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Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

theguardian.com

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Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#201

Post by pantalaimon »

vacuity wrote: post #156
pantalaimon wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s not "happening anyway", most people take drugs just fine without getting addicted. It’s when you are in a lousy situation and you take them regularly as an escape that you have a problem.

Most people may be fine, but considering that the CDC reported nearly 92,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020[0], I think there is a problem. Granted, it's a low percentage of the population, but that feels like the whole reducing people to statistics. The number seems to be growing, and anyways, you don't need to be on the immediate path to drug overdose for addiction to be an issue. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/product…

Overdose deaths are mainly caused by opiates, the surge is due to fentanyl. [0] This is also due to other drugs being cut with fentanyl. I'm not saying other drugs are otherwise harmless, far from it, but opiates are particularly sinister and addictive.

Most people know this, but many of those who seek out opiates are in a particularly lousy spot already where they don't care if it will ruin their life.

For other drugs that are used recreationally, the rate of addicts is comparable to that of alcohol users, if not lower.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db428.htm#fig4

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#202

Post by kjkjadksj »

falcolas wrote: post #177
xwdv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious… as a kid pulling out a Gameboy in the middle of class and just sitting there playing a game would feel like a death sentence. The equivalent of walking into a bank with an assault rifle firing wildly in the air.

And yet children playing games on their phones and aren't the equivalent of your wildly inappropriate metaphor?

Its a lot easier to use a phone one handed discretely than a gameboy

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#203

Post by delfinom »

verve_rat wrote: post #64
bgribble wrote: post #42

My kid just graduated from a NYC high school that had a complete ban on phones in school. The kids checked in their phones at the front desk on the way in and got them back when leaving. It was by no means watertight -- many (most?) kids had a "burner" phone that was dead or broken or whatever that they turned in (because nobody would believe a highschooler who said they didn't have their phone with them lol) and the…

Did 12 year olds take the subway to school 20, 30 years ago? (Genuinely asking, never lived in a place with a subway, but took the bus all the time at that age.)

Yes, we did. NYC even gives out student Metrocards that provide free transit to kids.

I took a 30 minute ferry ride and then subway to school each day in NYC ;)

And kids still do it.

Heck, outside my middle school in NYC, they had a line-up specifically for regular transit buses that were scheduled to stop there just when school let out. The only kids that qualified for yellow school bus service were those that lived more than a half a mile from a bus/subway stop.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#204

Post by vacuity »

sneak wrote: post #188
vacuity wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is unfortunate, it's not an argument against mass transit in general.

It's an argument against school-aged children riding mass transit unsupervised.

Seems like a fixable problem.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#205

Post by xwdv »

Loughla wrote: post #74
MisterTea wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing to think about is how these things obliterate creativity - In school If I was bored I would doodle in the back of my notebooks during class. Drawings of things, places, trying to do nature scenes. But mostly drawings of machinery, robots and electronics nonsense. Towards senor year when I learned some programming it was code. Those little ephemera works feel important - exercises of the mind, creativity…

It's not that they obliterate creativity, it's that they shape it in one or two very specific ways. Let me tell a story with some background as an example: Our rule in our family is that smart devices are a reward; finish your chores, get x number of minutes on tablet; do a good dead unasked get x number of minutes on tablet, that sort of thing. The one major difference in our family is that all smart devices (save f…

If left unchecked these behaviors go beyond playtime and into careers.

Kids without harmful social media influence will often go into careers where they do useful things.

Kids who watch rich influencers all day think about how they can make money making YouTube content, or playing video games or acting like an NPC, or even just starting an OnlyFans.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#206

Post by carlosjobim »

greatwave1 wrote: post #197
carlosjobim wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swap the word "raise" to "influence" if you prefer. A person cannot really influence themselves.

Yes they can, people can (and should) have some influence over their own life.

Then you're trying hard to misunderstand, and what do you gain from that? There's no point in arguing about semantics.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#207

Post by mixmastamyk »

theshrike79 wrote: post #14
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #2

We've come full circle. When I was in high school (2013), smartphones had just started to become the default (i had a galaxy s2) and cell phones had been banned in-class since they became common for every teenager to have one (as early as 2007 for me, probably earlier than that for older millennials) I guess at some point teachers gave up trying to enforce the rules. Or the idea of being away from your phone for hour…

When I was in school, we broke a teacher's curriculum by me having a digital camera (Agfa CL20) The teacher's process was to put a slide on the projector and have everyone write it down. Repeat until class is over, maybe with minimal discussion. I just snapped a picture of a slide and told the teacher to move to the next one, I already sent it to everyone in class =)

The process of writing down information is one aspect of learning it.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#208

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

unethical_ban wrote: post #163
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #136

I wish education went the other way, focusing on integrating educational tools to adapt to a world where everyone has access to the world's full repertoire of knowledge at all times. Teach kids to integrate these powerful tools as part of their learning and problem solving skills. By the time a kid is out of high school they should have a powerful index of knowledge accessible from all devices to help them tackle com…

How do you integrate Instagram into a lesson plan, and why? Banning personal smartphones and forcing kids to focus on the class is the objective, not to be arbitrarily Luddite.

There are more uses for smartphones than just Instagram and TikTok. My point is that we should be developing tools to help students organize and index everything they learn so it can be put to use when they need to solve problems in the real world. Education as it's currently done mostly focuses on getting students to be able to pass some exam, after which they will quickly forget everything learned because it's no longer needed.

Taking away a student's most powerful tool is crippling their development capabilities. Education should focus on integrating and leveraging existing modern tools to empower student capabilities and problem solving skills.

A trite example: imagine a student has to solve a word search. For an older person the only way to solve this would've been to perform the task manually. But younger students could learn how to scan the grid with OCR tools, and then write a simple script to search for the words. Ideally students would be familiarized with a full set of advanced capabilities and programming tools to be able to outperform someone doing a manual search. This example is basic, but it can be extrapolated to far more practical real world problems.

Instead of giving students basic problems, unleash them on more complex domains without instructions and get them to engage with LLMs and other tools to try and solve the problem. Then if they get stuck, help walk them through arriving at the solution. This is what education should be about.

I want students to learn to leverage all of their tools to maximum efficiency. The goal isn't to get students to pass some stupid exam, it's for them to be able to solve complex problems in the real world.

An analogy. If we had a tree-climbing competition, where some students are allowed to use their hands and feet while others are only allowed to use their feet, I bet you that the ones that are allowed to use both hands and feet will be far more effectively at climbing. And the ones forced to just use their feet will be left wondering why they weren't allowed to use their hands.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#209

Post by vacuity »

pantalaimon wrote: post #201
vacuity wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people may be fine, but considering that the CDC reported nearly 92,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020[0], I think there is a problem. Granted, it's a low percentage of the population, but that feels like the whole reducing people to statistics. The number seems to be growing, and anyways, you don't need to be on the immediate path to drug overdose for addiction to be an issue. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/product…

Overdose deaths are mainly caused by opiates, the surge is due to fentanyl. [0] This is also due to other drugs being cut with fentanyl. I'm not saying other drugs are otherwise harmless, far from it, but opiates are particularly sinister and addictive. Most people know this, but many of those who seek out opiates are in a particularly lousy spot already where they don't care if it will ruin their life. For other dru…

I don't exempt alcohol as a drug. At best, drugs are helpful in moderation. Social media, literal drugs, whatever potential object of addiction are trouble. There's enough trouble with society already.

Re: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

#210

Post by kjkjadksj »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #136

I wish education went the other way, focusing on integrating educational tools to adapt to a world where everyone has access to the world's full repertoire of knowledge at all times. Teach kids to integrate these powerful tools as part of their learning and problem solving skills. By the time a kid is out of high school they should have a powerful index of knowledge accessible from all devices to help them tackle com…

The problem is that most kids aren’t using these tools like you might. They are just wasting time doom scrolling junk content in the place of learning.
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