooting your kids before they’ll let anyone in.
You know there were smart phones in 2014 right?
Im 36 and i often forget that the 90s were about 20-30 years ago. I forget im not 20 sometimes, until i throw my back out.
If I had to guess, they meant to say something like 25 years ago.
Or not. Im not them, i dont know.
The 90’s were just last decade and there’s this exciting new politician running for president called Obama.
Vaccines didn’t exist 200 years ago, so why should we allow them today?
You understand that a lot of communication in that scenario can, at worst, lead to crucial misinformation about what’s going on and, at best, is unnecessary, don’t you?
Obviously, these shootings happen, but the solution is not to arm each student with a cell phone, just as it sure as hell isn’t to arm each teacher with a firearm.
The detrimental effects of cell phone usage in the classroom are well documented and plain as day if you just walk into a high school or middle school lesson. Even with highly engaging teachers and lessons, there are kids who slip through the cracks because nobody can compete with the newest fad app designed to melt a child’s brain and possibly drain their parent’s bank accounts.
This move addresses a significant issue within our school system. Addressing gun violence in the US is a very complex issue that needs to be tackled through a lot of different fronts. Kids having smart phones in school will not address that issue.
Obviously, these shootings happen, but the solution is not to arm each student with a cell phone, just as it sure as hell isn’t to arm each teacher with a firearm.
You’re right. The solution is fucking gun control. Not isolating those kids out of fear that they might give the cops misinformation and there won’t e a safe space to play flappy bird while children are being executed.
So how about you shut the fuck up about how it is more important to isolate the kids than to protect them? Hmm?
I think flip/dumb phones are still allowed with most smartphone bans, are you suggesting this one is different?
I think this is less about isolating kids than it is separating them from distracting and addictive apps.
Also it creates a class distinction in schools - some kids don’t have them causing them to be socially isolated
Personally I think the schools should be handing out locked down wifi phones to students without smart phones. But I don’t think any part of this is about isolating students.
Lol isolating kids? They’re at school… If someone needs to get information out, there are already channels of communication.
Hope you have a better day.
Edit:
The need for gun control in the US is absolutely dire from any and all perspectives of public health, from school shootings to suicide.
The effect smart phones have had on our students is significant and must be addressed as many kids are not learning in the classroom.
Both of these things are true. Both must be addressed.
Would you allow the children to have a cell phone in school so they can say goodbye to their parents before they are shot to death? Seems a fair concession vs the apparent need to prevent the kids from spreading misinformation about a gunman roaming the school.
At that point, take your kids out of school if you’re that worried about them being able to say goodbye.
During the 99.99999999% of the time the school isn’t being shot up, the goal is for the kids to learn. Even with as many school shootings as we have now, the odds of your kids being in one is still incredibly small. Way higher than it should be, but ensuring the kids are getting quality education is still the top priority on a day to day basis.
What’s with the fetishization of school shootings in this thread?
This whole argument is weird. Kids don’t need smart phones in school. Is your argument that we should let kids have smart phones so they can call their parents if there is ever a school shooting? Do you think every kid should be prepared for imminent death at all times in the classroom? What’s the actual argument?
I’m stating that smart phones are a net negative to any learning environment and there are already effective modes of communication within schools.
I was responding to the point being made that smartphones are a detriment during a school shooting due to students sharing misinformation.
If you’re more worried about your kid at school getting shot than them getting distracted during their education, You might be the one living in a shit hole country.
I believe in educating kids to know how to ignore distractions. The phone will be there in every work/life situation and will be a tool used to get them further in their careers and life in general. It’s stupid to let them use them openly during class… It’s also stupid to make legislation about them. Notice we don’t have country wide dress codes for schools. Just legislation that says when such codes have gone to far. Banning students from having items they carry daily is just a stupid over abuse of power being instated for what reason? Failed parenting and failed educators?
You text during class you get told to stop, happens again you get detention/thrown out of class/sent to the dean and eventually thrown out of the school. Always was that way. No need for laws around it.
You text during class you get told to stop, happens again you get detention/thrown out of class/sent to the dean and eventually thrown out of the school. Always was that way. No need for laws around it.
It’s more complicated. Teachers can’t take away the phone because it’s an expensive piece of property and it opens all kinds of doors for the school being liable if it goes missing or gets broken. Not to mention if something does happen, the parents might sue the school.
And we aren’t talking about mere distractions, but things designed to keep kids addicted to them. You’re pitting school teachers and admins trying to get kids to pay attention to something often found as boring, against billion dollar businesses pushing punping money into keeping and grabbing kid’s attention. Plus having kids miss school because of a cell phone just doesn’t make sense, especially if the parents are pushing the kid to bring it.
The law just makes it clear and reduces liability for the school, and it’s better for kids.
I wish the world were the way our describe it, and that would work. But it doesn’t.
You pretty obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, almost every class my children have been in for middle school and high school had the children commit to not using their smartphone and sent home a slip to be signed by parents acknowledging that the phones will be taken away and have to be picked up by a parent if they become a distraction for the student. They include similar language in the school student handbook as well.
This law is just ridiculous authoritative nonsense, being used to score a victory for political marketing purposes.
Agreements and enforcement are two different things. Have you talked to any teachers about how this plays out?
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Teachers
can’tshouldn’t take away the phone because it’s an expensive piece of property and … the schoolbeingis liable… Not to mention if something does happen, the parentsmightshould sue the school. The law just makesit clearthis legal and reduces liability for the school, andit’s better foras usual kids are told it’s better for them to be controlled and lack agency.FTFY.
things designed to keep kids addicted to them
You really think that’s what electronic engineers do?
I don’t understand how a state governor can “introduce” a bill.
Isn’t that the legislature’s job?
Anyone can introduce a bill, including you. Only the legislature’s vote on it counts.
This sucks, because smartphones could be such fantastic tools in a classroom. Not that I’m under the illusion that they’re being used in any sort of productive way (or even would be), I was once a kid scrolling through shitposts and memes in class. But having all of the textbooks in one place, the ability to record lectures and whiteboards for later review, and automated schedule management would’ve definitely made my high school education a lot smoother.
The other side of the coin on this. Cell phones as day planners are invaluable. So kids who have spent their lives organizing their schedules on digital calendars are being told “Oops! Sorry. You can’t use that anymore. We caught someone else using it incorrectly.”
Incidentally, I’m old enough to remember how every graphing calculator in the school had video games installed on them and half my class carried a gameboy someone on their persons. This is going to be pure wack-a-mole as a policy. Selectively enforced, with lots of high profile punishments for minor infractions and inevitably highly intrusive misconduct by individual teachers and principles. Richer, whiter students will almost certainly be exempted from the policy through loopholes. Poorer, blacker students will be shoved even more forcefully through the School To Prison Pipeline. Cops will inevitably get involved in the worst possible way.
And all of this will be sold as a means of “reducing distractions”.
Yea, I had my phone taken a few times in school. It’s fine.
But I was programming on my calculator more. My history teacher was the only one to say anything about it since it was very distracting for me. But he never took it.
When using the right tools, phones are already incredibly powerful in an educational environment. There’s a reason why Kahoot achieved meme status: it’s because students love it.
Yeah, and there are some analytical apps for smartphone cameras and sensors, like measuring physio with accel or gyro. But I guess that’s okay to include as a part of a course and not really needed for rest of the school day
Great,I fully support this
Schools should be places to learn, not to be distracted by continuous alerts from phone addicted children
I fully support this as long as they put the pay phones back in the schools so kids can call their parents when they need to
A school shouldn’t make kids pay to call their legal guardian. Make phone calls free.
Yeah nah i went to the office asked to call my mom and go home like a man
Either way, there should some way to do it without having to go to the main office and ask to use their phone or something. When I was a kid we had payphones, back when it cost a dime.
I’m sorry but just wondering here… Why would you need to phone home up to the point where you can’t be without a phone? I didn’t have phones in my school, never needed them either. A lot of people are acting as if not having phones will kill them where in reality, everyone will be just fine.
Like when my kid is finished with his club after school and it’s raining and he’d like me to pick him up. Or he’s at school and realizes he forgot to take his medication. One time his bike was broken and he couldn’t ride it.
I’m glad for you that you never once had a need to call home. I congratulate you. Some people do need to, and I just hope they have a way.
You do understand that the entire world had those “problems” since forever until just only about 10 years ago or so? It wasn’t a life or death back then, it isn’t now.
Sure, there are some limited life or death situations where a mobile phone is critical, none of what you describe is.
Also I was talking about mobile phones in school. They are a deterrent to learning and must go, period. You don’t NEED a mobile phone at school. You take it with you? Put it in your locker.
Kids having a medical emergency at school don’t need a mobile phone, they need teachers and school employees making sure an ambulance is on the way.
Its Raining at a club? Well, I drive my bike home and get wet. I’m sorry but that isn’t going to kill you.
Seriously, whats up with this generation to think that all these new shiny gadgets that they have are critical to life? They’re not. Never were.
And no, I’m not some anti tech genezer. I grew up with computers, I was almost always ahead of everyone in tech, and now work as a CTO. I simply understand that people get way too worked up about their tech gadgets and moreover, I see the hurt mobile phones do to children, which is far greater than the imagined issues people come upmwith if they were without their phone
Why would even that be necessary? It’s school, not jail or drug den…
Kids survived fine without phones for millenia, I’m sure they can survive now. If there is a real emergency, then I’m sure some supervisor can make a call…
What is wrong with you
Nothing.
Im a normal person who grew up during the time that there were no mobile phones, and we got by just fine. Anyone arguing that its torture or dangerous to remove mobile.phones from school really need to calm down. It literally NEVER was an issue until literally the last 10 years of this worlds existence, you cannot come up with any argument that requires kids to have one.
I can come up with a shit tonne of arguments why they shouldn’t have one, though
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/06/police-investigate-shooting-outside-garfield-high-school/
5 days ago. Glad they have their priorities straight.
A lot of public school districts now provide laptops or Chromebooks to the students to use during class while doing… let’s say…minimal oversight at best.
So most of the same inappropriate garbage behaviors and distractions will just be offloaded from the personal phone to the school device.
Ontario has now passed two different bills banning cell phones in school. It’s a great distraction from actual problems. I fully expect we’ll pass a third in a few years if our provincial government is re-elected
Teachers don’t need a sheet of paper at a legislature somewhere to take away cellphones. They can do that already, and if the kids disobey a legislature won’t help. I assume no one is expecting kids to go to prison for having a cellphone
The key thing is that teachers can ban phones in their individual classrooms if the school permits it.
There are many schools in which the senior admin don’t institute phone bans (you’d be surprised how common this is).
Legislating it helps maintain consistency and parity between schools nation wide, which is important as it’s a quality of education issue, so the policy should be consistent across all schools.
I’m not from North America, but the situation is similar across most western democracies.
It’s dumb as fuck.
Hate it if we want (and I have major problems with how young phones and similar devices become glued to kids), but they’re here to stay. They’re a part of modern life, and trying to completely ban them is the most idiotic waste of time and resources possible.
You gotta find a way to limit use in a consistent and evenly applied way so that parents and school staff are all on the same page. Then you just keep enforcing the rules amd explaining them over and over. Eventually, it becomes a manageable annoyance instead of the chaos it currently is
so that parents and school staff are all on the same page.
That’s the problem, they aren’t on the same page. Teachers and admins have to live in the reality of kids having these devices in school, while parents just live in the anxiety of the very rare “what if something happens?”
A lot of things are here to say that you don’t bring to school.
Every teacher I know is happy with this move. Personally, I think kids could do fine with a flip phone. Maybe this will bring them back more on the market, too.
I work in a high school in a California school district where they’re discussing banning cell phones.
Most teachers I’ve talked to about it think it’s really fucking stupid because you’re not going to be able to ban them, partly because a TON of parents showed up at the school board meeting to say they would send them with their kid anyway for a variety of reasons. The board also talked about different things they could buy to take phones and lock them up during class or as students come in. Most of the solutions were pretty expensive, and some of the schools are literally falling apart, so that also pissed people off.
A great start would be to have a campus-wide rule that is CONSISTENT. Some teachers give out a detention if they even see the phone. Some do activities with QR codes and use them as tools. Some have boxes on the corner of their desk and students are required to keep their phone in the box so the teacher can see if they reach for it. We have students with free periods, and if they don’t go home, they hang out outside around campus or in the library. Should phones be banned then too? Or just during class?
There are so many ways to try to deal with it, and at least in my school (not even the district as a whole), every teacher deals with it differently. I doubt the state of New York is all that different.
That makes sense, too. Admittedly, my circle of teachers I know may be less than yours, but the ones I know seemed very exasperated with them. What do you sense a good, consistent rule would be?
Honestly, I’m at a loss. It’s so hard to get a single school of teachers to stick to one policy, let alone at a district or state level. When I send an all-staff email at my school (and they’re occasionally important with scheduling details), Outlook often tells me that only 67% of them even opened it.
I feel like you’d either have to: a) incorporate cellphones as a tool in class and have standard repercussions (e.g. 1st/2nd time earn a detention, 3rd time earn a Saturday school) for kids texting/on social media, or b) do something like a box on the desk so it’s visible but they can’t touch it.
I just don’t think it’s possible to ban them at school. Too many parents don’t respect any school authority figures after COVID with all the culture war stuff (fight to return to full day school, fight to not wear masks, fight to censor bipoc and lgbtq+ books/lessons/celebrations, etc.). I think either way, it’ll just end up being another shitty part of a teacher’s job.
It’s a tough job =(
Gross! Couldn’t even let schools decide, somehow it’s important to ban them state-wide? Piss off.
The state is responsible for the education of children. This absolutely falls within their scope.
A state wide mono-culture based on an unsolved cultural issue isn’t “education” it’s inherently heavy handed.
It also actively harms schools that may be trying to teach students how to use cell phones productively in their lives to help them solve problems rather than pretending as though they don’t exist.
How it’s handled in countries such as Norway or The Netherlands is that those kinds of classes are exempt from the ban. It’s not a hard issue to solve.
So that’s in this bill right?
Right?
Beats me, I don’t live in the US.I stand corrected. It doesn’t include that as far as we know, on account of the bill not existing yet, not even in draft form. If you don’t mind, I’m going to ignore everything else you say now.
It’s not. This is boomer reactionary garbage. Right up there with video games causing crime.
Sure thing, bud. So far all the studies disagree with you, though.
Part of that is teaching people how to control their impulses and stay on task.
Your workspace isn’t going to have you hang your phone up on the wall somewhere when you come into work and have someone tell you “now is the time to use your phone.”
College isn’t going to do it either.
We also could take some cues that maybe this isn’t all as serious as we make it out to be. My high school back in the 2010s gave us a ton of busy work, insisted on making it effectively mandatory if you wanted a decent grade, didn’t let people go to the bathroom without asking permission and using a sign out sheet, insisted every second of every lesson was crucial, and was very strict about not pulling out your cell phone basically ever (kids still snuck texts here and there).
I see more merits for small children, but in general I’m strongly in favor of radical changes to how we approach education … because learning should be fun but is not for so many people … and we forget so much of what we’ve been “taught” anyways.
schools teach how to use cell phones
If you were serious, your country is in deep shit.
You can’t get/keep many jobs without one here, so it would make sense that being able to have/use one should be part of the education for said jobs.
I haven’t a job in ~7+ years that didn’t require 2 factor applications on personal devices to be able to access company resources such as email, elevated security accounts, VPN connections, etc.
Ahh yes, hostile partial quoting to make my country seem unintelligent; welcome to my block list.
Yes, education is important, and this would spare every single school the intense battle vs parents to do the right thing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut off from human connection, social interaction and normal classroom activity,” she said.
The smartphone-ban bill will follow two others Hochul is pushing that outline measures to safeguard children’s privacy online and limit their access to certain features of social networks.
In New York, the bills have faced pushback from big tech, trade groups and other companies, which collectively spent more than $800,000 between October and March lobbying against one or both of them, according to public disclosure records.
This differs from other state-level bills across the country, which place some reliance on self-policing by tech companies to decide which features could be harmful by completing assessments of whether products are “reasonably likely” to be accessed by children.
“Meta itself admits its own parental controls aren’t widely used – they’re often confusing and frequently fail to work as intended,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a policy advocacy organization.
The major social media firms have faced increasing scrutiny over harms against children, including sextortion scams, grooming by predators and worsening mental health.
The original article contains 922 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m 100% in favor of this move. If parents really need their kid to have a phone at school, get them a basic flip phone.
You’re free to parent your own children however you like.
As long as it’s within the legal limits where you live.
Good idea. Its of the main reason why education today is faltering. Allowing too many screen in the class room is simply a bad idea. These kids have the no ability to stay focused in any way. They way they learn guarantees many will never learn to read without a screen and the internet. I see it often in my current job.
LOL good luck with that guys
