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School cell phone bans and student achievement

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Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#71

Post by ryuhhnn »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #55
ryuhhnn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put yourself in the student's shoes: instead of being required to rote memorise every detail and hold that in your head until the end of the year, you are now only required to be assessed at the time that you are learning the material. Do you think you'd fare better on that type of test, or a test done months after you actually studied the material? One of the first things they teach you in educational research is th…

A good student would do well regardless, a bad student would do bad regardless. Cell phones might help a bad student do a little less bad, but only a little. For the middle, it really depends on the material covered. if it's cumulative, then results might not change as much. if it's "learn and forget", then it might be testing the wrong incentives.

> if it's "learn and forget", then it might be testing the wrong incentives

The thing I find interesting is that when most people talk about standardised tests, they are talking about assessments that benchmark how much trivial knowledge about a given subject one has, and this has been the standard for most of the history of the American education system. I would argue that this is a flawed way to measure a student's literacy–in any subject for that matter.

I would actually frame "learn and forget" as "learn and adapt" because I would much rather a student forget a piece of trivial knowledge, but still have the ability to figure it out on their own with the right resources than a student who can tell you the colour Benjamin Franklin wore on his 15th birthday, but couldn't explain the effects of imperialism on societies.

For much of history, we have incentivised rote memorisation of trivial knowledge and accidentally de-valued critical thinking and problem solving skills. Do you remember the backlash that schools got from _parents_ when schools started implementing Common Core in an attempt to get students to think more abstractly? While I scoff at them, I genuinely don't blame parents for coming to the conclusion that we should just do math "the way we used to do it", but I can't help but point out that this is leading to the exact decline in general literacy that we have seen in public schools over the years. Now when you start comparing the educational attainment of students in public schools vs. private schools this becomes a who other conversation that cell phones can't even begin to explain.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#72

Post by agumonkey »

i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

You could even argue that society is incapable of not running into these cycles of building wisdom and losing it. Our minds are differential.. things that are here have less value, we seek newness no matter what.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#73

Post by dhussoe »

knollimar wrote: post #64
johnnyanmac wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why the parents would fight for them. My theoretical kid is there to learn, enforce any reasonable rules that can disrupt that goal. It's also in general a good way to form work habits for future aspects. Be it college, a job, military, etc. You can't fight over having your phone out to your boss. You can do it to your professor, but that's your $20k/yr tuition talking.

>You can't fight over having your phone out to your boss Give me a company phone or you don't get this rule. I'm not using my phone for work if I can't have it out during work. I use it 99% for work related things during work, though, with the 1% being happy birthday texts or something similar

This is kind of a weird example to begin with on a forum mostly populated by software engineers, because I'd find it very weird if a manager ever objected to someone using their personal phone at a SWE or similar office job, but I'd guess that the sets of jobs where a "boss" would object to someone using their phone during work (but still getting their work done) and those that would potentially have a company phone are mostly disjoint... a complete prohibition on using your phone seems like entry-level retail job type rules. excepting corner-case stuff like some very high security facility where you wouldn't even be allowed to bring any outside electronics in.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#74

Post by bluedino »

aschla wrote: post #3

I'm not particularly old yet, in my mid-thirties, but I reacted like someone much older when I learned kids are allowed to carry around their phones all day at school. Back in my day (when we walked to school uphill both ways), we weren't allowed to carry around basic flip phones. They had to be in our locker and only used before or after school. When and why did it become acceptable for much more distracting and sti…

In the 90's only drug dealers had pagers and cell phones, at least in the eyes of the board of education. If you were caught with one you'd be expelled.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#75

Post by apical_dendrite »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #52
phantasmish wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't allowed to have any of several different individual devices the functions of which are present in a smartphone. Banning that stuff was more-or-less uncontroversial. Obviously kids in an ordinary classroom shouldn't have instant cameras, and video recorders, and audio recorders, and Walkmen, and radios, and game boys, and TVs, and flashlights, and... Now we have devices that are all of those things in one a…

I really don't understand why the parents would fight for them. My theoretical kid is there to learn, enforce any reasonable rules that can disrupt that goal. It's also in general a good way to form work habits for future aspects. Be it college, a job, military, etc. You can't fight over having your phone out to your boss. You can do it to your professor, but that's your $20k/yr tuition talking.

Parents really like the convenience and the feeling of safety they get when their kid has a phone. If they have to change school pickup plans they'd much rather text their kid than call and leave a message with the school office and then hope that the office gets the message to their kid.

We're so used to being able to get in touch with our family members at all times that it feels really unnerving when your kid isn't immediately accessible.

And the parents who complain think that their kids aren't the ones who are addicted to their phones.

That's why these bans needed to happen at the state or school district level - expecting individual teachers to have to spend their time arguing with parents and kids over cell phones was just not realistic.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#76

Post by cal_dent »

patcon wrote: post #58
i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

> rediscover the hard way the older wisdom about having separate spheres with separate hard constraints and boundaries on behaviors This is something I also believe. Thanks for saying it. I've been thinking and reflecting a lot on what I've been calling for myself "generative constraint". It's sure as heck not something that is the same for everyone, but I think we all have a set of them that might help us be our bes…

I think of it as "introducing friction". There's a lot things that we do now which is largely as a result of frictionless ease of doing it. Smartphones and social media are the obvious one, but it applies to many technology/digital driven behaviour (pay with face id/touch and people end up consuming more for instance). And it's no surprise to me that what works for a lot of people is putting their phone somewhere else in their house. Essentially introducing artificial friction.

My slightly cynical view is for many of us we're more often lazy than not and default to doing the most frictionless thing. Introduce friction and very quickly I find it forces you to think about what you're actually doing

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#77

Post by apical_dendrite »

HPsquared wrote: post #7

I wonder if there's a hidden confounding selection bias here, i.e. "ability of the school to ban phones". This is probably easier in less chaotic schools where the students listen to the teachers, say.

A lot of schools implement this by having the students put their phones in a locked pouch when they enter the building in the morning. https://www.overyondr.com/phone-locking-pouch

This generally takes it out of the hands of individual classroom teachers.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#78

Post by bigC5560 »

RegW wrote: post #63
i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…

As someone who graduated from high school in 2025 I completely agree with this. I am glad I had to work it out on my own, and I don't think this is a place that a school should take control. If I had to figure this out along with the stress of college, I don't know if I would be able to handle it. I also think that it has helped with my overall time management skills and prioritizing my time.

I know not everyone will have the same experience as me, but I just feel like learning to manage it on my own was overall beneficial for me in the end.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#79

Post by imgabe »

i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

For certain tasks for me, having a movie running while I'm working is more productive. It gives something to take your attention when you have to wait for something without getting sucked in to endless scrolling.

Re: School cell phone bans and student achievement

#80

Post by testing22321 »

RegW wrote: post #63
i_c_b wrote: post #10

Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…

In my first job out of university in the 80s, I spent all one night playing Knight Lore on the Spectrum with friends. I failed to get up the next morning. My boss drove across Leeds and to bang on the door to see if I was alright. I needed that job so I stopped playing computer games. In the 90s a later boss called me out for spending my days attached to the Slashdot firehose. I had sort-of known that it was a wastef…

> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves

That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies.

What makes you think this is different?

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