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Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

theguardian.com

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Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#61

Post by prmoustache »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #41

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.

What kind of parent will call or message their kids during school hours?

All the ressources mentionned can probably be accessed through other means, usually the school library which has computer terminals.

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#62

Post by ben_w »

Symbiote wrote: post #38
Retric wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I'm assuming voice entry mistranscription of "study hall"?

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#63

Post by johncessna »

zarzavat wrote: post #49

Confiscating 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 t…

Typical fear mongering that got phones all over the schools in the first place. Kids aren't getting abducted or even using their phones in an emergency capacity.

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#64

Post by teekert »

We have schools doing this in the Netherlands. Students actually report liking it because they are now more in real physical contact with their fellow students directly instead of immersed in their phone every chance they get.

I think that shows that indeed it should be a rule, voluntary will not work because of something akin to the network effect.

When we get interns at our company many of them, instead of communicating with us are in their phones during lunch and coffee breaks. It’s a disease, they don’t integrate, they don’t learn being social around collegeas. I don’t like most people of that generation and they never get to know me. Something has to change.

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#65

Post by Retric »

Symbiote wrote: post #38
Retric wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Auto corrupt of study hall, also known as a free period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_hall

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#66

Post by tired-turtle »

zarzavat wrote: post #49

Confiscating 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 t…

Can you provide data that grounds these claims? How often are children saved from abduction by an iPhone or similar?

The schools posit that the social and educational benefits of no smartphones outweigh the (purported) risks of an un-nannied childhood.

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#67

Post by Zhyl »

trgn wrote: post #29
ben_w wrote: post #18

Earlier 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?

What useful things could a smartphone do during school hours.

You have a literal internet connected computer with any function you could care to name, interactive touch screen display, full sound with headphones being provided by the student.

The situation we have now is that there are few apps that are suitable for a classrooms, even fewer which teachers would be allowed to use and none which are endorsed or included in the curriculum[1].

Meanwhile students phones have no central management unless by parents using a specialist app, are not automatically locked down to appropriate use during school hours, meaning they just get used for messaging and inappropriate stuff.

There is no reason that a students phone couldn't become the world's most amazing educational tool the moment they walk onto school premises - the world just hasn't caught up yet and probably won't for a while.

[1] I don't know this, but I'm sure they're providing iPads or something if they're actually doing anything around this.

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#68

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

maxehmookau wrote: post #52
Angostura wrote: post #46

Listening 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’

I genuinely think there's a difference between young people having access to the internet, and young people having access to social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) Social media is designed to be addictive. Much of the internet is not. I'm increasingly in favor of banning Facebook and Instagram to under 18s.

There just isn’t much of the internet left outside of social media as far as I can tell

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#69

Post by micromacrofoot »

prmoustache wrote: post #61
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #41

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.

What kind of parent will call or message their kids during school hours? All the ressources mentionned can probably be accessed through other means, usually the school library which has computer terminals.

it's incredibly common, like a quick text from the child "hey don't pick me up today I'm going to Greg's house" or a parent saying "do you have football practice today"

Re: Group of 17 London secondary schools join up to go smartphone-free

#70

Post by cjk2 »

leohonexus wrote: post #57
cjk2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this before. To quote a barrister friend of mine, regardless of the law, it mostly depends on how big a stick the person having their device confiscated wields. The stick in this case is connections, parents etc. They rely purely on submission to enforce this policy. A simple "no" removes consent and their ability to do anything about it. If after that it is forced upon you, then things get "interesting" to…

During my school years, my teacher confiscated a deck of my trading cards and stored them in the classroom drawer. You could probably see where this goes next - very quickly all my cards were stolen by my classmates, and I could do nothing while I saw my classmates play my own cards, as I had no proof they were mine. That certainly taught me a lesson or two about human nature, at least at that time...

Similar thing happened to me in the 80s.

I learned never to take anything of value into school.

My kids learned the same thing in the same way.

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