8 ms·

As 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 9

by donatj 3y ago

As 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 ago
Brings 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 ago
This is a weird comment. Did you really think most schools widely police cell phone usage in the year 2023?
- donatj 3y ago
  I 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.
  - tempsy 3y ago
    because cellphones became ubiquitous and admins never felt empowered to strictly limit them in schools
    - tivert 3y ago
      >> 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. > because cellphones became ubiquitous and admins never felt empowered to strictly limit them in schools You're missing the point. But there was a time when they weren't ubiquitous and admins did feel empowered to strictly limit similar distracting devices. It's anachronistic thinking to cite the present-day situation as a reason for a past change, when the conditions in the past were different. This is purely hypothetical, but I could see a process for the change where teachers and admins were ignorant of texting, so allowed phones under the mistaken belief that they would not disrupt class, because students would only use them to make voice calls to parents outside of class (because it would be far easier and cheaper for students to talk to each other in person). Then a new status quo was established. Then the school's awareness of the harms came like a frog boiling in a bot: a little bit a time, and too slowly to motivate action until it was too late.
      - zztop44 3y ago
        I remember I could send texts (including selecting the contact) in my pocket without looking at the screen of my Nokia 3310 in high school. So I think the boiling pot analogy holds. Things were already pretty advanced by the time smartphones came along. And the importance of cell phones to everyone’s lives (even children and teenagers) has massively increased since then. For schools to blanket ban them on campus or on the person of students in class would be swimming against a strong tide indeed. My guess is that the reason they don’t is that they believe that to do so would be constant war. And they aren’t paid enough for that.
  - fumar 3y ago
    Smartphones. I like to think they snuck in as a communication device more so than pocket computer. As in, kids and parents wanted to stay connected for emergencies but the software grossly exceeded text or phone call capabilities. I had a Nokia 9930 to reach my folks and rarely used it outside of making calls.
    - talldatethrow 3y ago
      I know what you mean, but I'd love to hear what kind of emergency communication a child needs to make to an adult, or adult to child. (That isn't accomplished the exact same way via the school staff)
      - tjr 3y ago
        I suspect part of it is overall societal changes pertaining to phone usage. When I was an elementary school student, I carried a few coins in the event that I had to call someone on a payphone. (Which happened very rarely.) But today, we have no payphones. Well, almost none. So what else could you do, with no payphone? Perhaps you could find someone else who had a phone that they could let you borrow. In years past, it wouldn't have been that uncommon to walk into a store or other place of business, or walk into your school office, and politely ask if you could use the phone. They might let you, or they might not, but it was a reasonable request. I imagine today that it would come across a lot more suspicious. Why don't you have your own phone? Both infrastructure and ways of thinking have shifted toward assuming that all individual people who might need to make a phone call have their own personal mobile phone. Children being assumed to have their own phone is probably more of a grey area, but even so, things have changed, and there may be no going back.
        talldatethrow 3y ago
        The kid can own the phone. In silent. In the backpack. Never to be seen on school grounds. And if they need to make a call, they go to the admin building, and explain why, and use the office phone.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    Probably because teachers lost moral authority to police cell phones since they themselves likely use their phone during down time in class.
  - layman51 3y ago
    I think they swung quickly because maybe aside from some families using them for communication in case of an emergency, the phones just became more of a liability to take away from a student. I haven’t been in classrooms recently, but I can imagine for high schoolers, taking away their phone == taking away their wallet.
    - lp0_on_fire 3y ago
      I’ve never bought the “we need them for emergencies” argument. Are there _that many_ emergencies happening that the school office is unable to field calls from parents who need to reach their child right now? I don’t see the “it’s like their wallet” argument either. That the phone is expensive and it contains personal information doesn’t mean it’s not disruptive to the classroom.
      - axus 3y ago
        What if the collected wallet/phone gets lost or stolen? That becomes the school's problem.
        lp0_on_fire 3y ago
        You don’t need to collect that which should be left at home or in the locker between periods.
      - ksenzee 3y ago
        You’re picturing emergencies at home. They’re picturing an emergency at school.
        riversflow 3y ago
        Neither are common though?
        drdeca 3y ago
        Emergencies generally aren’t, but emergency preparedness can still be worthwhile. Ok, but yes, I suppose that does suggest that, for personal emergencies, the office won’t be too overloaded with personal emergencies to deal with all of them. How often would the latency of getting to the office matter? I’m not sure.
  - pempem 3y ago
    Honestly I generally agree with you. I dont even want my kid to have a phone but now that I have a child I am worried about them being able to call me if there is some kind of: - natural disaster - school shooting - third type of personal issue where the school doesn't share what happened Growing up I do not remember my parents having these fears despite there being a bomb scare (once during my schooling).
    - boopmaster 3y ago
      80s/90s kid here.. I remember my car breaking down and needing to walk to a rest area, to use a pay phone to call for help. That and using pay phones generally as a convenience when I would bike miles into town, well that isn’t really available anymore. I’ve had to knock on a door to ask a stranger to use their phone. I’ve had to ask a store to use their phone. A lot of this seems so strange now, like I cannot picture myself needing to rely on strangers and stores!
    - riversflow 3y ago
      I read this as your peace of mind being more important than maintaining a schooling environment conducive to education. We need to protect kids, not expect our kids to protect us, which is what expecting them to be able to contact you during school is, protecting you from anxiety. This seems incredibly selfish, but not out of line for a society so incredibly narcissistic as that of American Millenials.
      - pempem 3y ago
        LMAO Thank you riverflows. I needed that. 1. Unintentional injuries account for 30% of all deaths of teenagers 2. Within that, suicide and homicide are the top two causes 3. Pretty sure its biological not narcissism that makes me want to make sure my progeny are safe esp when in a space that continually seems to be failing children and coming up with such mindbending solutions as more guns in schools
  - lozenge 3y ago
    I think part of the answer was in your post- most students allowed the policy to continue. They used the Walkman out of sight without open defiance and unreasonable use. Once enough students tip over to "I'm going to use it and I don't care", the school can't do anything about it.
    - tivert 3y ago
      > Once enough students tip over to "I'm going to use it and I don't care", the school can't do anything about it. The school can totally do something about that, they just have to be willing to confront the student and enforce the rules.
      - belthesar 3y ago
        I don't know your background, but this definitely reads like someone who either isn't, or doesn't have a family member or friend as faculty in a public high school. You enforce the rule, and confiscate the device. You have an irate parent now emailing you constantly, coming in and demanding that their child be able to have their several hundred dollar smartphone back, to which they will hand it back to their child, give them a weak "don't do that again" at best, and likely forget the incident ever happened.
        tivert 3y ago
        A school can't have rules if they're that afraid of one parent complaining. They're too weak. What if the student beats other kids up, and the parent behaves similarly in response to discipline? Should the school tolerate that defiance, too? The school obviously can't take the phone and throw it in a shredder or keep it for the year, but they can and should be able to keep it for the school day (and every other school day, if need be).
  - burmer 3y ago
    A walkman costs like what, $20? A cell phone is hundreds. Do you, as a teacher really want thousands and thousands of dollars of students' electronics stashed in your drawer?
    - lancesells 3y ago
      Phone lockers. My kid puts his phone in before class and gets them out with each class.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    In Northern Virginia schools, late '90s, cell-phones and pagers were banned[1] (not even allowed on campus) because they were perceived as tools for accomplishing drug-deals. I think that perception has definitely changed. We also had a half-dozen pay-phones in the school lobby for students to make calls if needed. 1: IIRC automatic suspension on first offense. Note, however, with most of the "zero tolerance" policies that were in place at the time, the offenses were significantly under-reported by the faculty.
  - matteoraso 3y ago
    >What I am questioning is the why. Why did it stop. Where do you even start? For a kid raised on phones, asking them to stop using their phone feels like asking them to cut off their hand. I imagine that most schools do have anti-phone policies, but there's a point where it's just too hard to enforce. Like other people have also mentioned, parents often pressure their kids to have phones in high school. As someone who went to high school after smartphones became popular, my mom would get upset when I want to school (or anywhere) without a phone on me. That means that teachers have to deal with a student body that's completely unwilling to follow the rules and parents that will back them up if you ever try. I certainly wouldn't bother enforcing a phone ban if I was a teacher.
    - hamhock666 3y ago
      > feels like asking them to cut off their hand It seems like this would be good reason to ban phones in school. I worry about the detrimental effects of not being able to concentrate. You could at least enforce school as a place to focus. If a student is using their phone during class, then they are not paying attention. It seems worthwhile to enforce this rather than give up on the kids.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    They're far worse than a distraction, they enable everything from new forms of bullying to viewing of gore and porn. Then there's the issue of kids having a high-value gadget that's easily damaged and at risk of theft in schools that never managed to solve old-fashioned bullying let alone whatever the kids get up to on social media these days. If kids, or, anyone under-18 really, really needs a phone make calls, something like the original Nokia 3110 would be much more suitable than any smartphone.
- urda 3y ago
  They should but many do not. The students do not need to be on their phones during school hours. They are there to learn.
- rimunroe 3y ago
  Is that such an odd thought? I know about this, but can easily imagine others being unaware of it. It seems like a reasonable thing to expect
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Of course. Because they obviously need to.
talldatethrow 3y ago
Delete
- lozenge 3y ago
  "They do something, she says something they don't respect, they continue, she gives up." And what do you want her to do? Stop the lesson until the student respects her? Remove the student from the classroom?
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    One, students that don't listen used to be removed. So, potential totally yes. Two, I expect her to put a lot of personal effort into becoming at expert in motivation, behavior management, discipline for kids. I expect her to at least read ONE book about this. She complains for 2+ years about this that I've known her. I recommend books, she gets insulted and explains why it's not relevant. IMO a teacher being paid $90k a year for 7 hours a day of work, 10 months a year, should be working hard to improve. But instead it's just a cushy job that no one gets fired from no matter how average (or below) they are. Ps, I have never seen her take work home once in 2 years. So don't say the hours are long. Tldr; I'd like her to do whatever other teachers that have better control of their classrooms do. Unless you're going to tell me there's zero variation in that amongst teachers.
    - starttoaster 3y ago
      > I have never seen her take work home once in 2 years. So don't say the hours are long. What does she teach? One of my best friends is a foreign language teacher that leaves home for work around 6AM and is never back home until around 7-8PM. Partially because they have to coach for sporting events because the paycheck for just teaching is ridiculously low; less than $50k/yr last I asked. Fairly middle class area in a suburb of Chicago, by the way. But yes, if what you've said is halfway accurate, it sounds like her and her coworkers are fairly underqualified and/or under-driven.
      - 3y ago
josephcsible 3y ago
> some of the ruder study hall attendants would clear your calculators memory of games. Do you mean school-issued calculators, or personally owned ones?
- WolfeReader 3y ago
  Personally owned, in my former school's case.
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    If I found out a school deleted files from one of my kid's personal devices without my permission, I'd be livid.
    - WolfeReader 3y ago
      These days, sure. But back in the 90's, your TI-83 almost certainly wasn't the preferred place to store photos or other sensitive data.
    - willsmith72 3y ago
      if a kid was playing banned games in my class, i'd want to do the same. why are kids' devices so special?
      - oh_sigh 3y ago
        They aren't - in no other situation would anyone be allowed to delete random information off the device of an adult who broke some private rule. The only thing they could generally do is kick you out of wherever you are and tell you to not come back.
      - MeImCounting 3y ago
        Why should a teacher or anyone besides the childs parents have any right to mess with in any way somebody elses property? Students are people not property.
      - 3y ago
libraryatnight 3y ago
This was always a curiosity to me, too. Same in my schools, no gameboys, graphing calc use monitored and restricted to specific classes, whether cheating or distraction things weren't allowed - smart phones are all those things and more. It didn't feel oppressive, either, it felt appropriate - like setting a tone, even when we were defying the rules lol
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  It was just annoying to me. They take away trading cards and game boys and at the same time this was when they were removing monkey bars and tether ball courts due to lawsuits. What do you want students to do during recess? There's only 1 full basketball court and 2 single courts. We only had access to half the grass field for whatever reason so that limited soccer (and yeah, no full contact so Murica Football was soft banned. You could throw the pig skin and that's it). If that's a shared experience, it's no wonder my generation is so scrutinous of authority.
  - tnecniv 3y ago
    I went to a tiny Catholic school that didn’t have a playground. We had a parking lot with two moveable basketball nets. We played “touch” football on the asphalt where touch was only a strong suggestion. We went to the nurse a lot.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Glad I didn't have to endure such an unreasonable "culture of no". In the late 90's in California, we had an open campus (no fences) and the classrooms were freestanding buildings without enclosed halls. Some students went to lunch at businesses a few blocks away. The cool kids would enroll in one period that included floating permission, so you could basically leave campus whenever you wanted. There was far more weed and ritalin than smoking or drinking. Because of parental pressures, there weren't many students who were lazy or fuck-ups. HP 48G(X) represent. IR beam compilers, apps, and games to each other. Also, the very powerful universal remote app that could control any TV at a long distance. No one else ever touched my calculator except to verify clear memory for placement tests. The computer lab was full of absolute shit PS/2 25 and 30, and PCjrs, but that wasn't a problem because of the laissez-faire un-management and lack of control freaks that didn't stifle creativity and exploration. In my estimation, 97% of my graduating class went to college. Of that cohort, most ultimately became millionaires with a few centimillionaires, and a few became moderate names in academia and professional trades. (I once made the mistake of unwittingly agreeing to a blind date with someone from my graduating class, but she (a dentist) was so embarrassingly inconsiderate, unrelatable, ill-mannered, and late that I had to cut it short. Some people are just so awful that they're entertaining clichés and good story fodder.)
- monksy 3y ago
  https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/11/30/he-wanted-privacy-his-college-gave-him-none https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/11/30/he-wanted-... I'm just going to leave that there.
arp242 3y ago
> we weren't even supposed to have our Discman or early MP3 players on school property Or your Tamagotchi! That was probably much more similar. Our school wasn't too strict about walkmans and the like, because no one was really distracted by it during classes. Tamagotchis on the other hand...
Vicinity9635 3y ago
>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. That would have been a huge bummer becuase I wasn't playing games on mine, I was writing programs. It was actually the start of my professional programming career technically. I sold a copy of the program I wrote via link cable to a fellow student for $1... 8 years before apple was selling $1 mobile apps ;)
- Flameancer 3y ago
  Crazy because I started playing games on the calc and then at something in HS I got a new Ti-84 and student read the full manual and realized you could actually code programs in that thing.
- twright0 3y ago
  The very first thing you did is write a program that prints a pixel-perfect "memory reset successfully" message to the screen as if you had just cleared it yourself :)
  - kurisufag 3y ago
    yep, remember doing exactly this for the ti-84+ CE. god bless third-party TI-BASIC documentation websites. better than making it seem like you had just done it yourself, you could use the Menu() function to simulate all the menu navigation necessary to actually get to that screen! funnily enough, jabbing all the buttons on the calculator and having to select functions via menu listings created one of the comfiest development environments I've ever used. after a while, banging out a screensaver or fake menu became second nature.
    - bierjunge 3y ago
      I'm not a big BASIC fan, so I've done my stuff in C, since it was a Motorola 68k on the TI-Voyage 200. I don't remember exactly how (it's 15+ year ago), but you could mark your app as a "system app" which was not removed during a factory reset. Add a cryptic name, blank screen on start with a short timeout to return to menu when a key combination is not pressed and nobody will ever notice.

by donatj 3y ago

bknight1983 3y ago

Brings 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 ago

This is a weird comment. Did you really think most schools widely police cell phone usage in the year 2023?

donatj 3y ago
I 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.
- tempsy 3y ago
  because cellphones became ubiquitous and admins never felt empowered to strictly limit them in schools
  - tivert 3y ago
    >> 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. > because cellphones became ubiquitous and admins never felt empowered to strictly limit them in schools You're missing the point. But there was a time when they weren't ubiquitous and admins did feel empowered to strictly limit similar distracting devices. It's anachronistic thinking to cite the present-day situation as a reason for a past change, when the conditions in the past were different. This is purely hypothetical, but I could see a process for the change where teachers and admins were ignorant of texting, so allowed phones under the mistaken belief that they would not disrupt class, because students would only use them to make voice calls to parents outside of class (because it would be far easier and cheaper for students to talk to each other in person). Then a new status quo was established. Then the school's awareness of the harms came like a frog boiling in a bot: a little bit a time, and too slowly to motivate action until it was too late.
    - zztop44 3y ago
      I remember I could send texts (including selecting the contact) in my pocket without looking at the screen of my Nokia 3310 in high school. So I think the boiling pot analogy holds. Things were already pretty advanced by the time smartphones came along. And the importance of cell phones to everyone’s lives (even children and teenagers) has massively increased since then. For schools to blanket ban them on campus or on the person of students in class would be swimming against a strong tide indeed. My guess is that the reason they don’t is that they believe that to do so would be constant war. And they aren’t paid enough for that.
- fumar 3y ago
  Smartphones. I like to think they snuck in as a communication device more so than pocket computer. As in, kids and parents wanted to stay connected for emergencies but the software grossly exceeded text or phone call capabilities. I had a Nokia 9930 to reach my folks and rarely used it outside of making calls.
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    I know what you mean, but I'd love to hear what kind of emergency communication a child needs to make to an adult, or adult to child. (That isn't accomplished the exact same way via the school staff)
    - tjr 3y ago
      I suspect part of it is overall societal changes pertaining to phone usage. When I was an elementary school student, I carried a few coins in the event that I had to call someone on a payphone. (Which happened very rarely.) But today, we have no payphones. Well, almost none. So what else could you do, with no payphone? Perhaps you could find someone else who had a phone that they could let you borrow. In years past, it wouldn't have been that uncommon to walk into a store or other place of business, or walk into your school office, and politely ask if you could use the phone. They might let you, or they might not, but it was a reasonable request. I imagine today that it would come across a lot more suspicious. Why don't you have your own phone? Both infrastructure and ways of thinking have shifted toward assuming that all individual people who might need to make a phone call have their own personal mobile phone. Children being assumed to have their own phone is probably more of a grey area, but even so, things have changed, and there may be no going back.
      - talldatethrow 3y ago
        The kid can own the phone. In silent. In the backpack. Never to be seen on school grounds. And if they need to make a call, they go to the admin building, and explain why, and use the office phone.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Probably because teachers lost moral authority to police cell phones since they themselves likely use their phone during down time in class.
- layman51 3y ago
  I think they swung quickly because maybe aside from some families using them for communication in case of an emergency, the phones just became more of a liability to take away from a student. I haven’t been in classrooms recently, but I can imagine for high schoolers, taking away their phone == taking away their wallet.
  - lp0_on_fire 3y ago
    I’ve never bought the “we need them for emergencies” argument. Are there _that many_ emergencies happening that the school office is unable to field calls from parents who need to reach their child right now? I don’t see the “it’s like their wallet” argument either. That the phone is expensive and it contains personal information doesn’t mean it’s not disruptive to the classroom.
    - axus 3y ago
      What if the collected wallet/phone gets lost or stolen? That becomes the school's problem.
      - lp0_on_fire 3y ago
        You don’t need to collect that which should be left at home or in the locker between periods.
    - ksenzee 3y ago
      You’re picturing emergencies at home. They’re picturing an emergency at school.
      - riversflow 3y ago
        Neither are common though?
        drdeca 3y ago
        Emergencies generally aren’t, but emergency preparedness can still be worthwhile. Ok, but yes, I suppose that does suggest that, for personal emergencies, the office won’t be too overloaded with personal emergencies to deal with all of them. How often would the latency of getting to the office matter? I’m not sure.
- pempem 3y ago
  Honestly I generally agree with you. I dont even want my kid to have a phone but now that I have a child I am worried about them being able to call me if there is some kind of: - natural disaster - school shooting - third type of personal issue where the school doesn't share what happened Growing up I do not remember my parents having these fears despite there being a bomb scare (once during my schooling).
  - boopmaster 3y ago
    80s/90s kid here.. I remember my car breaking down and needing to walk to a rest area, to use a pay phone to call for help. That and using pay phones generally as a convenience when I would bike miles into town, well that isn’t really available anymore. I’ve had to knock on a door to ask a stranger to use their phone. I’ve had to ask a store to use their phone. A lot of this seems so strange now, like I cannot picture myself needing to rely on strangers and stores!
  - riversflow 3y ago
    I read this as your peace of mind being more important than maintaining a schooling environment conducive to education. We need to protect kids, not expect our kids to protect us, which is what expecting them to be able to contact you during school is, protecting you from anxiety. This seems incredibly selfish, but not out of line for a society so incredibly narcissistic as that of American Millenials.
    - pempem 3y ago
      LMAO Thank you riverflows. I needed that. 1. Unintentional injuries account for 30% of all deaths of teenagers 2. Within that, suicide and homicide are the top two causes 3. Pretty sure its biological not narcissism that makes me want to make sure my progeny are safe esp when in a space that continually seems to be failing children and coming up with such mindbending solutions as more guns in schools
- lozenge 3y ago
  I think part of the answer was in your post- most students allowed the policy to continue. They used the Walkman out of sight without open defiance and unreasonable use. Once enough students tip over to "I'm going to use it and I don't care", the school can't do anything about it.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Once enough students tip over to "I'm going to use it and I don't care", the school can't do anything about it. The school can totally do something about that, they just have to be willing to confront the student and enforce the rules.
    - belthesar 3y ago
      I don't know your background, but this definitely reads like someone who either isn't, or doesn't have a family member or friend as faculty in a public high school. You enforce the rule, and confiscate the device. You have an irate parent now emailing you constantly, coming in and demanding that their child be able to have their several hundred dollar smartphone back, to which they will hand it back to their child, give them a weak "don't do that again" at best, and likely forget the incident ever happened.
      - tivert 3y ago
        A school can't have rules if they're that afraid of one parent complaining. They're too weak. What if the student beats other kids up, and the parent behaves similarly in response to discipline? Should the school tolerate that defiance, too? The school obviously can't take the phone and throw it in a shredder or keep it for the year, but they can and should be able to keep it for the school day (and every other school day, if need be).
- burmer 3y ago
  A walkman costs like what, $20? A cell phone is hundreds. Do you, as a teacher really want thousands and thousands of dollars of students' electronics stashed in your drawer?
  - lancesells 3y ago
    Phone lockers. My kid puts his phone in before class and gets them out with each class.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- aidenn0 3y ago
  In Northern Virginia schools, late '90s, cell-phones and pagers were banned[1] (not even allowed on campus) because they were perceived as tools for accomplishing drug-deals. I think that perception has definitely changed. We also had a half-dozen pay-phones in the school lobby for students to make calls if needed. 1: IIRC automatic suspension on first offense. Note, however, with most of the "zero tolerance" policies that were in place at the time, the offenses were significantly under-reported by the faculty.
- matteoraso 3y ago
  >What I am questioning is the why. Why did it stop. Where do you even start? For a kid raised on phones, asking them to stop using their phone feels like asking them to cut off their hand. I imagine that most schools do have anti-phone policies, but there's a point where it's just too hard to enforce. Like other people have also mentioned, parents often pressure their kids to have phones in high school. As someone who went to high school after smartphones became popular, my mom would get upset when I want to school (or anywhere) without a phone on me. That means that teachers have to deal with a student body that's completely unwilling to follow the rules and parents that will back them up if you ever try. I certainly wouldn't bother enforcing a phone ban if I was a teacher.
  - hamhock666 3y ago
    > feels like asking them to cut off their hand It seems like this would be good reason to ban phones in school. I worry about the detrimental effects of not being able to concentrate. You could at least enforce school as a place to focus. If a student is using their phone during class, then they are not paying attention. It seems worthwhile to enforce this rather than give up on the kids.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  They're far worse than a distraction, they enable everything from new forms of bullying to viewing of gore and porn. Then there's the issue of kids having a high-value gadget that's easily damaged and at risk of theft in schools that never managed to solve old-fashioned bullying let alone whatever the kids get up to on social media these days. If kids, or, anyone under-18 really, really needs a phone make calls, something like the original Nokia 3110 would be much more suitable than any smartphone.
urda 3y ago
They should but many do not. The students do not need to be on their phones during school hours. They are there to learn.
rimunroe 3y ago
Is that such an odd thought? I know about this, but can easily imagine others being unaware of it. It seems like a reasonable thing to expect
nonethewiser 3y ago
Of course. Because they obviously need to.

talldatethrow 3y ago

Delete

lozenge 3y ago
"They do something, she says something they don't respect, they continue, she gives up." And what do you want her to do? Stop the lesson until the student respects her? Remove the student from the classroom?
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  One, students that don't listen used to be removed. So, potential totally yes. Two, I expect her to put a lot of personal effort into becoming at expert in motivation, behavior management, discipline for kids. I expect her to at least read ONE book about this. She complains for 2+ years about this that I've known her. I recommend books, she gets insulted and explains why it's not relevant. IMO a teacher being paid $90k a year for 7 hours a day of work, 10 months a year, should be working hard to improve. But instead it's just a cushy job that no one gets fired from no matter how average (or below) they are. Ps, I have never seen her take work home once in 2 years. So don't say the hours are long. Tldr; I'd like her to do whatever other teachers that have better control of their classrooms do. Unless you're going to tell me there's zero variation in that amongst teachers.
  - starttoaster 3y ago
    > I have never seen her take work home once in 2 years. So don't say the hours are long. What does she teach? One of my best friends is a foreign language teacher that leaves home for work around 6AM and is never back home until around 7-8PM. Partially because they have to coach for sporting events because the paycheck for just teaching is ridiculously low; less than $50k/yr last I asked. Fairly middle class area in a suburb of Chicago, by the way. But yes, if what you've said is halfway accurate, it sounds like her and her coworkers are fairly underqualified and/or under-driven.
    - 3y ago

josephcsible 3y ago

> some of the ruder study hall attendants would clear your calculators memory of games. Do you mean school-issued calculators, or personally owned ones?

WolfeReader 3y ago
Personally owned, in my former school's case.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  If I found out a school deleted files from one of my kid's personal devices without my permission, I'd be livid.
  - WolfeReader 3y ago
    These days, sure. But back in the 90's, your TI-83 almost certainly wasn't the preferred place to store photos or other sensitive data.
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    if a kid was playing banned games in my class, i'd want to do the same. why are kids' devices so special?
    - oh_sigh 3y ago
      They aren't - in no other situation would anyone be allowed to delete random information off the device of an adult who broke some private rule. The only thing they could generally do is kick you out of wherever you are and tell you to not come back.
    - MeImCounting 3y ago
      Why should a teacher or anyone besides the childs parents have any right to mess with in any way somebody elses property? Students are people not property.
    - 3y ago

libraryatnight 3y ago

This was always a curiosity to me, too. Same in my schools, no gameboys, graphing calc use monitored and restricted to specific classes, whether cheating or distraction things weren't allowed - smart phones are all those things and more. It didn't feel oppressive, either, it felt appropriate - like setting a tone, even when we were defying the rules lol

johnnyanmac 3y ago
It was just annoying to me. They take away trading cards and game boys and at the same time this was when they were removing monkey bars and tether ball courts due to lawsuits. What do you want students to do during recess? There's only 1 full basketball court and 2 single courts. We only had access to half the grass field for whatever reason so that limited soccer (and yeah, no full contact so Murica Football was soft banned. You could throw the pig skin and that's it). If that's a shared experience, it's no wonder my generation is so scrutinous of authority.
- tnecniv 3y ago
  I went to a tiny Catholic school that didn’t have a playground. We had a parking lot with two moveable basketball nets. We played “touch” football on the asphalt where touch was only a strong suggestion. We went to the nurse a lot.

1letterunixname 3y ago

Glad I didn't have to endure such an unreasonable "culture of no". In the late 90's in California, we had an open campus (no fences) and the classrooms were freestanding buildings without enclosed halls. Some students went to lunch at businesses a few blocks away. The cool kids would enroll in one period that included floating permission, so you could basically leave campus whenever you wanted. There was far more weed and ritalin than smoking or drinking. Because of parental pressures, there weren't many students who were lazy or fuck-ups. HP 48G(X) represent. IR beam compilers, apps, and games to each other. Also, the very powerful universal remote app that could control any TV at a long distance. No one else ever touched my calculator except to verify clear memory for placement tests. The computer lab was full of absolute shit PS/2 25 and 30, and PCjrs, but that wasn't a problem because of the laissez-faire un-management and lack of control freaks that didn't stifle creativity and exploration. In my estimation, 97% of my graduating class went to college. Of that cohort, most ultimately became millionaires with a few centimillionaires, and a few became moderate names in academia and professional trades. (I once made the mistake of unwittingly agreeing to a blind date with someone from my graduating class, but she (a dentist) was so embarrassingly inconsiderate, unrelatable, ill-mannered, and late that I had to cut it short. Some people are just so awful that they're entertaining clichés and good story fodder.)

monksy 3y ago
https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/11/30/he-wanted-privacy-his-college-gave-him-none https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/11/30/he-wanted-... I'm just going to leave that there.

arp242 3y ago

> we weren't even supposed to have our Discman or early MP3 players on school property Or your Tamagotchi! That was probably much more similar. Our school wasn't too strict about walkmans and the like, because no one was really distracted by it during classes. Tamagotchis on the other hand...

Vicinity9635 3y ago

>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. That would have been a huge bummer becuase I wasn't playing games on mine, I was writing programs. It was actually the start of my professional programming career technically. I sold a copy of the program I wrote via link cable to a fellow student for $1... 8 years before apple was selling $1 mobile apps ;)

Flameancer 3y ago
Crazy because I started playing games on the calc and then at something in HS I got a new Ti-84 and student read the full manual and realized you could actually code programs in that thing.
twright0 3y ago
The very first thing you did is write a program that prints a pixel-perfect "memory reset successfully" message to the screen as if you had just cleared it yourself :)
- kurisufag 3y ago
  yep, remember doing exactly this for the ti-84+ CE. god bless third-party TI-BASIC documentation websites. better than making it seem like you had just done it yourself, you could use the Menu() function to simulate all the menu navigation necessary to actually get to that screen! funnily enough, jabbing all the buttons on the calculator and having to select functions via menu listings created one of the comfiest development environments I've ever used. after a while, banging out a screensaver or fake menu became second nature.
  - bierjunge 3y ago
    I'm not a big BASIC fan, so I've done my stuff in C, since it was a Motorola 68k on the TI-Voyage 200. I don't remember exactly how (it's 15+ year ago), but you could mark your app as a "system app" which was not removed during a factory reset. Add a cryptic name, blank screen on start with a short timeout to return to menu when a key combination is not pressed and nobody will ever notice.