Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's much more likely that simply changing the way they administer these tests had a more significant impact on test scores than phone bans. Why do you think that's more likely?
Put yourself in the student's shoes: instead of being required to rote memorise every detail and hold that in your head until the end of the year, you are now only required to be assessed at the time that you are learning the material. Do you think you'd fare better on that type of test, or a test done months after you actually studied the material? One of the first things they teach you in educational research is th…
School cell phone bans and student achievement
101–110 of 221 posts
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#102Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…
In my experience with mentoring juniors and college students, it’s common to have some wake-up call moment(s) where they realize their phone use is something that needs to be moderated. For some it comes from getting bad grades in a class (college in the age range I worked with) and realizing they could have avoided it by paying attention in lectures instead of using their phone. I’ve also seen it happen in relationships where they realize one day that their social life has disappeared or, in extreme cases, get dumped for being too into their phone. For others it shows up in their first job when someone doesn’t hold back in chewing them out for excessive or inappropriate phone use.
In the context of high school students, I don’t see this happening as much. A big component of high school social structure is forcing students a little bit out of their comfort zone so they can discover friends and build relationships. The default for many is to hide, withdraw, and avoid anything slightly uncomfortable. For a lot of them, slightly uncomfortable might be as simple as having to make casual conversation with people around them. A phone is the perfect tool to withdraw and appear busy, which feels like a free license to exist in a space alone without looking awkward.
So while agree that most people come to terms with the problem themselves as adults, I do also think that middle and high schools deserve some extra boundaries to get the ball rolling on learning how to exist without a phone. The students I’ve worked with who came from high schools that banned phones (private, usually, at least in the past) are so much better equipped to socialize and moderate their phone use. Before anyone claims socioeconomic factors, private high schools generally have sliding scale tuition and a large percentage of students attend for free due to their parents’ income, so it’s not just wealthy kids from wealthy families that I’m talking about.
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#103I can hardly wait for all the WFT->RTO charts :P
Work from ... Texas?
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…
The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. The problem with that is without some explicit instruction or guidance or invention before they have full control of their impulses, not everyone tames the beast unscathed.
This factoid has been repeated for decades but it’s essentially a myth.
Brain development continues into your 20s, but there isn’t a threshold at age 25 where someone goes from having poor impulse control to being capable of good impulse control.
18-25 year olds are not children and are fully capable of having impulse control. That can continue to develop as they age, but it doesn’t mean age 25 is when it happens.
I would agree that actual children need some more explicit boundaries, which is also why we don’t allow children to do a lot of things that people over 18 can do.
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#105Some very important context that the researchers don't mention: during the same period that they are claiming test scores improved because of phone bans, Florida changed the way they administer standardised tests. Starting in 2024, they switched from doing one end-of-year assessment and started administering more frequent tests throughout the year in order to better gauge a student's progress and provide a tighter fe…
In other words, correlation does not imply causation
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
That approach works more often than it doesn’t — outside of certain spiraling situations most people don’t became alcoholics and drug addicts. Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.
They weren't always. In fact it took many centuries for this to happen. The history of cocaine in the US is quite interesting. It was being used everywhere and by everybody. Factory owners were giving it to their laborers to increase productivity, it was used in endless tonics, medicines, and drinks (most famously now Coca-Cola = cocaine + kola nut), and so on. You had everybody from Thomas Edison to popes to Ulysses…
Be careful with that comparison. The cocaine infused drinks of the past are not comparable to modern cocaine use for several reasons.
The route of administration and dose matter a lot. Oral bioavailability is low and peak concentrations are much lower when drinking it in a liquid as opposed to someone insufflating (snorting) 50mg or more of powder.
You could give a modern cocaine user a glass of Vin Mariani and they probably would not believe you that it had any cocaine in it. The amount, absorption, and onset are so extremely different.
> So probably part of the reason it was so difficult to realize there is a problem is because everybody was coked out of their minds
That’s an exaggeration. To be “coked out” in the modern sense they’d have to be consuming an insane amount of alcohol as well. We’re talking bottle after bottle of the wine.
Be careful with these old anecdotes. Yes, it was weird and there were stimulant effects, but it’s not comparable to modern ideas of the drug abuse. It’s like comparing someone taking the lowest dose of Adderall by mouth to someone who crushes up a dozen pills and snorts them. Entirely different outcomes.
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#107Some very important context that the researchers don't mention: during the same period that they are claiming test scores improved because of phone bans, Florida changed the way they administer standardised tests. Starting in 2024, they switched from doing one end-of-year assessment and started administering more frequent tests throughout the year in order to better gauge a student's progress and provide a tighter fe…
I swear sometimes people only exist to look for flaws in studies they didn't read.
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#108TVs? Newspapers? Magazines?
Well those are on-way, with limited feedbacks. What's the better alternative except phones?
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#109Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
The answer is, of course, liberal hyperindividualism. By that I don't mean "liberal institutions" or respect for the individual person especially in the face of collectivism, but an ideology of antisocial atomization of the self that thrusts the self into subjective godhood. Paradoxically, this makes people more susceptible to control in practice.
Now, ideological and political programs don't fully realize the consequences of their premises instantly. It can take years, decades, centuries for all the nasty errors to manifest and become so conspicuous that they cannot be ignored. The Enlightenment program in our case. And so, in this hyperindividualism, the social order - its layers, its concentric circles, its various rights and demands on the individual that precede the consent of the individual - is all reduced progressively to not only the consensual, but also the transactional. Social bonds and structures evaporate or become fluid and contingent merely on the transactional; commitment and duty are a prison. Consent as the highest and only moral law leads us to relativism, because if all that is needed is consent to make an act moral and good, then naturally what is morally good will vary from person to person, and even minute to minute for a given person. On top of that, consent can be attained through manipulation and power, and so now individuals joust for power to manufacture consent in order to bless their exploitation of others.
The self cannot be limited in any way according to this program, and any residual limits are the lingering chains of some ancient past.
Perhaps most amusing is how so-called "countercultural" movements are anything but. These are typically just advancing the ideological program, not rejecting it. Contradictions between such movements and the status quo often come in the form of a tension between residual cultural features of an earlier age and the greater faithfulness to the trajectory of the program among the countercultural. Typically, conflicts are over power, not belief. And sometimes, the internal contradictions of the program lead to diverging programs that come into conflict.
Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement
#110If phones were totally banned for kids, where would the kid get to know the world? TVs? Newspapers? Magazines? Well those are on-way, with limited feedbacks. What's the better alternative except phones?