I know it would complicate things a lot, but are we sure it's smartphones and not social media / "not educational" websites being the issue? If I had a phone with calendar and a to do list, when at school, I might have fared better.
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Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
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Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#32I believe that, in retrospect, these schoolchildren will greatly appreciate this decision.
To me, the necessity to have a banning "law" is a sign of failure. We should teach children the why and how, incentive them to put, by themselves, their phone in a lockbox and eventually consider them as growing adult and not irresponsible childs.
let's keep all the junk foods in schools too. children should be responsible enough to choose the fruit salad over the battered fries
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#33I know it would complicate things a lot, but are we sure it's smartphones and not social media / "not educational" websites being the issue? If I had a phone with calendar and a to do list, when at school, I might have fared better.
Student planners are paper calendars and to do lists. One can have these things without a CPU, RAM, and a network connection.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see it going either way. A century ago in the US, a lot of support for Prohibition came from the impact of liquor, yet Prohibition itself also banned beer. I can very easily believe that the backlash against dark patterns, against deliberately addictive apps (games and social media), against advertising getting squeezed into what would otherwise be normal conversations, against the surveillance that currently m…
what useful thing does a smartphone do during school hours?
Looking stuff up during lunch or study hall. School hours != in class but it often means doing assignments.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#35I am suprised they allowed them at first to begin with.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#36The cool / mischevious kids will still bring phones to school, while life of the calm kids will be made miserable.
Story old as time.
Fascinating that people here cant predict it.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as the phone is locked, surely mere teachers can't force a student to unlock it.
That an official government document explicitly mentioning that school staff is allowed to search a device without law enforcement (either being present, or authorized by warrant) is problematic in and of itself.
You can decline this at any age. What can they do? Well turns out at that point they can only threaten to or apply violence or confiscate it until you hand over the details, none of which are "reasonable in all circumstances" as quoted in the legislation.
So the correct answer is to tell your kids to tell them to get fucked and call you. At that point, remind them that the device is your property, decline their request and they can only threaten you, which is 100% illegal.
I am more worried about the teachers from experience than the other students. Some of them I have encountered over the last 15 years of having three kids at school have been right nasty pieces of work and should not be in a position to have power over a minor.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
what useful thing does a smartphone do during school hours?
Looking stuff up during lunch or study hall. School hours != in class but it often means doing assignments.
Lunch time is supposed to be a break from studying.
(Study haul? I don't know this term.)
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#39My schooling experience (in London, less than 10 years ago) was a waste of time. If they want students to be engaged, make the material engaging.
> waste of time
Don't we all say that though?!? :) It's hard to measure the value if we can never try out the alternative and see where it would lead us.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#40From TFA:
> The schools have agreed that if any phone is used by a pupil during the school day, it will be confiscated.
In my experience as a parent, this is nothing new. Until last year one of my children went to a very large secondary school in the UK (not in London though). The above was the rule for all of the seven years they were at the school: if you kept your phone out of sight and set to dnd then you were ok, but if it was visible then it was confiscated. My impression as a parent is that it was reasonably well observed by students and enforced by staff.
Context: We have an election here in the UK in ~2 weeks and phones in schools have been a minor moral panic issue that some of the parties are trying to use to assert their education credentials. I'm not saying there is no problem with children and phones - I believe there is - but theres a reason its getting attention at the moment.