Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more

Post by sebastiennight » Mon, Aug 19, 2024, 9:14 AM UTC

sweeter wrote: post #52

chrisamiller wrote: post #49

Our middle school has banned phones during school hours, and it's been great. Even though most kids own phones and have them in their backpacks, they aren't seen. There are less problems during classes and kids have to talk to each other during lunch instead of going head down in their phones. Parental pushback has been really minimal - most parents love it, and it's good for the kids. Making no phones a blanket poli…

it's all good until that thing that happens at American schools, happens... That is my one hang up here. It would be idealistic to believe that the Police would protect kids, but in reality there are far too many cases of them being grossly negligent in this exact circumstance... in many of those cases, having a phone played a pivotal role in security. I don't want to get too far into details on HN for the sake of ke…

Post by 082349872349872 » Mon, Aug 19, 2024, 9:38 AM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #182

chgs wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never used a pay phone as a kid?

I was born in 1955 in the UK and I almost never used a phone of any kind as a child.

Post by GuB-42 » Mon, Aug 19, 2024, 10:10 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

haswell wrote: post #21

I forget who originally suggested this so I can’t take credit. But what if device manufacturers worked with schools to implement some kind of “School Mode” on these devices? Students could retain their access in exchange for schools setting policies on what’s allowed, e.g. you can keep wearing your watch, but it’s effectively in collection-only mode during the school day. Nothing intrusive to the students; more like…

> what if device manufacturers worked with schools to implement some kind of “School Mode” on these devices? How would you enforce this? > as our devices become increasingly wearable and integrated with daily life, it seems like a ban is only a temporarily viable solution I’m a strong proponent of these technologies. But the truth is we mandate, and as a result do, zero testing on how it affects kids before deploying…

Post by watwut » Mon, Aug 19, 2024, 10:51 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #187

tsimionescu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walter's comment could be applied exactly as well to an argument that there shouldn't be electricity in schools (after all, kids survived without electricity just fine for decades).

If 99.9% of what electricity was used for in a class for was a distraction, this might be a reasonable argument. It's not, though. But I'd wager that 99.9% of cellphone use during class is.

Post by lupusreal » Mon, Aug 19, 2024, 1:38 PM UTC

shiroiushi wrote: post #202

lupusreal wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rare circumstance that is made to seem more common by very wide media coverage. And even in that sort of situation, it seems doubtful that it actually helps anybody either. Some parents will show up and get in the way of emergence responders. Most kids who call their parents will end up surviving anyway, and the phonecalls end up increasing the number of people who get PTSD from the whole thing. If a modest…

These kinds of calculations aren't useful to a typical US parent who, after the Uvalde disaster, has absolutely no reason to trust law enforcement to handle such a situation competently, and every reason to distrust them. Why should they assume that the cops in their town are any better than Uvalde's? They're going to hear "your kid can't have their phone in our school" and think of this.