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Minnesota middle school students 'seem happy' after cellphone ban
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThis has to be done by the school, there is not a critical mass of parents able to stop existing momentum.
- bonestamp2 3y agoYep, we had a pact with the parents of my kids and several of them caved early and now we look like the bad guys. That's ok, sometimes we have to be the bad guys. Hopefully, like me and my parents, the child appreciates later in life why the parent did things a certain way. Obviously, we have explained to them why they can't have phones yet, but they don't agree of course. For when my kids do get phones, I want a way to disable social media in blocks for different mac addresses/different times. Anybody know of a device that I can bolt on to any network to add that functionality?
- srcreigh 3y agoHave you considered a pihole with a blocklist config which covers social media domains?
- bonestamp2 3y agoThat's a good idea. I had heard of the pihole but didn't know how configurable it is. I'll check that out, thanks!
- hammock 3y ago>we had a pact with the parents of my kids Interesting. I wonder if putting some money (charity, etc) or other skin in the game would increase compliance and how many parents would agree to that. I could see this working at a small private school
- gnicholas 3y agoThere is the Wait Until Eighth campaign (though I personally think 9th makes much more sense, given the break between 8th and 9th grades. https://www.waituntil8th.org/ https://www.waituntil8th.org/
- klyrs 3y agoSounds like you live in a place with middle schools. Our system goes straight from elementary 7th grade to high school 8th grade. I grew up with middle schools and think they make a lot more sense. That said, I'd rather a "wait until 18th"...
- gnicholas 3y agoWe have a mix of schools that start with K, 4th, or 6th and end with 8th. Where are you that high school starts with 8th grade? is that still called "freshman year"? I'm in California and have never seen a school like that.
- klyrs 3y agoWell technically, we call it "grade 8" rather than "8th grade" (and that I slip up here is a tell that I'm a foreigner) and it's technically "secondary school" but I don't hear people call it that. High schoolers don't have cutsey names for the grades. They're just... in grade 8, in grade 12, etc. This is in Canada.
- gnicholas 3y agoThey don't refer to "senior year"? I don't think of that as cutesy at all — just descriptive. Do you refer to university by these 'cutesy' names? Or is it grade 13-16?
- klyrs 3y agoCaveat, my kid is still in elementary school, and I don't really interact with high schoolers yet. In my time in university here, I didn't hear that language being used. Wikipedia tells me that Canadians use "first year" to indicate its first year students, but "frosh week" is a thing. I did my undergrad in the US, though. Even there, if I ever heard somebody say "sophomore," it would have come from the mouth of a confused freshman.
- ilikeitdark 3y agoA group of students and teachers in Barcelona are trying for a mobile phone ban as well.
- christkv 3y agoOur school in Oviedo (co-operative run school) has a no phones policy and it's great. No peer pressure since everyone is in the same boat.
- johnea 3y agoThat article sucked 8-/ Just repeating the headline doesn't make an article, it is literaly 3 sentences long...
- jjulius 3y ago>Just repeating the headline doesn't make an article, it is literaly 3 sentences long... This makes it sound like you only read the three bullet points underneath the headline and didn't bother scrolling further, down to the parts where the middle school principal discusses the policy (aka, the actual article).
- wavemode 3y agoThe news here for me is that grade schools nowadays are allowing phone use in the first place
- ABeeSea 3y agoSchools should just be allowed to have cell jammers.
- timenova 3y agoA blanket ban on cell phones in schools will hamper teachers and staff too. Plus, the usual reason why jamming is illegal in most countries: dialling emergency numbers!
- pmorici 3y agoI wonder if they could wire the jamming system into the fire alarm. Pulling the alarm turns off the jamming.
- Loughla 3y agoI'm not going to pull the fire alarm if my friend is having an epileptic seizure.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoWe've gone many generations without cell phones at schools with trained professionals who are qualified to handle seizures. You don't need a cell phone to contact someone who can get medical assistance on a school campus.
- PointThink 3y agoI don't know how things work where your live, but I'm willing to bet my right hand that there is not a single person in my school that knows what to do in case of a seizure.
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoEpilepsy training is bog standard for teachers. Just because the kids don't know how to handle it doesn't mean that the teachers won't.
- lukev 3y agoI'm a little surprised this is newsworthy... this is already the policy at my kid's middle school (NC public schools.) Is it that uncommon? I get that it's probably harder to enforce into the upper grades...
- HDThoreaun 3y agoMost schools allow phones outside of class time. This policy bans phones on school grounds altogether
- huytersd 3y agoJust have a jammer on school premises and use mac auth for the wifi in addition to the the metal detectors at the entrance.
- doublemint2203 3y agoteachers/faculty?
- kgwxd 3y agoLaws?
- easton 3y agoThe jammer will get you a visit from the friendly people at the FCC. Much easier to just make your school have some thick walls that prevent cell signals :)
- Der_Einzige 3y ago[flagged]
- Sakos 3y agoHNs readership grew up in times when where cellphone usage was limited in schools by nature and also by policy (using them in class certainly was never allowed or tolerated). Jailbreaking my phone had nothing at all to do with school and was never something that could be prevented by school policy. It also feels like you have extremely out-of-the-norm takes on schooling in general. Most people do not want to end compulsory education and don't see the wider benefit in doing so. I primarily see downsides to it, in fact. > Teachers should have zero power to “discipline” except to expel students from their classroom. This sounds like dogma based on bias instead of anything factual. Why shouldn't teachers be able to discipline students? > Teachers are not the arbiters of truth on how effective you are at producing for society, but we sure treat them like it. No, we have given teachers a purpose and a responsibility, and we generally give them the room and autonomy and authority to carry that out in the best interests of our children. This might not be universal, but this is not an issue with schooling fundamentally, but with the specifics of schooling in a particular place and time. I hear plenty of nightmare-ish things about schools in the US, but that doesn't mean schools as a concept are flawed. Plenty of other places manage to have decent schools that actually serve their purpose quite well. > I forgot that HN actually loves to lick boots! You're barking up the wrong tree here. Just because we disagree with your bizarre conclusions and unsubstantiated statements of facts has nothing to do with anybody being a bootlicker.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoYou claim my takes are super out of base, but I’m basically just arguing the same things that Paul Freire advocated for in Pedogogy of the oppressed, which is requires reading in many universities in the USA (why this is, I’ll never know since it advocates for a far different educational system to the one that exists today) That book is the third most highly cited book in all of social science and the most highly cited work of pedagogy of all time. I’ll edit this and give point by point rebuttals in a bit.
- 3y ago
- donatj 3y agoAs a former student of a Minnesota district right outside Minneapolis, it's interesting to me that they were allowed at all. When I was in school in the late 90's / early aughts we weren't even supposed to have our Discman or early MP3 players on school property. We all had them of course, but if they were seen they could be confiscated - I think it was largely an empty threat but I never saw anyone push it. Some teachers would happily allow you to use them in class. They were also VERY suspicious any time you had your graphing calculator out outside math class, and some of the ruder study hall attendants would clear your calculators memory of games. Gameboy or anything of the like certainly would not have flown. I remember my friend actually getting special permission to bring his laptop in.
- bknight1983 3y agoBrings back great memories of my TI-83. Wrote my first program on it (text based SimCity). It’s somewhere on the 10s of 3.5 disks sitting in my closet
- tempsy 3y agoThis is a weird comment. Did you really think most schools widely police cell phone usage in the year 2023?
- donatj 3y agoI am well aware that they don't police it. What I am questioning is the why. Why did it stop. Why have the attitudes towards personal technology in schools swung so quickly? Phones in schools seem like nothing but a distraction.
- Octokiddie 3y ago“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.” -- Frederik Pohl Car, meet traffic jam. But few, if any saw this one coming. Oddly enough, today's readers would find any story based on this premise mundane - kind of like a story about a traffic jam. From the article: > “We do see a huge, huge difference in the way students are connecting with each other,” Smith said, later adding: “Just a short two years ago, they spent more time just looking down at their phones every moment that they could, and so it has become the culture of our building, and again, the kids seem happy.” In the 1990s, a cell phone was an expensive toy. Today it's almost impossible to function as a member of society without one. Everyone, even, kids under 8, simply must own one of these damned devices, carry it around at all times, and respond to its every demand. Public schools were a mess before all of this. But the cell phone has turned all of the problems in school up to 11. It has done so while offering little to nothing in return.
- riversflow 3y ago> Everyone, even, kids under 8 Is this satire? I don’t need a smartphone, anything that lets me answer a call would work, and I’m in my 30s. Always connected internet isn’t necessary, it’s a crutch.
- WolfeReader 3y agoThe sentence you're quoting is an exaggerated expression of a common viewpoint. Not exactly satire. The unexaggerated version would be "Many people, including children and their parents, feel compelled to buy smartphones in order to fully participate in modern society." Whether they are right to feel that way is a good point to ponder. If all of your friends and family communicate with video calls, do you want to be the one guy with a flip phone? Maybe you do! But not everyone shares that view.
- harryfyx 3y agoTo recommend good science fiction, "Three Body Problem" from Liu. He predicts the "traffic jam" and all other social impacts from tech.
- duxup 3y agoOne of the issues was cellphones in the bathroom. I don’t think the staff wanted be constantly patrolling and dealing with kids in the bathroom. I can tell you I’m happy to not be getting constant emails about cell phones that you just know parents who don’t care aren’t reading/ won’t do anything. I have a child in that specific school.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- elbasti 3y agoThe analogy couldn't be more perfect--social media is modern-day cigarettes.
- Timwi 3y ago“Our European visitors are important to us. This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.” Translation: Thank God for American visitors because we don't have to care about their privacy.
- irrational 3y agoIs this like how office workers "seem happy" after being forced to return to office? We have no data, but we are sure they are happy now. My work did lots of surveys about work from home, but have done zero surveys since forcing everyone to return to office. Gee... I wonder why?
- WheatMillington 3y agoHow did this become about WFH?
- irrational 3y agoAnalogy
- NetOpWibby 3y agoAnecdotally, my daughter lost her phone for a bit over the summer due to poor behavior. She reported feeling relieved she didn't have her phone after a day or so.
- basedkissinger 3y ago[dead]
- Susan77 3y ago[dead]
- MrDresden 3y agoThis has been trialled in schools here in Iceland, and from interviews and surveys it would seem the kids love not having their phone. Reading some interview transcripts I remember them mentioning that the kids felt that since their whole social group was without a phone (everyone in the school had to leave their phones at home or in storage boxes) at the same time they did not feel like there was anything that they might be missing out on, and subsequently could rather relax and focus on face-to-face interactions instead.
- olgeni 3y ago"Our European visitors are important to us", says the page blocking the content since years :D
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago>Our European visitors are important to us. >This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with applicable EU laws.