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.
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.
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.
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.
Right. Probably correct
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Minus the lobotomies, that’s still happening.
To be fair, I think I need that lobotomy to deal with the US as a whole right now…
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.
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”
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.
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
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.
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.
It’s not that hard. You keep it in your backpack, and never take it out the whole day while school is in session.
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
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.
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?
I’m a man with a very particular set of skills…
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.
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.
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.
