This is plainly idiotic. Smartphones are great for having useful apps for studying such as dictionaries and translators, they provide access to Wikipedia and means to communicate with other kids. They also make parents feel less stressful knowing they can always call or message their kids. Whoever came up with this idea is a retrograde.
Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
41–50 of 192 posts
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#42I 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.
You're assuming children (on average) have the same capacity to make reasoned decisions as adults so long as you just "teach" them.
There's a reason why we don't let 8-year-olds drive, and its not just that nobody bothered to take the time to teach them.
And no, no matter how many times I tell my three-year-old the stove is hot, I'm not going to put them in charge of cooking dinner on the stove. Instead, I'll ban them from using the stove outside of extremely supervised limited circumstances. I'm also not going to put them in charge of chopping things with sharp knives either. Instead I'll find other more age-appropriate ways for them to participate in making the meal.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#43Sounds like commonsense to me. This was the policy when I went to school too - use a phone during school time and it's confiscated.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#44Earlier 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.
but why? if im a teacher getting wind of cyberbullying, or a photo being shared, what should i do? call the police every time?
im telling you, the police will not like that policy any more than the students.
you're in a school. you don't have the right to do whatever you please.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#45Overblown hysteria both makes school administrators feel useful and sells papers...
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#46Listening to something on the BBC the other day that I found thought provoking.
The speaker suggested that the question’at what age do you give your child access to the internet’ could better be framed ‘at what age do you want to give internet companies access to your child’
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#47Can the students use other computing devices like Chromebooks or iPads with restrictions in place? Overall, this is likely a success for the schools who can commit and the students willing to compromise.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#48Earlier 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?
Dumb phone things, apps for blood sugar monitoring, checking public transport delays,....
There are enough stories about children dying because schools locked away medication. I have very little trust that schools will apply any common sense.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#49Confiscating phones from children for an entire week is an unhinged idea. Confiscating for the rest of the school day I can understand, but not giving them the phone back when they go home is dangerous.
At some point a child will get abducted on their way home from school, or be unable to contact emergency services, because the school confiscated their phone.
They seem to want parents to buy dumb phones instead for their children. Can you imagine trying to text “I’m being followed by someone on XYZ road” on a Nokia-style keyboard? Do dumb phones support sending GPS coordinates to emergency services like smartphones do?
Even mundane things like what if a child’s train gets cancelled and they need to check Google Maps to find an alternative way home.
Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free
#50I 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.
"Here, kiddo. You're on your own, against the trillion dollar companies who employ entire teams of psychologists to identify and exploit addiction mechanisms."