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Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

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Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#261

Post by criddell »

torpfactory wrote: post #70
GuB-42 wrote: post #50

Earlier 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…

What’s the skill though? Most everything you do on a smartphone is trivially easy thanks to all those hard working app developers. We all know from experience that the vast majority of actual phone time is spent consuming some kind of media. I’m not at all worried about kids not learning to use a smartphone well enough- that part will sort itself out. It’s all the other (boring) skills that get pushed aside in the mi…

Where my kids went to high school, a smart phone was required. The teacher would encourage kids to put assignments and tests on their calendar. They would use the camera to take a picture of a home work assignment written on a whiteboard. They used the camera for photo and movie projects. They had some twitter-like app for the teacher to broadcast to all students.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#262

Post by Jolter »

adverbly wrote: post #221
nabla9 wrote: post #150

It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take away. Current legislation allows the teacher to tell a student to put their phone away in a pocket or backpack, for example, where it will not be a distraction. The use of phones during breaks cannot be completely banned, as students have fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees everyone…

So wait did they ban it for teachers and staff as well?

Staff are expected to use phones and other digital tools in order to do their job, so I don’t think this comment is as witty as you might think.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#263

Post by bombcar »

dist-epoch wrote: post #225
RHSeeger wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter brings her phone to school with her - If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to come drive her to school - If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call us and let us know she won't be home at her normal time - If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it - etc, etc, etc There's a ton of reasons for her to have her phone on her. Enough so that, when she gets p…

> If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it Curious what this will lead to. When she'll get a job, if she'll forget her laptop at home, will she call you and ask you to bring it to the workplace?

Depending on where people are relative to each other, absolutely yes.

I’ve done similar for friends and family.

For most kids, the embarrassment of a parent appearing during the school day is enough to really negatively enforce forgetting things, at least after middle school starts.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#264

Post by thinkingtoilet »

Gormo wrote: post #196
nabla9 wrote: post #150

It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take away. Current legislation allows the teacher to tell a student to put their phone away in a pocket or backpack, for example, where it will not be a distraction. The use of phones during breaks cannot be completely banned, as students have fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees everyone…

> It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take away. It's a strange concept to hold that there are rights that can't be taken away, but then take them away merely by passing legislation.

Not at all. Libel can punish you for speech. Defamation can punish you for expression. If you break a law, you no longer can vote in some states (I heavily disagree with this, just stating a fact) or own a gun. Etc... Etc... This is very normal.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#265

Post by dagss »

RHSeeger wrote: post #172
PeterStuer wrote: post #3

If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome world and social model and some practical skills and basic physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a lot from those aims.

My daughter brings her phone to school with her - If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to come drive her to school - If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call us and let us know she won't be home at her normal time - If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it - etc, etc, etc There's a ton of reasons for her to have her phone on her. Enough so that, when she gets p…

1) Point 1 and 3 can in many families be an impediment to the development of the child rather than a good thing. If you can always call on helicopter parents to solve your issues you do not get the experience that even if you mess up / get into a bad situation, in the end, you can solve the situation yourself -- or if it is not solved, that you at least survive it and life goes on. Important life skills.

2) The entire list can be equally well solved by dumbphones without TikTok and Snapchat. Which is what such bans as this is about.

3) It is always about pros/cons. In Scandinavia phones have (in my view as a parent and married to a teacher) essentially destroyed education wherever they are allowed in the pocket/backpack of the student during class.

Not to speak about downsides to social life. E.g., people not attempting dancing in high school proms because there are videos taken everywhere. People not showering in gyms due to phones. Just two examples. SO MANY things are killed by the phones.

The benefits have to be weighed against the quite massive downsides.

--

They banned phones on the high school where my wife teaches last year and she is basically a changed person. Instead of spending 50% of class time policing phone use, she can, you know, actually teach.

(She still has to deal with a generation addicted to dopamine, but a habit of phone confiscation during class is at least a massive improvement.)

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#266

Post by DocTomoe »

watwut wrote: post #94
constantcrying wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the aim of schools? It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany. There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you described I do not think they were ever considered. All around school was a giant waste of time.

Quite a lot of Germans learn quite a lot. German schools expect quite a lot from students that do actually want to go to better schools. But yes, it is possible to slack through it all if you want to slack.

Heavily depends on where you went to school.

Bavaria, Saxony, Baden-Württemberg? Preferrably Gymnasium? Preferrably a state school, not a city school? Hell, you have good chances!

Any other Land? Something on a lower tier? Nah, easy going. There are schools in Germany which are famous for breeding 16-year-olds who can barely read.

Disclaimer: Writer is German, Württemberger, visited a state gymnasium

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#267

Post by raron »

dweekly wrote: post #229
RHSeeger wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter brings her phone to school with her - If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to come drive her to school - If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call us and let us know she won't be home at her normal time - If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it - etc, etc, etc There's a ton of reasons for her to have her phone on her. Enough so that, when she gets p…

Those are good reasons to have a smart watch with cellular capabilities. They are not good reasons to have a phone at school. In terms of QOL: there is a meaningful body of research about the impact of giving a teenage girl access to a phone on their quality of life. https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/7/576 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245195882...

Those studies speak about social media addiction, smartphone addiction, and excessive phone use and not about having a phone.

If you want to prevent the negative effects of social media and (designed to be) addictive apps, then you should ban social media and addictive apps, and not phones (because that would just mask the symptoms).

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#268

Post by eitally »

GuB-42 wrote: post #50
PeterStuer wrote: post #3

If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome world and social model and some practical skills and basic physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a lot from those aims.

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…

Fwiw, my local public school district (I have three kids at three different public neighborhood schools) does provide kids instruction like this, as well as lots of other programming around empathy, acceptance, drug/alcohol use, common health/physiology topics, driver training, etc. This is my tax dollars being spent on things that aren't core academic topics but imho absolutely help develop youth into better decision makers with a more holistic view of society than many of them might otherwise given their home situations.

The middle and high schools here ban phone use during class, and the high school confiscates phones (and grants detentions) for students who flaunt the ban. In practice, it usually works with teachers using those door mounted phone holders as a way to take attendance. Put your phone in the pouch when you get to class, and grab it when you leave. Occasionally, a teacher will also ban smartwatches if they become too distracting, but this is not common.

That said, many teachers take advantage of their students having phones to augment their methods & curriculum, and afaik this is the teachers' prerogative.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#269

Post by bombcar »

cudder wrote: post #190
js8 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think are the factors that caused this fall?

I always felt like the teaching method in primary school was very much like "no pupil left behind". Teachers really tried their best to keep everyone up to speed on what they taught. If you were a huge troublemaker or just couldn't keep up with the (slowish) pace you would get moved to a special class where you would get more attention (even smaller class sizes) and wouldn't slow the rest of the group down. As a "sma…

The solution is almost always more teachers (though at some point you have two teachers per kid and that’s likely to be excessive).

A class of five can handle darn near anything; a class of fifty needs everyone to be as nearly identical as possible.

You can artificially increase the number of “teachers” by combining classes of different grades sometimes. 12 year olds can do great assisting 6 year olds.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#270

Post by bluGill »

kube-system wrote: post #167
constantcrying wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is no such thing as a 12th grade level. 6th grade is all the farther English is taught. There are sometimes things called levels above that, but they are not levels in English they are levels in some specific specialization and have more to do with that specialization than reading. (doctors would not be expected to understand deep computer science writing even though doctors have very advanced reading skills in a medical domain).

I understand Spanish only goes up to a 5th grade level while Japanese to 9th. This is a reflection on how complex the writing systems are, and not the kids, intelligence, or school systems.

The years after you have your basic reading down are used to learn other skills that are of general use in life for everyone.

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