8 ms·

I don't know why this is hard. At least in the classroom if not during the entire school day. You get a cabinet with a bunch of cubbie holes, kids put their ph

by imgabe 2y ago

I don't know why this is hard. At least in the classroom if not during the entire school day. You get a cabinet with a bunch of cubbie holes, kids put their phone in at the beginning of class, they take it out at the end of class. They can even lock and each kid takes a key with them if theft is a concern. It doesn't seem that complicated. They have these things outside every SCIF. I know they exist.

scarface_74 2y ago
So if a child says they don’t have a phone are you going to search them? But you don’t even have to take the phone out of the possession of the student. They use these at some phone free concerts. https://www.overyondr.com/phone-locking-pouch https://www.overyondr.com/phone-locking-pouch
- lovecg 2y ago
  That’s exactly what they use at some of the schools that tried it (and there’s an arms race where some kids figured out how to hack these devices and unlock them). Locking up thousands and thousands of dollars worth of phones for the day is way too much liability for a school otherwise.
  - mensetmanusman 2y ago
    Society can choose to pass on bowing to the God of insurance in this case :)
- Gys 2y ago
  I imagine it is not difficult to make a phone detector. A phone is sending almost constantly. If a phone has to be in flight mode the whole lesson then there is no reason to bring one
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Even airlines can’t really tell when all of the phones are in airplane mode…
  - TheCoreh 2y ago
    It is extremely hard to make a phone detector that's able to detect only phones in a specific room, considering how far the cellular signals can travel, and how pervasive wifi is for everything
    - reverius42 2y ago
      Just make every classroom a Faraday cage. No need to detect if you can disable.
  - Tempest1981 2y ago
    Would you want it to ignore the teacher's phone?
- imgabe 2y ago
  If they say they don’t have a phone, fine. If they later have a phone out in class, you tell them to put it in a cubby. If they have it and don’t take it out in class it’s not a problem.
- TheCoreh 2y ago
  You don't have to search the students. Or even put the phones in a locker. You just make the rules about them known, and if students are found using a phone during class, they can just be punished with detention/suspension. I don't understand why this is hard to enforce, or requires special laws. We had rules about not using (feature) phones back when I was in middle school (~2002), and you just kept your phone in your backpack/pocket until the class was over. It worked.
  - coryrc 2y ago
    In Seattle they won't even expel students committing violent crimes in schools. There's no punishment available for any behavior. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/student-discipline-are-schools-equipped-to-handle-behavioral-extremes/ https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/student-discipline-are-... If someone brandished a knife at my workplace they would be immediately fired, never to return. At SPS that's just a stern talkin' to.
    - thfuran 2y ago
      That's weird. I've mostly heard about the opposite at schools, like someone getting reamed for bringing cake and a plastic knife to cut it. But I guess that was probably over a decade ago. Has 'zero tolerance' so thoroughly reversed?
- jonhohle 2y ago
  If they don’t take it out and use it (or at least don’t get caught using it), what’s the problem? If they’re using a phone in class, take it like any other distraction. I have four kids in school and while extreme incidents are rare, if I set my kid to school with a phone it would be to contact me in an emergency. I completely agree with no phones out, on silent, etc., but I’m unsure how I feel about schools taking away tools that could be used to get help.
  - commodoreboxer 2y ago
    I don't see a problem with taking the phone, as long as it's returned by the end of the day. The school should have your phone number on file and can reach you in an emergency. The situations where your child would specifically need to reach you on their own phone with no other possibilities of getting help (or getting their phone back in a hurry) while at school are so uncommon as to be not really with considering.
- lovecg 2y ago
  > So if a child says they don’t have a phone are you going to search them? If a child says they don’t have any cigarettes or a knife etc. etc. are you going to search them? Most kids follow the rules. A few troublemakers with phones won’t make a difference and can be easily handled by existing disciplinary actions.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    You don’t have kids do you? Just as a proxy, weee use is against the rules by definition for middle and high schoolers https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36863048/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36863048/
    - lovecg 2y ago
      I do, do you? I also used to be a kid myself. What does lifetime use have to do with smoking _on school property_?
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        So you think kids “follow the rules” and “say no to drugs”, don’t engage in underaged drinking, don’t lie and say they are over 18 to view porn etc?
        lovecg 2y ago
        Of course not. This is not some rhetorical gotcha you think it is, there’s a huge difference between rules like “don’t use a phone in class” and “don’t drink alcohol ever in your life anywhere”.
        scarface_74 2y ago
        I fail to see the difference in “kids following the rules in this one specific case” and statistically we know that kids usually don’t follow the rules that adults set for them if they can get away with it. Heck even when I was in school kids had beepers (late 80s - early 90s) when they were not allowed to.
spondylosaurus 2y ago
I'm young enough that smartphones were just hitting the market when I was in high school, but old enough that using your phone in class was still totally verboten. (We all tried to skirt the rules[1], of course, but we knew the rules were unambiguously a thing, and knew there'd be consequences if we got caught.[2]) And for the most part, teachers didn't have to implement any special solutions; we kept them on us at all times, and if a teacher heard/saw your phone, they were liable to take it for the class or for the day. So the current situation with out-of-control phone use in schools is interesting/puzzling to me, because clearly something's changed since then—but I don't think "better smartphones" are the differentiating factor here. Something's shifted with how schools enforce (or don't enforce) these policies, or with kids' relationship to their phones (and believe me, I was plenty hooked on mine back then too :P), or something else entirely. It's also puzzling when people argue that smartphones have opened a Pandora's box that makes it impossible to control student behavior—because I know firsthand that that's not true! [1] I think the threat of punishment also forced us to be relatively discreet about it. If you're texting in class, you have your phone on silent, brightness all the way down, barely sticking out of your bag... [2] Some teachers admittedly gave more of a shit than others, but I rarely saw students taking advantage of that in a disruptive way—the most blatant thing you'd see is a kid listening to music on headphones during art class or something. I might've been the biggest offender in that regard, because I would occasionally bust out a Wiimote and N64 emulator to play Mario 64 on my phone, but I knew when I could get away with that and when I couldn't.
- 1_1xdev1 2y ago
  Punishment is effectively not allowed at many schools because parents suck. Kids complain to parents. Parents complain to teacher. Teacher tells parent to pound sand. Parent complains to administration about unfair teacher. Administration takes a “customer is _always_ right” mindset for various reasons, and teacher told to not enforce. Or the rule is changed. Some parents refuse to allow their child to do anything wrong (by moving the goalposts of “wrong”, assuming their child is always right, etc), some have anxiety if they can’t reach their child instantly via text, some parents refuse to enforce rules they don’t understand or agree with.
amalcon 2y ago
It's hard because the parents object. They want to be able to directly reach their children in the event of an emergency.
- 31337Logic 2y ago
  I'm sorry but no. There is no emergency I can think of that either can't wait till lunch (or end of class, whenever the kids are allowed to check), or else calling the school office directly (remember those?), or even just showing up to the school to pickup their kid in person. By the way, most parents I speak to would love to have their kids off their phones and focusing on school during the day. This whole "parents, emergency" argument seems highly suspicious to me.
  - loeg 2y ago
    There are many parents with different preferences than you.
  - falcolas 2y ago
    > There is no emergency I can think of that either can't wait till lunch Respectfully, most parents I've met do not agree with you. And I don't think that the random events like school shootings and bomb threats have helped them relax into the same environment we had in the 90's.
    - ericd 2y ago
      I guess we’ll see if that’s representative, there’s a clear backlash, so at least a significant proportion don’t agree, and don’t appreciate the disruption and peer pressure dynamics this creates. I’m certainly in the camp of personal devices having no place outside of a backpack. We shouldn’t let our anxiety run things.
    - Vegenoid 2y ago
      If there is an emergency, a parent can deal with it the same way they would have 20 years ago: call the school, and they will send someone to grab your kid from the classroom. This was not a particularly rare occurrence when I was in school. The parent has to talk to the school on the phone to release their kid from class anyway.
Ccecil 2y ago
A tech high school machining instructor I know does this and that is how he takes attendance. Almost every kid has a phone...if the phone isn't in the cubby they aren't counted as being there. Cabinet locked at beginning of class. There are only 2 students out of his entire year that don't have a phone and he makes allowances for them.

by imgabe 2y ago

scarface_74 2y ago

So if a child says they don’t have a phone are you going to search them? But you don’t even have to take the phone out of the possession of the student. They use these at some phone free concerts. https://www.overyondr.com/phone-locking-pouch https://www.overyondr.com/phone-locking-pouch

lovecg 2y ago
That’s exactly what they use at some of the schools that tried it (and there’s an arms race where some kids figured out how to hack these devices and unlock them). Locking up thousands and thousands of dollars worth of phones for the day is way too much liability for a school otherwise.
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  Society can choose to pass on bowing to the God of insurance in this case :)
Gys 2y ago
I imagine it is not difficult to make a phone detector. A phone is sending almost constantly. If a phone has to be in flight mode the whole lesson then there is no reason to bring one
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Even airlines can’t really tell when all of the phones are in airplane mode…
- TheCoreh 2y ago
  It is extremely hard to make a phone detector that's able to detect only phones in a specific room, considering how far the cellular signals can travel, and how pervasive wifi is for everything
  - reverius42 2y ago
    Just make every classroom a Faraday cage. No need to detect if you can disable.
- Tempest1981 2y ago
  Would you want it to ignore the teacher's phone?
imgabe 2y ago
If they say they don’t have a phone, fine. If they later have a phone out in class, you tell them to put it in a cubby. If they have it and don’t take it out in class it’s not a problem.
TheCoreh 2y ago
You don't have to search the students. Or even put the phones in a locker. You just make the rules about them known, and if students are found using a phone during class, they can just be punished with detention/suspension. I don't understand why this is hard to enforce, or requires special laws. We had rules about not using (feature) phones back when I was in middle school (~2002), and you just kept your phone in your backpack/pocket until the class was over. It worked.
- coryrc 2y ago
  In Seattle they won't even expel students committing violent crimes in schools. There's no punishment available for any behavior. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/student-discipline-are-schools-equipped-to-handle-behavioral-extremes/ https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/student-discipline-are-... If someone brandished a knife at my workplace they would be immediately fired, never to return. At SPS that's just a stern talkin' to.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    That's weird. I've mostly heard about the opposite at schools, like someone getting reamed for bringing cake and a plastic knife to cut it. But I guess that was probably over a decade ago. Has 'zero tolerance' so thoroughly reversed?
jonhohle 2y ago
If they don’t take it out and use it (or at least don’t get caught using it), what’s the problem? If they’re using a phone in class, take it like any other distraction. I have four kids in school and while extreme incidents are rare, if I set my kid to school with a phone it would be to contact me in an emergency. I completely agree with no phones out, on silent, etc., but I’m unsure how I feel about schools taking away tools that could be used to get help.
- commodoreboxer 2y ago
  I don't see a problem with taking the phone, as long as it's returned by the end of the day. The school should have your phone number on file and can reach you in an emergency. The situations where your child would specifically need to reach you on their own phone with no other possibilities of getting help (or getting their phone back in a hurry) while at school are so uncommon as to be not really with considering.
lovecg 2y ago
> So if a child says they don’t have a phone are you going to search them? If a child says they don’t have any cigarettes or a knife etc. etc. are you going to search them? Most kids follow the rules. A few troublemakers with phones won’t make a difference and can be easily handled by existing disciplinary actions.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  You don’t have kids do you? Just as a proxy, weee use is against the rules by definition for middle and high schoolers https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36863048/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36863048/
  - lovecg 2y ago
    I do, do you? I also used to be a kid myself. What does lifetime use have to do with smoking _on school property_?
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      So you think kids “follow the rules” and “say no to drugs”, don’t engage in underaged drinking, don’t lie and say they are over 18 to view porn etc?
      - lovecg 2y ago
        Of course not. This is not some rhetorical gotcha you think it is, there’s a huge difference between rules like “don’t use a phone in class” and “don’t drink alcohol ever in your life anywhere”.
        scarface_74 2y ago
        I fail to see the difference in “kids following the rules in this one specific case” and statistically we know that kids usually don’t follow the rules that adults set for them if they can get away with it. Heck even when I was in school kids had beepers (late 80s - early 90s) when they were not allowed to.

spondylosaurus 2y ago

I'm young enough that smartphones were just hitting the market when I was in high school, but old enough that using your phone in class was still totally verboten. (We all tried to skirt the rules[1], of course, but we knew the rules were unambiguously a thing, and knew there'd be consequences if we got caught.[2]) And for the most part, teachers didn't have to implement any special solutions; we kept them on us at all times, and if a teacher heard/saw your phone, they were liable to take it for the class or for the day. So the current situation with out-of-control phone use in schools is interesting/puzzling to me, because clearly something's changed since then—but I don't think "better smartphones" are the differentiating factor here. Something's shifted with how schools enforce (or don't enforce) these policies, or with kids' relationship to their phones (and believe me, I was plenty hooked on mine back then too :P), or something else entirely. It's also puzzling when people argue that smartphones have opened a Pandora's box that makes it impossible to control student behavior—because I know firsthand that that's not true! [1] I think the threat of punishment also forced us to be relatively discreet about it. If you're texting in class, you have your phone on silent, brightness all the way down, barely sticking out of your bag... [2] Some teachers admittedly gave more of a shit than others, but I rarely saw students taking advantage of that in a disruptive way—the most blatant thing you'd see is a kid listening to music on headphones during art class or something. I might've been the biggest offender in that regard, because I would occasionally bust out a Wiimote and N64 emulator to play Mario 64 on my phone, but I knew when I could get away with that and when I couldn't.

1_1xdev1 2y ago
Punishment is effectively not allowed at many schools because parents suck. Kids complain to parents. Parents complain to teacher. Teacher tells parent to pound sand. Parent complains to administration about unfair teacher. Administration takes a “customer is _always_ right” mindset for various reasons, and teacher told to not enforce. Or the rule is changed. Some parents refuse to allow their child to do anything wrong (by moving the goalposts of “wrong”, assuming their child is always right, etc), some have anxiety if they can’t reach their child instantly via text, some parents refuse to enforce rules they don’t understand or agree with.

amalcon 2y ago

It's hard because the parents object. They want to be able to directly reach their children in the event of an emergency.

31337Logic 2y ago
I'm sorry but no. There is no emergency I can think of that either can't wait till lunch (or end of class, whenever the kids are allowed to check), or else calling the school office directly (remember those?), or even just showing up to the school to pickup their kid in person. By the way, most parents I speak to would love to have their kids off their phones and focusing on school during the day. This whole "parents, emergency" argument seems highly suspicious to me.
- loeg 2y ago
  There are many parents with different preferences than you.
- falcolas 2y ago
  > There is no emergency I can think of that either can't wait till lunch Respectfully, most parents I've met do not agree with you. And I don't think that the random events like school shootings and bomb threats have helped them relax into the same environment we had in the 90's.
  - ericd 2y ago
    I guess we’ll see if that’s representative, there’s a clear backlash, so at least a significant proportion don’t agree, and don’t appreciate the disruption and peer pressure dynamics this creates. I’m certainly in the camp of personal devices having no place outside of a backpack. We shouldn’t let our anxiety run things.
  - Vegenoid 2y ago
    If there is an emergency, a parent can deal with it the same way they would have 20 years ago: call the school, and they will send someone to grab your kid from the classroom. This was not a particularly rare occurrence when I was in school. The parent has to talk to the school on the phone to release their kid from class anyway.

Ccecil 2y ago

A tech high school machining instructor I know does this and that is how he takes attendance. Almost every kid has a phone...if the phone isn't in the cubby they aren't counted as being there. Cabinet locked at beginning of class. There are only 2 students out of his entire year that don't have a phone and he makes allowances for them.