5 ms·

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

• forinti 3y ago
  You wouldn't believe what an issue this can turn into. Some parents will fight for their kid's right to use cellphones.
  • Firmwarrior 3y ago
    Pretty wild.. what's the point in even making them go to school if you're just going to let them goof off on their phone all day? Just let them sit around at home watching TikTok until they turn 18 and have to get a minimum wage job
    • jupp0r 3y ago
      Schools could teach kids to do something useful with their phones so they can use tech to their advantage later in life? How ho you think kids that never learned to responsibly use tech will do in college when they are on their own?
      • Almondsetat 3y ago
        Kids can't even mutiply two numbers and they are supposed to learn the most complex device ever made from school? lol
  • wharvle 3y ago
    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 shoot the shit. Lots of parents are... let's be kind I guess and go with really fucking weird.
    • shadowgovt 3y ago
      Parents now are the generation that grew up with ubiquitous communication connectivity. For them, not being in touch is going to feel weird.
    • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      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 first place. Having kids shouldn't give you special powers re: how your taxes are used.
      • cwalv 3y ago
        > 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.
        • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
          Whatever influence a non-elected person has over their police precinct should be equal to that of all the other non-elected people in that precinct. The voucher thing is like if you had a different sized influence based on whether you have a criminal record, since presumably you would then have a different relationship with the effects of that funding. It's just not how democracy works. (It is, however, how pre-revolution France worked, the revolution was as much about getting rid of the system of privileges as it was about getting rid of the king. I think we should think twice about the extent to which we legitimize the practice of treating different types of people differently.)
  • jonlucc 3y ago
    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.
    • pge 3y ago
      policy shouldn't be defined by extreme outlier cases
      • wharvle 3y ago
        I've run the numbers on "average likelihood of a given student being present during any kind of shooting on school grounds—the overwhelming majority of which aren't the kind of shooting one thinks of when one sees the term 'school shooting', anyway—at any point during 13 years of k-12 school, in the US" and it helped me conclude it's not a thing worth worrying about, even a little. (I do have kids in school)
      • pokerface_86 3y ago
        [dead]
    • mingus88 3y ago
      The light phone mentioned in this article can still make calls and send texts This seems to be more of a ban on social media apps in school, which I 100% support and honestly wouldn’t mind it being nationwide.
• tempest_ 3y ago
  Those light phones are interesting products and I thought about trying one at one point but seen some mixed reviews.
  • Podgajski 3y ago
    Why can’t someone just make a phone. I don’t need a phone that plays music or can listen to podcast. I just need a phone that can make calls and make texts. I think their problem is they wanted this phone to still be like a smart phone.
    • gambiting 3y ago
      You can still buy a super basic Nokia phone that pretty much only does that, and it lasts like a month of battery - I own one, it's great to carry around in places where you might not want to risk your super expensive smartphone. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-1-77-Inch-Feature-Phone-Single-Black/dp/B081DDS4HK/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1J3WYTSPPU1DT&keywords=nokia+phone&qid=1705507109&sprefix=nokia%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nokia-1-77-Inch-Feature-Phone-Singl... I'd happily give this to my own child so they can reach me in emergencies, but there is no risk of them going on TikTok or anything else. It's "just" a phone.
      • Podgajski 3y ago
        Then, why didn’t that school Just give them those Nokia phones? Because this is an advertising puff piece for the light phone. I’m going to guarantee you that someone in that company has connections to that school.
        • gambiting 3y ago
          I don't know. And maybe you're right - but I'd bet it's the attempt by the school the quell all kinds of complaints from parents like "what if my kid gets suddenly lost on the way home? what then????" by giving them a phone that has some mapping capability, it's just crap - but I guess it will do in an emergency.
• shannifin 3y ago
  Around here, unfortunately yes. The general argument I've heard is that kids need to be able to contact parents in an emergency, or something.
  • boeingUH60 3y ago
    There should be a public phone (manned by an administrator or teacher) that parents can call and get connected to their child or vice versa. Allowing smartphones for everyone is an unbelievable distraction.
    • vwcx 3y ago
      Most schools have maintained this for the past 40+ years.
    • gremlinsinc 3y ago
      With the rise in school shootings (I graduated in 98, Columbine was for me the first, and one of the deadliest obviously, but ever since it's just escalated).. I've got two boys 4 and 6, they don't have cellphones now, but I freak and feel I need to do damage control/therapy with them everytime they have an active shooter drill. We only ever had to deal with Tornado, and Fire drills. ADHD tangent aside my point is: I can see the need these days, however I like the idea of a dumb phone that just has the basics. Definitely no tiktok, facebook, etc.
      • boeingUH60 3y ago
        To be honest, I think your fear is overblown, but I understand how it is having kids you love. But let's assume a rare mass shooting actually happens (I forbid this thought)...will there be any point calling your kids? A phone will be more of a liability than an asset at that point..
        • wharvle 3y ago
          The fear of harm from shooter drills that the parent expressed is, sadly, not overblown. That we have so many school shootings is shameful. That we've decided a good reaction to them is to traumatize huge numbers of students (and staff! My former-teacher wife has stories...) over something that's, as shameful as the cases of it are, in fact extremely unlikely (specifically, an indiscriminate mass shooting at a primary or secondary school) is also shameful.
• semanticist 3y ago
  It's a boarding school, so something a bit different than your standard high school. Imagine if the school rules were no smartphones... at all, except on the school holidays and maybe weekends. Slightly different context.
• __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Most of my wife's high school students write their papers on their phones.
• rootusrootus 3y ago
  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 retrieve it. Maybe that's draconian. But maybe it's just good sense -- our high school is close to #1 in the state for academic performance, so they are doing something right.
  • brayhite 3y ago
    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.
    • rootusrootus 3y ago
      > I’d hope schools at least make exceptions for cases like this. Of course, they absolutely do. I imagine failure to do so would be an ADA violation, at least.
• wharvle 3y ago
  What's wild to me is that almost all the individual devices a smartphone represents, not even counting the phone itself, would have been confiscated if used in class, for my generation (and I'm a millennial!) Flashlight? LOL, they might not even wait for you to use it, just assume there's no way you're not going to do something dumb with it, and take it. A handheld gaming device? Insta-yoink. Note-passing? Notes confiscated. Basically an ordered-from-a-back-of-magazine-ad spy kit of a miniature camera and voice recorder? GONE. And you might be on the way to the office for a chat, and parents called, if you'd actually been using any of it. A glossy fashion magazine, seen out at any point that's not explicitly totally-free time? In the teacher's desk. (and that's on the tame side of the kind of thing one might be looking at on one's phone...) A portable mini-TV or small radio? Jesus, of course you can't have that in class. But smartphones? Nope, they can have those. Which is the exact same as having all those things above, and way more. It's such a crazily-different direction for policy.
  • z500 3y ago
    Hell, at my school you couldn't even listen to a CD at lunch. It boggles the mind.
    • balfirevic 3y ago
      > 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.
      • wharvle 3y ago
        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.
• tennisflyi 3y ago
  Totally out of the loop