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France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

theguardian.com

101–110 of 358 posts

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#101
post #85

Blanket bans of this kind rarely work, and policies like this are usually caused by other factors. My primary school had a concrete playground without any trees, and school policy forbid us from running (so we wouldn't hurt ourselves), from playing games like tag (so we wouldn't run) or clapping each other's hands (because we could hurt ourselves). We also couldn't play card games to protect against gambling, nor gat…

> nor gather in a group of 5 or more people for some reason

Seriously...? There is like several worlds between this (even if it's true) and the topic.

You should ask yourself why your parents didn't do anything against those ridiculous rules and I assume you grew up in some normal western country and not in NK or something where I would assume those rules to be normal.

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#102
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The minister said the ban was also a “public health message to families”, adding: “It’s good that children are not too often, or even at all, in front of a screen before the age of seven.” Citation-fucking-required for this one, with conclusive evidence proving that it's true for all kids under seven. AKA he pulled it out of his ass.

Why do you seem so angry about this ?

There is a frightening amount of people having huge problems with the rule on here. I'd guess they are quite young and grew up in this unregulated time, not even knowing what they've missed.

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a step too far. Imagine they banned books during breaks. That's how far this is. I get you want to not have them use them during class but that is the general policing class behavior that teachers are supposed to do. Why ban them during breaks when it doesn't hurt their studies?

Mobile phones get stolen and can take pictures/videos that can then be used for bullying others, it's quite different from a book. I don't have an opinion regarding this new law but those are the arguments I heard in the news. It will still be allowed to use mobile phones for "emergencies" from what I read, i.e. a teacher is not here and a child wants to contact a parent regarding that.

> It will still be allowed to use mobile phones for "emergencies" from what I read, i.e. a teacher is not here and a child wants to contact a parent regarding that.

If that happened in my son's school (he's 5) I would expect one of the pupils to simply wander into another classroom, or reception. Given the number of parents who work full time I'm not sure what good a child phoning their parent is going to be.

In the highly unlikely event I need to contact my child, I will phone the school and they will pass on a message.

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones tend to be distraction machines, books much less so.

Books are distraction machines on a different level. When I become immersed in books I tend to deprive myself of sleep, neglect my daily chores and procrastinate my work. I do feel much better about periods where I read a lot, otherwise I tend to incessantly grab my phone to check blogs, news sites and stock/crypto prices.

I would say that as someone who is very addicted to books and will tend to escape reality through novels that, yes, for a certain kind of people, books can be much worse than mobile phones.

I've had days where I didn't eat because I was immersed in a story, I will skip sleep, neglect my work, not shower when I'm inside a good novel. And, that behavior will continue until I've finished reading the entire series.

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#106

I think this is a mainly positive move. Mobile phones are massive distractions to children, especially in a school context. When it comes to young children, I am skeptic to the use of digital technology in education in general. School should help incorporate good habits into a child's routine, such as reading books, and nailing reliance on phones into children is not something we want to be doing in schools.

Digital technology has its place, but in its present form, it's too easy to get distracted. My nephews would probably spend 10x as much time looking up youtube videos and playing pay-to-win apps than they would googling things if they had access to their phones in class.

I agree that in general the drive to "put a computer in every classroom" is absolutely moronic; in general, I think teachers don't adequately understand which technology is useful and cost-effective and which is not, and especially for teaching administrators, "technology" is just some nebulous black-box codeword for "expensive equipment." However, there is value in teaching children how to use technology effectively. For example, very few people know how to properly craft a google search, or how to discern a reliable source from a poor one. A lot of people, and especially children, can't even tell the difference between sponsored content and regular content. These are very important to teach children and I think this should be done in a scholastic context, as few parents would even have the skills to teach this. The problem is teaching kids these skills without distracting them - the secondary problem is that they're probably not learning from people who are very knowledgable themselves.

I think the ideal solution is some kind of locked-down, school-only (as in, it must physically stay within the school) tablet or laptop. It's probably counter-productive to spend too much time teaching children to write/read from physical media when >95% of a child's exposure to media from now to the foreseeable future will be digital. Ironically maybe our best bet is a "digital typewriter"

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#107
post #81
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't rely on books as you can't carry enough of them with you for them to replace having to know things, and a phone is a fundamentally different thing from even an infinite number of books anyway, as it is a tool that let's you communicate--in private--with people around the world. It is totally legitimate for someone to have an issue with one of these objects and not the other entirely different object.

Well, maybe I use my phone very different from others. For me the "read things on it" aspect is the most important part. Before I had a smartphone (I got my first two years ago) I tended to carry five or six books around all the time. Now I don't need to anymore and can still read whenever I want.

Compared to phones, books offer delayed gratification. Although it is possible to come to a library and only look at the first and last page of a hundred books, not many people do so.

Stuff one can get on phones are however massive dopamine inducing machines.

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deeper question is - how do we make it not unusual, but a normal things that kids just do?

There was a Mac Plus in the classroom at school. We were given some classes in LogoWriter, and I excelled at it. My dad found an abandoned Mac Plus next to the church one evening, but it was broken. He gave it to me and told me that if I fix it, it's mine. Of course it was much slower than the family computer, but I wanted my own! So I learned how to replace the motherboard, and kept writing more programs on it for f…

And if they're going to play games, is it more disruptive to throw virtual fruit against virtual knives, or real paper balls at real classmates?

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#109
post #62
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those are true, not in any systemic sense. Some old people love to grouse about how Things Were Better Then, and how Children Used To Respect Authority. It's been that way for millennia. You ever read Heinlein? Back in the 1950s, his "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" complained about how schools were too touchy-feely, intent more on having students feel good than providing a good education.

'Some old people love to grouse about how Things Were Better Then, and how Children Used To Respect Authority...' I don't know if things were better then but (as a kid in the 70's) we certainly respected authority because the threat of physical violence was a real one. I am not saying that was a good thing by the way, just explaining.

As a kid in the 80s I didn't respect authority because I read Enid Blyton books (written in the 40s), who taught me that the local police were at best benign, but more likely incompetent.

Re: France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

#110

I had a flip phone with no internet in HS, I played minesweeper on it about half a day everyday at school. It was the only way I had of staying awake during some of my classes. I literally fell asleep during class if I didn't have some stimulation. Not having that would've been a torture since falling asleep is a good way to get in trouble. Before I had my phone I drew. About 90% of my ink expenditure in school was d…

> Before I had my phone I drew.

There you go then. Although I'm sure either activity exasperated teachers, I hope you'll agree that drawing is a much more creative and useful skill.

If you would have had access to a networked phone, you might not have gotten anything done. Not even doodling.

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