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Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

washingtonpost.com

71–80 of 252 posts

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is a red herring and justification for helicopter parents to normalize their micromanaging. We live in Plano, TX, just a few minutes south of the Allen Outlet massacre. Yesterday my son texted me at noon "Shooting threat at school" and "It’s a rumor though but a lot of people are leaving anyway". You can bet your life I was in my car and speeding down the street to get him out ASAP within 60 seconds of receiving th…

285 children have died in US school shootings since 1764. In 2021, 50 million students were enrolled in public schools in prekindergarten to grade 12. That's a 0.00057% chance your kid dies in a school shooting. You are being hysterical.

An even better statistic would be: how many children were saved by a smart phone in a school shooting?

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#72

Its overdue. As a principal I used to ban phones in our school. Back before every kid had one. If they were caught playing on them or if it rang during class, the phone went to the teacher's desk til the end of class. If it happened a second time, it came to my office til the end of the day. And a 3rd violation meant it stayed in my office til the end of the week. That last one rarely happened as any child who lost a…

When I taught high school English, admin never drew such a hard line. Teachers were additionally told that we would be personally responsible for the replacement cost of a phone should it become damaged/lost if taken from a student. As you would expect, phones were rarely taken off students, and they were a constant frustration.

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#73

Its overdue. As a principal I used to ban phones in our school. Back before every kid had one. If they were caught playing on them or if it rang during class, the phone went to the teacher's desk til the end of class. If it happened a second time, it came to my office til the end of the day. And a 3rd violation meant it stayed in my office til the end of the week. That last one rarely happened as any child who lost a…

Maybe there's a technical solution for this.

Companies could give students a special form of (e)sim card where the school could disable data and block calls that does not go to family, emergency services etc. during class, and then unblock it automatically when there are no classes.

I'm sure it's not as simple as suggested above, otherwise someone would have made it already. But perhaps there is a similar technical solution for this problem, as parents and schools are unable to fix it on their own.

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#74
post #2

There's a phrase for something that people can't stop using -- addictive substance. We (and companies) need to ditch the equivocation and be honest about what we created. ( Edit ) > Parents have been split on the issue, with many critics insisting their children need phones in case of an emergency. Is a red herring and justification for helicopter parents to normalize their micromanaging. Someone shouldn't be texting…

> Is a red herring and justification for helicopter parents to normalize their micromanaging. We live in Plano, TX, just a few minutes south of the Allen Outlet massacre. Yesterday my son texted me at noon "Shooting threat at school" and "It’s a rumor though but a lot of people are leaving anyway". You can bet your life I was in my car and speeding down the street to get him out ASAP within 60 seconds of receiving th…

> The reality of schools and public life in the USA today means my family not being without a way to contact each other immediately, in real time, is a no-go.

You have badly misread the statistics on this, if you're that worried about it.

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#75
It's about time to start calling it an addiction. I've seen people that can't walk down a street and look where they are going, because their head is glued to the smartphone. Some people can't even focus on a conversation, because they are constantly checking on their smartphone every other second.

Smartphones are great, but as the old saying goes, "moderation is best in all things". Kids/students do have to learn control, discipline, and focus. Otherwise it is very likely to have a negative outcome.

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

285 children have died in US school shootings since 1764. In 2021, 50 million students were enrolled in public schools in prekindergarten to grade 12. That's a 0.00057% chance your kid dies in a school shooting. You are being hysterical.

We WERE at the Allen Outlets on Saturday. We left 5 minutes before the shooting began. If I had purchased one more item from a store we would have been right there. Tell me again how I am being hysterical. This country is going down in flames and not everyone can see the fire.

A traumatic experience for sure. One might almost think that after such an experience, you'd overreact at the slightest hint of anything like that ever happening again.

You are being hysterical.

(I am sorry for sounding dismissive. I pray for the safety of your family.)

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#77
post #2

There's a phrase for something that people can't stop using -- addictive substance. We (and companies) need to ditch the equivocation and be honest about what we created. ( Edit ) > Parents have been split on the issue, with many critics insisting their children need phones in case of an emergency. Is a red herring and justification for helicopter parents to normalize their micromanaging. Someone shouldn't be texting…

> Is a red herring and justification for helicopter parents to normalize their micromanaging. We live in Plano, TX, just a few minutes south of the Allen Outlet massacre. Yesterday my son texted me at noon "Shooting threat at school" and "It’s a rumor though but a lot of people are leaving anyway". You can bet your life I was in my car and speeding down the street to get him out ASAP within 60 seconds of receiving th…

> You can bet your life I was in my car and speeding down the street to get him out ASAP within 60 seconds of receiving the text.

"Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 1–54"[0]

I wonder if you speeding in your car increased the likely hood of death for someone more than collecting your son from a rumored school shooting. Not saying you were wrong to do that, obviously this is something that comes to the front of your mind when something is wrong at a school. The disconnect between risks we find acceptable, and those we don't is interesting though.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index....

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#78
post #17

Why do parents need to "check-in" on their kids during school hours? The fact that some parent are calling students in the middle of class is particularly egregious.

Former teacher. There is no reason. Parents can always get in touch with students via the office if there's a legitimate need. That never stopped parents from calling and texting their kids during class time of course.

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is a red herring and justification for helicopter parents to normalize their micromanaging. We live in Plano, TX, just a few minutes south of the Allen Outlet massacre. Yesterday my son texted me at noon "Shooting threat at school" and "It’s a rumor though but a lot of people are leaving anyway". You can bet your life I was in my car and speeding down the street to get him out ASAP within 60 seconds of receiving th…

> You can bet your life I was in my car and speeding down the street to get him out ASAP within 60 seconds of receiving the text. "Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people ages 1–54"[0] I wonder if you speeding in your car increased the likely hood of death for someone more than collecting your son from a rumored school shooting. Not saying you were wrong to do that, obviously…

Some enterprising individual should figure up how many highway miles driven with a kid in the car it takes to exceed the annual risk from school shootings. I bet it's not many, but nobody thinks a thing of driving their kids around.

Re: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough

#80
I think it's just a result of society insisting that their entire lives revolve around a phone due to convenience. Kids these days (I feel old saying that at age 33!) now are raised by parents who were around for the first wave of everyone having a phone, except those parents' phones up until college or later were dumb phones that could call, text, and take pictures (and play snake!). Thus, their well-intentioned move to give their kids a phone is self-defeating and will only hurt in the long run.

I went to a public school and don't really remember at any level of classes where my classmates were outright addicted to their phones - some would occasionally text or take pictures or whatever, but perhaps that was due to the limitations of what the device could do.

I do understand that modern problems need to be addressed with modern solutions, and smartphones, in a vacuum, aren't a bad thing - they open up a lot of avenues of education that were simply not possible when I was growing up....and I'm all for that, I think its better to prepare kids for the world of tomorrow rather than the world of yesterday. However, there needs to be a limit to how intertwined technology becomes with modern educational practices.

I dread the US becoming like China, where people's lives revolve around a smartphone from a very early age. Sadly, we might have missed that boat already.

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