Austria did too.
Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
161–170 of 491 posts
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#162Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
I think you're right in a way because if school wants to prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent with tech. But at the same time, I think banning smartphones is perfectly fine because you can still use computers and stuff. It's not like they're going back to quills and ink. Smartphones fry your attention span and enable bullying. And if parents want to have emergency contact, you can always have a s…
Using a dumb-phone is the reason a pre-teen neighbor of mine got bullied. So much that she ended up stealing money to get herself a smartphone. Shortly afterwards the parents folded and became less strict with their anti-consumerism stance.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
the goal of school and what it is used for are different thing. School is childcare
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In my experience and observation, as the age and school level increases, there's more actual learning going on.
By the time you're 16, I'd say a significant amount of school time is decently geared toward learning, and you're old enough to supplement that yourself during spares or downtime if you want to.
At younger ages though, it definitely seems like more of a daycare service than a learning focused environment. The free daycare is important, but I do feel bad for the kids who are stuck in that absurd environment. Someone can come up to you and stab you with a pencil for no reason and that's just par for the course.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is: smartphones exist. The young adults these children will become will live in a world where smartphones are an essential part of their life. Using a smartphone is a practical skill. That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea. It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit like with calculators, there are clas…
Many real world distractions exist. Drugs and alcohol exist, and will be part of many of these children's lives. Just because something exists in the real world doesn't mean it belongs in schools. Frankly, smartphones should be discussed in health class, much like drugs and alcohol, and in a similar tone.
It's not really smartphones by themselves that need to be discussed, but rather (simplified) the dopamine loop reward system.
Explain it to young kids as the smartphone giving you a 'treat' for doing nothing. Eventually you get lazy and won't do any work because you get a 'treat' from the smartphone for free whereas if you play sports or hang out with your friends you only get the 'treat' for doing something.
Then explain that very smart people have taught the smartphone how to make the 'treat' tastier and tastier until you spend most of your time chasing treats instead of doing and enjoying things.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#165Austria did too.
Hungary too
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think are the factors that caused this fall?
Some common themes in the conversation are neoliberal cost cutting, failed attempts at inclusion and immigration. * Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have made significant cuts to education and the general wellbeing of younger generations. * Modern schools are increasingly built like open plan offices with dozens of students crammed into "learning spaces" instead of traditional classrooms. This reduces…
In summary, Finland has brought the policies that have caused much destruction in other Western countries into their own education system, where those policies have also caused destruction, much to everyone's amazement.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#167Earlier 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.
> I did not take me twelve years to learn to read and write.
It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write at a 12th grade level.
You could study it for another 4 or more years at university if you wanted to develop your skills further.
> What made me good at reading was reading books outside of school.
This is your personal experience. I learned to read and write quite well at school and was well-prepared for university.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
All students at university were unprepared from school or only some, i.e., performance of different schools, classes, etc. would be heterogeneous?
Curricula are standardized. All students experienced almost the exact same disconnect. This is also not some secret, all Professors know this and some try their hardest to bridge the gap.
Maybe aligned/frameworked/pooled but no full uniform testing or single curriculum across all the states in Germany, for example - so variations exist and some schools might prepare better than others.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#169Earlier 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?
In Switzerland, it is 16 for beer and wine, and 18 for spirits (or drinks that contain spirits, like "alcopops", even if they have a low ABV). I think Austria and Germany are the same.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is: smartphones exist. The young adults these children will become will live in a world where smartphones are an essential part of their life. Using a smartphone is a practical skill. That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea. It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit like with calculators, there are clas…
Smartphone should not be compared to a calculator. The closer analogy would be kids bringing in their friends, cousins, music, games, photo albums, films etc into a class and interacting with them.
Glossy magazines, handy-dandy mobbing tools, porn, a kiddie slot machine, a big stack of totally random niche zines that include yes the icky ones, a kiddie panopticon, their anxious parents, a gaggle of marketers and influencers grooming their income streams (this is a fun game) and interacting with them.