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Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

yle.fi

121–130 of 491 posts

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#121
post #4

Where they not already? In America they started off banned as soon as kids started getting them in the early 00s, but then some years later the bans became unenforced or even undone because, apparently, parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.) But that shouldn't apply in Finland at all.

At least in my time they were pretty much banned. You could have your phone on you but if you got caught using it during class, they'd just confiscate it. Of course, some exceptions apply like if a teacher informed of some upcoming event, you could pull up your phone and set it in your calendar without getting chewed out. Not sure what's happened since.

I went to primary school in 1999-2008 and it was the same for me. After that I started my secondary education in business school in 2008 and there were basically zero restrictions on smartphone use. Smartphones probably became ubiquitous in primary school after that too, but this law seems to also target secondary schools which sounds stricter than it used to be.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#122
This was mostly a kind of political posturing law by a deeply unpopular government. Teachers and schools already had the authority to ban phone use in class, including that they must be put into a cabinet, and most in fact already did.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol. If we trust them with that surely we can let them do things during the day without constant adult supervision.

Do you remember yourself at the age of 16?

Sure.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#124

[flagged]

A cynical take is To keep kids out of the labor market, and to keep them busy so the parents can participate in the economy.

I think day care for comprehensive education is main goal. Then with secondary education is to make them somewhat useful in work life. As a lot of truly unskilled labour does not do well in modern economy.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol. If we trust them with that surely we can let them do things during the day without constant adult supervision.

The legal drinking age in Finland is 18 or 20, depending on the ABV. Where us the drinking age 16?

Belgium as well.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#126
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It is not possible. Why couldn't the school have prepared me for that when I was 16? Why does preparation take precisely 12 years and only then I can really learn anything.

Maybe you're right. You're taking your own anecdotes as evidence that schooling is useless. If schooling and university didn't teach you not to do that then maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be.

The curricula for school and early university semesters are largely standardized, which allows me to generalize my observations as all other students had to learn roughly the same in school and university.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#127
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of child labor laws.

In which country are 16 year olds not allowed to work?

In my nation 16-year olds may work outside of school hours (school is mandatory until they are 18 years old). There are other hard limits on which types of jobs and the time of day they may work. Work shall never interfere with school.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#128
post #89

The main (literal) takeaway is that teachers can now confiscate phones. Over here, at the other end of the Baltic sea, there's an ongoing debate about phones in the classroom and some schools have regulations in place regarding the use of electronic devices, but these are largely toothless as otherwise they would infringe on the right to property. I graduated high school before the smartphone era, so I don't have muc…

> they would infringe on the right to property.

Can children bring in portable hifi systems? What about those squeaky chicken toys? Or a water pistol?

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. If the code is decent and shows effort I have no problem. If it's sloppy it shite code. I really don't have time to care about what my peers think of me. It's work. I don't want to communicate with them outside work. Work is just another mind space that stays at work. I am strict when it comes to code, I expect the same. I want working maintainable code to enable me to do my job. If people dread submittin…

Ok, so the PR never gets approved and their work never makes it into prod, right?

No. I put my view on to reject PR and they go to the next best person to approve.

Blag the senior with bullshite of: "I will fix this in the next revision, it works for now" and don't.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#130
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely reading/writing are useful skills that most people did not have before school was mandatory.

I did not take me twelve years to learn to read and write. What an awful excuse. What made me good at reading was reading books outside of school . In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.

> In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.

You keep saying this but I have a hard time believing this is true; in fact I'm not even sure what "more" means (objectively) in this context.

Let's see, in the 12 years of schooling you've learned at the very least: how to read and write, how to interpret texts, how to read literature, how to compose an essay, how to speak, read, and write a second language, a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths, several topics of physics and chemistry, biology, geology, and other natural sciences (in more or less detail), several years of history, and mandatory physical exercise to top it off. What magical university did you go to that in a single semester you learned more than that :D Unless I'm missing something.

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