Not sure about other US school districts, but LAUSD (Los Angeles) had this going for several weeks now - https://abc7.com/post/los-angeles-unified-school-district-ce...
Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
421–430 of 491 posts
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think that you have a right to shoot someone in the head, you're fucking nuts. Period. Go see a shrink.
> If you think that you have a right to shoot someone in the head, you're fucking nuts. Period. Go see a shrink. To defend your life, liberty, and property you absolutely do have that right in most of the civilized world. Some places may put restriction on your ability to access a firearm, but self-defense is a basic necessity to have /any/ human rights. That said, I agree, trying to shoot someone in the head /is/ cr…
And to clarify, I'm not saying kill someone over $5. But if they attempt to steal something of high value (monetarily, sentimentally, etc.) and you attempt to prevent that or get it back, and they put up a likely-to-be-lethal resistance, you have the right to put up a lethal defense.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those rights can't be taken away... without existing legislation. There are many rights that can be taken away, freedom of movement for example in the case of prisoners, but you need laws in order to not make that taking away a crime itself. You can't just apprehend and throw someone in your basement because they stole something from you. Same thing with children's phones, a teacher can't just take away the phone bec…
Sure, I think this just looks a little alien from an American perspective because most of our rights are set up as explicit negatives to block the government from legislating them away, more than to prevent Joe or Jane Teacher from taking a phone. "Congress shall pass no law..." I guess the nordics don't have a common-law tradition and so never inhereted the in loco parentis doctrine that allows schools to take subst…
AFAIK, yes, in loco parentis isn't a thing. Rights of the child (or, overall, the individual) are first and foremost. Children commonly have voice in e.g. court proceedings affecting them, too.
Nordic legal system is interesting - it avoids a lot of Roman/Germanic/Anglo-Saxon influence and is rooted instead in the old tradition of "Tings". (Nordic communal gatherings). Which means there's a strong base of communal consensus instead of precedent - in the small, reflected by the presence of lay judges in legal proceedings. In the large, reflected in the Nordic countries together having a set of very closely coordinated legal systems. (Since late 1800s, I think?)
It's super-interesting (if legal systems are interesting to you ;)
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is: smartphones exist. The young adults these children will become will live in a world where smartphones are an essential part of their life. Using a smartphone is a practical skill. That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea. It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit like with calculators, there are clas…
The thing is that using a smartphone is a _very easy_ skill. I mean, who are we kidding. These devices are set up such that the stupidest person can use them. It's not 1995 anymore and we aren't walking in a line to the computer lab. These things are idiot-proof. You really don't need hours of practice everyday to learn how to use them.
It's probably still appropriate in 2025 for kids to go to the computer lab and learn to use an actual computer (ideally running some flavor of Linux so that they can learn to expect that the computer is a tool that obeys the user). Phones are both idiot-proof and expert-proof, and while you can use something like Termux as another commented noted (and I use it on my phone), it's sufficiently horrible that you'll never see the potential productivity boost, and will think that anything outside of "apps" is unreasonably difficult (because phones make it so).
So it's not that phones are easy enough to use that you don't need to teach them; it's that the thing you want to teach is the power of a general purpose computer, and phones try very hard to hide the fact that they are extremely powerful general purpose computers. You need to learn on a real computer to know what you even want the phone to be able to do.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#425I wonder how many people don't realize there are classrooms all over the United States where kids literally play on their smartphones and text all through class and don't pay any attention at all. They do F work and it gets graded on a curve up to a C. The teachers are powerless to do anything about it.
Do you think that banning smartphones - or attempting to - will fix any of that?
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#426Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't trying to be witty at all. I was legitimately curious. I didn't know teachers needed to use their smartphones for work. What do they need their phones for? Do they have landlines in each classroom to call parents or the office? Do teachers get laptops or PCs these days or are they expected to use a personal mobile phone to google things?
At my daughter’s school, they use a phone app to check the kids in as they arrive, and check them out as they leave. It replaces the paper list they used to have. Don’t ask me how it’s an improvement. I suppose they are able, in case of fire, to get an accurate head count that way.
The apps are often a part of some larger platform -- some of my friends have their kids in schools or daycares that do something similar, but the parents can also see the checkin/checkout info. I'm guessing at your daughter's school, the data is centralized in some way, which the admin can use for things like school-wide attendance statistics, which are often also tied to funding in some way.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#428It 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…
> 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.
This is also a question of balancing the different rights. The Finnish constitution also states that everybody has the right to free basic education.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Staff are expected to use phones and other digital tools in order to do their job, so I don’t think this comment is as witty as you might think.
I wasn't trying to be witty at all. I was legitimately curious. I didn't know teachers needed to use their smartphones for work. What do they need their phones for? Do they have landlines in each classroom to call parents or the office? Do teachers get laptops or PCs these days or are they expected to use a personal mobile phone to google things?
Another use case is documentation - as they do activities, the teacher will use their cell to snap photos of the kids doing stuff. They can then use the school's app ("platform", I suppose) to send out a short note/summary at the end of the day, which parents can read on their end in the parent app. Also, reminders about things to bring tomorrow, notices about upcoming activities, etc. I am assuming they use these documentation items at the end of the year for grading, etc.
Re: Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
In summary, Finland has brought the policies that have caused much destruction in other Western countries into their own education system, where those policies have also caused destruction, much to everyone's amazement.
Yep, this country is no longer that special by European standards. Childcare is still good, but later education and healthcare are very mediocre. In EU only greeks are less satisfied with the availability of healthcare. Our unemployment rate is pretty similar to Greece and Spain as well. This is what right wing governments want I guess.
This is a really tragic thing that happened in Finland on April 1st:
https://yle-fi.translate.goog/a/74-20158685?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x...
It's usual in Finland to let babies sleep outside in the strollers (even when it's cold) but in this case no one checked how the child was doing for 3 hours.
In the news he/she was called a baby.