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What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

theguardian.com

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Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#91

Post by slowmovintarget »

wharvle wrote: post #17
forinti wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't believe what an issue this can turn into. Some parents will fight for their kid's right to use cellphones.

This right here. Parents ultimately run schools, and a surprising proportion of them get really pissy if their kids can't have phones in class. Schools aren't letting kids have phones because they want to. My wife used to teach and had multiple parents, over a handful of years, who'd semi-frequently call their kids while they were in class . Just to, like, chat. A lot more would text with them, again, usually just to…

We need to educate parents better. The children of tech billionaires aren't permitted to use all of these devices or social accounts... because the tech elite know they are harmful to social and intellectual development.

Cigarettes are for plebes, after all.

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#92

Post by wharvle »

balfirevic wrote: post #89
z500 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, at my school you couldn't even listen to a CD at lunch. It boggles the mind.

> Hell, at my school you couldn't even listen to a CD at lunch. It boggles the mind. That we accept such authoritarianism in schools? It certainly does.

Part of your job is to keep kids on a schedule. Shit gets messed up and learning is disrupted for many students if you don't. It's also your ass on the line if you don't know where kids are, within reason, all day long.

Devices that don't necessarily, but do tend, to make keeping the schedule harder, exist and aren't needed for education.

("What does a CD player at lunch have to do with that?" if enough kids start listening to music at lunch I 100% guarantee you issues getting them to the next class on time increase in frequency a ton, and that's before you consider that every thing you add like that to a school environment increases the rate and severity of, ah, physical disputes)

So yeah, of course you ban their use.

"You could just only ban them for students for whom they're a problem."

Yeah, you could, but now you're dealing with even more angry parents up your ass because "you're not being fair, and you're singling out my kid". And you're burning more time you don't have dealing with these issues ad-hoc. No, it has to be a blanket ban.

Schools could be a lot less authoritarian if they didn't have to serve kids (or parents...) who can't handle a looser approach, and if they could simply kick out very disruptive kids, et c. But they can't, so they're a lot worse, in a lot of ways, than they hypothetically could be.

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#93

Post by falcolas »

rapind wrote: post #60
falcolas wrote: post #52

I have one part approval for this (back in my day, off my lawn, etc). But I also think about how many general tools cell phones replace, and the sudden added cost is a concern. Flashlight. Probably not necessary 99% of the time at a school, until it is valuable. Calculator. "Approved" graphing calculator replacements are stupid expensive, in many cases more expensive than the phone they're replacing. Camera. We didn'…

I don't remember needing a fancy calculator until Engineering in University. Possibly they are now needed in High School, but I haven't heard that before? The article actually addresses the lack of camera as a positive in that it greatly increased interest in photography courses. The Light Phone they are using can have some basic utility features like a music player, calculator, calendar, etc. That being said, I'm cy…

I remember using graphing calculators to do High School geometry. Loved it, we programmed games on it.

> I'm cynical this is just an ad for Light Phones lol.

It is definitely a bit over the top on the praise for it.

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#94

Post by wharvle »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #91
wharvle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here. Parents ultimately run schools, and a surprising proportion of them get really pissy if their kids can't have phones in class. Schools aren't letting kids have phones because they want to. My wife used to teach and had multiple parents, over a handful of years, who'd semi-frequently call their kids while they were in class . Just to, like, chat. A lot more would text with them, again, usually just to…

We need to educate parents better. The children of tech billionaires aren't permitted to use all of these devices or social accounts... because the tech elite know they are harmful to social and intellectual development. Cigarettes are for plebes, after all.

I posted elsewhere in the thread that, with the limited dataset I have (which includes families at a few schools of very different kinds, not just, like, my friend group) it sure looks to me like there's a sharp difference between the way the culturally upper-middle (under Fussell's model—the working "professional" class like doctors and lawyers, executives, that sort of thing) and higher, and the culturally middle-or-lower handle device use & access with their kids.

It's a big enough difference that, unless phones turn out not to have much of an effect (an... unlikely proposition, I think) on educational outcomes, I fully expect this to manifest as a widening gap between already-very-inequitable educational outcome stats for the (loosely) rich vs. the poor.

(Example: middle-class public school, 5th grader gets teased for not having a phone. "Your family must be so poor, hahaha!" Nearly the whole class has phones, and most of those have them on their person in class.

Bottom-edge-of-"fancy" private school—only like 25% of the kids in 5th grade have one at all, half of those aren't allowed to bring them to school, and the rest keep them put away, out of reach, during class and lunch and such—there is no teasing, not having your own phone, especially at school and certainly in class, is the overwhelming norm.)

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#95

Post by pokerface_86 »

pge wrote: post #34
jonlucc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my work, there are certain areas that we are not allowed to have any cameras, and that includes all personal cell phones. I have a colleague whose daughter was at school during an active shooter incident, and she was able to use her phone but he was not able to receive her calls or texts. She was not killed, but I am glad she had a cell phone that day, and I wish he had his too.

policy shouldn't be defined by extreme outlier cases

[dead]

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#97

Post by OkayPhysicist »

rapind wrote: post #60
falcolas wrote: post #52

I have one part approval for this (back in my day, off my lawn, etc). But I also think about how many general tools cell phones replace, and the sudden added cost is a concern. Flashlight. Probably not necessary 99% of the time at a school, until it is valuable. Calculator. "Approved" graphing calculator replacements are stupid expensive, in many cases more expensive than the phone they're replacing. Camera. We didn'…

I don't remember needing a fancy calculator until Engineering in University. Possibly they are now needed in High School, but I haven't heard that before? The article actually addresses the lack of camera as a positive in that it greatly increased interest in photography courses. The Light Phone they are using can have some basic utility features like a music player, calculator, calendar, etc. That being said, I'm cy…

SAT allows (and thus requires to be competitive) a graphing calculator, typically a TI-84, but there are approved CASIO ones as well.

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#98

Post by brayhite »

rootusrootus wrote: post #45
teeray wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm out of the loop... smartphones are allowed in the first place? When did that happen? In my high school, cell phones and ipods (at the time) were to be in lockers and turned off during the day. It was an insta-detention if you were seen using one.

Can't speak for the rest of the country, but in our district smartphones were allowed for a couple years. I don't know the rationale about allowing them in the first place, but it happened in 2020. It took them two years to decide it was an unmitigated disaster and they promptly re-banned all electronics. No music players, phones, headphones, etc. Get caught and it gets confiscated and your parents have to come retri…

My 4 year old son has an iPhone, and we’d sooner homeschool him than keep him enrolled if the only schools we could send afford would confiscate or ban it.

I recognize we’re an exception, but he has type 1 diabetes, and his iPhone is essentially a medical device that sends us updates on his glucose levels throughout the day.

I’d hope schools at least make exceptions for cases like this.

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#99

Post by tennisflyi »

teeray wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm out of the loop... smartphones are allowed in the first place? When did that happen? In my high school, cell phones and ipods (at the time) were to be in lockers and turned off during the day. It was an insta-detention if you were seen using one.

Totally out of the loop

Re: What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

#100

Post by cwalv »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #79
wharvle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here. Parents ultimately run schools, and a surprising proportion of them get really pissy if their kids can't have phones in class. Schools aren't letting kids have phones because they want to. My wife used to teach and had multiple parents, over a handful of years, who'd semi-frequently call their kids while they were in class . Just to, like, chat. A lot more would text with them, again, usually just to…

What's worse, in states with voucher systems, parents can remove not just their kid from the school, but their tax dollars too--so the teachers have to tolerate the phones or funding will dry up for the other students who are trying to pay attention. I think coupling where your kids go to school with where your tax dollars are going severely misunderstands the point of having there be tax dollars for schools in the f…

> I think coupling where your kids go to school with where your tax dollars are going severely misunderstands the point of having there be tax dollars for schools in the first place.

It makes some sense considering the people with kids probably care much more about the details in how those dollars are spent. Not that there are not people without kids who are equally interested (esp. those who work in education), but on avg parents will have much more interest and much more visibility into how it's spent.

What's weird to me is thinking that parents shouldn't get some "special powers". It's like saying the people who live in a particular police precinct shouldn't get any special consideration about how that precinct is run.

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