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Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

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Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#281

Post by smoe »

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…

While I see the utility of a phone in places where children can't move around independently for one reason or another, I reckon that in Finland, most children walk or cycle to and from school on their own starting in like first grade. So there's no need for this kind of coordination.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#282

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

nabla9 wrote: post #271
Gormo wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's how it is everywhere. Constitution gives rights, exceptions must be set by law. You have free speech... then comes the list of exceptions, incitement of violence, defamation (libel and slander), Child pornography, perjury, speech integral to criminal conduct, copyright infringement, state secrets,

The US constitution doesn't give any rights. It restricts the power of the government to curtail rights that already exist.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#283

Post by smckk »

Social media is lipstick on a pig. There's verbal and physical abuse, exclusion, name-calling, stalking and all sorts of inhumane behaviour towards each other in real life. Social media just digitizes that and is a reflection of the ugly parts of the socializing aspect of human life.

The ~10% good that comes from keeping in touch with people, for example, is not really worth it especially for kids.

Whatever you do you are going to have to deal with the negative aspects of society in-person, and we've all kind of accepted that. Social media just doubles the problem.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#284

Post by ethbr1 »

meowface wrote: post #238
ethbr1 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As part of the last generation to grow up without phones in (early) school, this. The endless rationalizing of why kids need to have phones at every moment rings hollow... Because grade school kids actually did just fine without them. Things functioned, people got where they needed to get, emergencies were handled, etc. Especially with pre- and post-school access, we're balancing a minimum of in-school utility agains…

I also grew up without phones in schools but in my opinion the problem is phones (and laptops, frankly) in class. If a student isn't in class, I don't see why they can't use their phone to talk to people or browse websites or whatever. If they're in class, then 99% chance it's distracting them from learning. If they're not, I think personal autonomy is a good rule.

My argument against any phones from school start to end is that socialization and interpersonal skills are also learned in school.

Having a distraction box at hand slows that process.

Grade school kids aren't tiny adults: they're actively building the pieces that make them into adults (self control, emotional regulation, empathy, cooperation, etc).

I don't trust Google or Apple to sacrifice profits, at scale, to support those goals.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#285

Post by jon-wood »

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?

Pretty sure if a teacher in a school is found to be scrolling TikTok when they're meant to be teaching a lesson they're going to lose their job pretty quickly.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#286

Post by eitally »

constantcrying wrote: post #34
roenxi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have put your finger on something - the actual purpose of school is to socialise children (it isn't very efficient as a teaching system - tutoring is better and what the people who really care about educational attainment use). But a side effect is teaching them a lot of useful things. And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it…

>the actual purpose of school is to socialise children I agree that this is probably the most important thing for children to learn. My point is that sitting in a room for 8 hours does very little to accomplish that. >And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it often fades into the background and nobody notices. But it still makes a…

I would argue that, no matter what your perception is, school is much more than "sitting in a room for 8 hours". Sure, academic advancement can be accelerated massively through home schooling, self-study or tutoring -- and many families take advantage of this fact -- but most school districts offer all sorts of non-academic enrichment programming (even including things like elementary school recesses here) that you don't get otherwise and which result in more well-rounded socialization than you'd get without an intentional effort to augment homeschooling with the same.

Also, the sometimes dramatic gulf between private and public school academic rigor means that some private school students are essentially receiving an early college level education during their tween/teen years. This isn't necessarily bad, but it absolutely is more time consuming for most kids who aim for straight As and high test scores, and this in turn impacts their ability to pursue extracurricular activities with seriousness, and without impacting their health/wellbeing. The fact that many public school students are learning slowly means those same students can work outside of school, can pursue sports/arts/etc interests almost full-time, can be caretakers for family members in need, and have flexibility in their social lives.

Yes, it's unfair to paint with a broad brush but this is largely true if we're looking at the high achieving population (say, kids who might be expected to apply to Ivy League universities). No matter how suboptimal the pace of academic instruction is at public schools, it's important to recognize that kids are still developing into adults and it's not normal or fair to treat them as adults (from a brain development, psychological and relationship management POV).

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#287

Post by bluGill »

bnegreve wrote: post #8
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.

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

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

Citation needed. I've heard it repeated a lot, but never by someone with actual historical credentials. It varied from society to society (and many societies were sexist so boys and girls would have different results). Likely most is correct, but also misleading as it appears many societies were very literate even among poor people.

From what I understand (recognize I'm not a historian!), Jewish boys have long had a right of passage of reading the bible in the local synagogue. Most languages are not that hard to learn the basic phonics of and thus read and write. You wouldn't be good, but you could do it.

Historians have told me that most of their references for is literate were from time/places where literate meant Latin. The common person know much Latin (despite going to mass in Latin), and couldn't read/write it. However they would have had more education in their local language which was never counted.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#289

Post by bmacho »

meowface wrote: post #234
dweekly wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I assume those effects are similar even if they're only using the phone before and after school.

Probably not, and replacing checking it every 45 mins with a continuous 8 hours of no screen time matters a lot, and a ban is a solution alone.

Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools

#290

Post by theshrike79 »

smckk wrote: post #283

Social media is lipstick on a pig. There's verbal and physical abuse, exclusion, name-calling, stalking and all sorts of inhumane behaviour towards each other in real life. Social media just digitizes that and is a reflection of the ugly parts of the socializing aspect of human life. The ~10% good that comes from keeping in touch with people, for example, is not really worth it especially for kids. Whatever you do yo…

The difference is that physical abuse, name-calling and stalking require the people to be actually present and risk (physical) consequences.

When done from the safety of one's own couch at home, surrounded by family, there are no consequences to name-calling, cyber-stalking or spreading rumours about someone.

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