I teach middle school in a state with a cell phone ban. We had our first year with the phone ban last year, and I thought it was an improvement.
Phones can be very detrimental to the school experience. For one, it is very difficult to teach kids who are already unwilling or resistant to learning while they have a piece of technology they are literally addicted to in their hand. Secondly, phones and social media contribute to a lot to the bullying, violence, and general misbehavior that occurs at schools.
My school district also provides all students with an iPad, so they have their own school-provided tech. In my experience, this comes with their own problems though. I often feel like I am playing “whack-a-mole” keeping kids off their iPads (playing games, etc.) during instruction. It’s nice to be able to incorporate technology into lessons, and it definitely is more convenient for teaching, but I don’t think the trade off is worth it. For example, the cheating with A.I. was off the charts for me last year.
This coming school year, I am looking to incorporate more paper and pencil assignments into my teaching. A lot of my students seem to favor assignments where they aren’t using their iPads. I think most agree that these kids’ eyeballs need a break from the screens.
Also, to people with concerns about the phone ban, students are allowed to bring their phone to school. My state’s law states that the phone must be turned off and in the student’s backpack during instructional hours. Students may be on their phone at school before and after classes start. In the event of an emergency, no one is going to care if the students get their phone out their bag to call their adult. So, kids will retain access to their phone. In fact, most of the students carry their phones around in the pocket and none of the teachers generally care as long as the student isn’t blatantly using their phone during class time. If a kid is caught using their phone during class time, they have to turn it in to the main office for the remainder of the day will escalating consequences for repeat offenses.
Also, I’m sure it varies from teacher to teacher, but I am very understanding when a kid needs to contact a parent/guardian. I will always allow my students to use the phone in my classroom, call a parent from the main office, or use their cell phone in the hall as long as the kid asks permission and explains the situation.
Can we just ban them in general? We used to be a proper society and had our phones on the kitchen walls with 25ft cords.
Back in the good old days when homosexuality was a felony, the cure for autism was an ice pick lobotomy, and certain people would be killed for being caught in nice neighborhoods? Proper society.
Jesus, show us on the doll where the bad man hurt you why don’t you. Can we not have a joke about anything benign these days without someone coming along to make it about the wrongs of society? And before you say it, yes, the things you mentioned were wrong.
Chill out, I wasn’t making a statement about race relations, intolerance, bigotry, or medical ignorance. It was just a joke about long phone cords.
You must be a miserable bastard to spend much time around if this is how to react to such things in real life as well.
Had a friend in the most expensive private school in my area. They had phones banned over a decade ago already.
Probably because richer parents have more mental bandwidth to worry about children’s digital footprint and neural development rather than survival.
Thus I believe extending this ban to public schools is only fair. Distraction-free and surveillance-free environment for children shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for few.
My position on this is really weird because I’m in support of laptops being in classrooms for educational uses. However, I’m against cell phones being in classroom.
That being said, as someone who grew up in a school system that didn’t allow the parent to communicate with their child or a teenager, meaning that they couldn’t call the school to have them relay a message, I am firmly against a straight ban period on school grounds. I was given a phone because my parents’ work schedule was very fluid and could change within an hour or two. And on more than a handful of occasions, my mom would call the school and be like, hey, you need to relay the message to get on a different bus because there’s no one going to be home, And they just wouldn’t relay it. It also helped if I chose to go to a friends house after school
I’m also disliking how they skewed the results. If you read the actual study, you’ll see that they merged the kind of agree strongly agree and the kind of disagree strongly disagree categories to make it a binary choice, but then chose to omit the six percent of the people who said they didn’t care or had no strong opinion.
they also removed any results where the person chose the first option or the last option on every question. And I dislike any type of automated data sanitation method like that, because while they did randomize the first and fourth answer, every time, there’s always the possibility that someone legitimately answered everything as either the first or last answer. My own vote could be stated that since I strongly agree that the cell phone shouldn’t be in the classroom, but strongly disagree that it should be straight banned. So if question one and question two had the polarity of question one and question 2 flipped, where one was strongly agree and one was strongly disagree, it’s entirely possible I would have been removed from the survey as a fraudulent result.
edit: removed couple sentences that drifted from topic some and fixed a repeated line
I live and teach in a state that implemented a ban. Results after year one were marginal improvement. Many just did the “hiding” trick more than before. A number didn’t think we’d notice them hunched over whispering to their watches. It was rather comical when they would do that.
I propose we build all new school buildings as giant Faraday cages.
Imagine a world where teachers weren’t geriatric and taught their kids digital literacy instead of digital luddism.
I mean, shit, homework was invented as a fucking punishment and so many studies have shown it has diminishing returns after a certain age. Yet here we are, perpetuating a system designed explicitly for controlling kids - not teaching them.
But yeah, phones are the problem. The internet is the problem. Definitely not how kids are taught to interact with them, no sir. While we’re at it, just get rid of PCs at the school - that way the district can save money on their IT department. They can access social media from the PCs so I don’t see the problem.
I don’t blame the teachers, I blame the system. I know too many teachers who have been yelled at by admin for daring to teach in a way the kids can learn because it’s “not what you’re supposed to teach, stick to the curriculum.”
It’s tough.
Kids are going to use their phones for random bullshit in class no matter what if they are allowed, but phones in general can be a fantastic learning tool used in the classroom.
I wonder if we might eventually see schools distribute phones like they do laptops, even though that in itself is rare. It would allow the school to lock them down during school hours. Maybe include some option to buy out the phone/number when a student leaves.
A common complaint of not allowing phones is that students can’t contact their parents quickly in an emergency or vice versa. A locked down phone with “emergency contacts” fixes that issue.
Digital literacy doesn’t do much when it comes to tech engineered to hook you and grab your attention. It bypasses the frontal lobe entirely.
At this point I don’t even know anyone who managed to use something like Instagram “occasionally” or in controlled manner. It’s way too addictive for this, and usage spirals out of control pretty fast.
I do agree with you generally though, schools should only use evidence-based interventions or none at all, no exceptions. In healthcare rolling out a drug without randomized control trial would be called heresy.
But when government does it, it makes it mandatory for all kids immediately, and then ignores increasing pile of evidence how it’s bad for decades
Y’all need to go read /r/teachers to learn what a scourge phones in classrooms are. The teachers are begging for an outright ban.
Right. Probably correct
That subreddit paints a realistic picture of what it’s like being a teacher, but I find it overly negative. While there are a myriad of reasons why education in the U.S. is in a bad place, there are also a lot of fulfilling and heartwarming moments to being a teacher that don’t get brought up over there.
Cell Phone bans hold up great until a school shooting happens and no one can call for help… then it’s all: “why didn’t anyone call for help”, “phone bans are dangerous to our kids”, “the trans kids are to blame”, “bitch bitch bitch transphobic bitching etc etc etc”.
And considering it’s America… School shootings are basically the Republican legally required National pastime. – Republicans actually get boners thinking about all the dead kids and they even get extra horny thinking about all the ways they can blame those deaths on LGBTQ+ folk… despite the fact that most school shooters lean towards right wing extremist philosophies… if you can even call pure evil incarnate a philosophy.
Don’t see why they can’t just have locked down WiFi networks so only staff and school equipment can use it and then have some sort of localized cell phone jamming that automatically turns off if a fire alarm or other alarm is triggered for emergencies.
In the US this isn’t legal. Signal jammers are outlawed period, you can’t even use one in your own private residence. The FCC is super clear on it’s legality. Any form of signal jamming period that can disrupt a communications signal such as a cellphone or wifi signal on US soil is a felony. They have even gone as far as fining companies who sold devices that could potentially have been used to signal jam over the restriction. In the US the only time you can use any device that has the capability to block signals is by a federal agency on a case by case basis
They actually
havehad (its been replaced with a much shorter excerpt that only mentions classrooms in a passerby) a FAQ about signal jammers where they explicitly mention it’s use in the school environment.I am a principal or school teacher and would like to use a jammer to limit cell phone calls and texting during school hours. May I do so? No. It is a violation of federal law to operate a jamming device within the U.S. Cell phone jammers do not distinguish between social or other cell phone conversations and an emergency call to a family member or a 9-1-1 emergency responder. In an emergency, use of a cell jammer can pose a threat to both students and staff by preventing communications with police or emergency services. In other words, jammers, even if carefully targeted, create risks of interference outside their intended zone of operations and can thereby disrupt critical communications by public safety providers, as well as the legitimate communications of passersby.
I think this is a tough one to weigh in on depending where you come from. If I lived somewhere where the news talked about school shootings a lot, I might want my child to have a phone.
Go after the companies making addictive applications instead.
It’s not that hard. You keep it in your backpack, and never take it out the whole day while school is in session.
When I was a kid in school, you had to go to the office to use the phone.
Just make them leave it off. Anyone caught using a phone gets it taken away the rest of the day.
That’s what we did with anything that was distracting when I was growing up. You can have it on you, but if they see you using it. It goes into the principal’s office until EOD.
How would it help for children to have phones during a school shooting? Everyone on the staff already has one.
For real. What are they gonna do if their kid specifically calls them directly? Go all Rambo on the shooter?
I’m a man with a very particular set of skills…
A parent is more likely to go rambo and be helpful than cops or teachers, just look at past school shootings where cops didnt do jack sht
The cops definitely need to act quickly. But no one is helped by a bunch of parents wandering around the scene of an active school shooter. Hell, half of them will bring their own guns, now you have multiple people without school credentials wandering around armed on campus. And the police have to chase after them instead of the actual shooter.
This is one of those cases where by trying to help your own kid, you’re actually putting them and a lot of other kids at increased danger.
Go after the companies
Sir this is a Merica.
As a mom of two in a country where school shootings do happen far more frequently than anywhere else in the world, the US, I fully support completely banning phones from schools. The benefit to my kids education overall far outweighs the minuscule chance something would happen where they need their phones or a shooting took place. I say this also as a former American student who’s school did go on lock down a few times for active shooters in the area, like the time a local bank got robbed or when they found a “kill list” some kid made. It just doesn’t make sense to me to degrade education across the board in the very very off chance my kid, or even myself, was at the location of a school shooting.
Are you suggesting a phone would stop the shooting?
I agree. Leave them at home. The safety argument is bullshit.
Nope. As a dad I want to be able to reach my kid when need to and I want her to be able to do the same
That’s been possible since way before cell phones were invented. Call the school and have them give your kid a message. School children on their phones all day long is why your kids can’t read, do math, or pay attention to anything longer than 5 minutes. Also, cyber bullying and negative social media influences are brutal and are contributing to rising suicidal ideation and attempts.
Is my kid on her phone more than I’d like? Yes. But she’s a straight A student. Doesn’t change the fact I want us to be able to contact each other should an emergency arise
You can. You call the school. That’s what people did before schools started allowing phones everywhere.
If there is an emergency, you’ll need to call them anyway. No school is just gonna let your kid leave because the kid says it’s okay.
Sincerely, a fellow dad
I mean, are phones conducive to learning? If not then forbid their usage at school and bloody enforce it. I think the fact phones became common place for kids so quickly and so early in their lives coupled with just the general insanity of American schools so often being under attack, the schools have just lost any agency to restrict them given their usage is already rampant.
It’s the parents that are the problem. The problem is, when schools try to ban them, parents flip the fuck out. They become apoplectic at the idea of not being able to instantly reach their kids at every hour of the day. A surprising number of parents install tracking apps on their kid’s phones. They have them tagged like wild animals under study.
So schools are stuck compromising with unenforceable rules. Instead of banning phones entirely, they’ll ban kids from having them out in class. Which of course never works, as the kids just take them out as soon as the teacher turns their back.
as the kids just take them out as soon as the teacher turns their back
When I was in school the teacher’s were seizing the phone if they caught you with it in class and sometimes require your parents to pick it up after school
Yup same. Then a few phones went missing, parents threatened to sue because cell phones were insanely expensive back then, and the school told teachers they couldn’t do that anymore. 🤷♀️
It’s darkly hilarious that parents are demanding that schools allow their kids to be stupid and the schools are just like “okay, we can’t do anything about this.”
What’s even the point? Shut 'em down if they’re not going to enforce any rules.
At that point, it’s probably more healthy to send little Bobby down into the mines, at least he won’t have time to melt his brain on a screen.
Bring back dumb phones
let the mobileks get dumber so the content creators can get smarter
