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This article tries to put the blame on laptops when the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement ag

This article tries to put the blame on laptops when the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class, whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class, and teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. Half these issues can be solved by teaching kids how to use technology meaningfully instead of using it as a babysitter.

japhyr 7mo ago
> the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class I was a middle school and high school math and science teacher from 1994 through 2019. I watched the advent of internet in schools, then desktop computers in classrooms, and finally smartphones in students' hands. I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not dealing better with society's issues. "Just teach kids how to use technology", "just ban phones", and "lock down irrelevant websites" is a pretty big ask when the entire industry is focused on getting kids to use these devices, apps, and sites as much as they possibly can.
- telman17 7mo ago
  I can definitely see the push for using technology in schools - what you're saying makes sense. It's not the individual teachers I blame. I come from a family of educators and a lot of the crappy enforcement falls to the district level, who just want to make the parents happy. There is literally no reason a child needs a cell phone in class. Computers are great. Lock them down. There is nothing unreasonable about this.
  - xethos 7mo ago
    Are we sure it isn't the offensively-well-funded tech industry that's being referenced here?
    - salawat 7mo ago
      You're not suggesting the most overinflated asset class in the market might somehow be involved though predatory pushing of product into education to get em hooked while they're young are you?! /s
  - carabiner 7mo ago
    Tech industry composed of many of the smartest people in the world with the most money, and the backing of the current US presidency vs. average middle America school district. Hmm.
- mschuster91 7mo ago
  And on top of that, in many countries (not just the US) teachers, school and the students themselves don't have anywhere near the financial resources that they need. Schools are (literally) falling apart, here in Germany it became apparent during Covid that a ton of schools had windows that rotted so far they couldn't be opened, in the US there are states that introduced 4 day school weeks due to budget constraints [1], way too many school children live in utter poverty meaning they get their only warm meal at school [2], with that meal sometimes being of even lower quality than prison food to the tune it was a recurring joke in The Simpsons, class sizes are too huge, teaching material is outdated or censored to the point of being useless [3], students are too poor to afford basic supplies meaning teachers step in [4], teachers lack the time and budget to actually educate themselves and keep up with modern development, teachers lack the budget, room and/or political backing from their superiors to actually use what they learned in university or in after-graduation continuous training in practice, students lack the privacy at home (and often enough: a safe home or EVEN A HOME AT ALL [5]) to learn in peace and safety. And on top of that comes the deluge of ChatGPT slop, sexual abuse both domestic and amongst students, bullying, domestic violence, "parents" using their kids as weapons to hurt their ex partners, stalking, gang violence, in Europe you got traumatized kids coming from war torn countries with zero support structure, in the US you got kids scared to hell and beyond about ICE. Honestly, I'm not surprised that both students and teachers are checking out into the dream world of their phones. We are failing our children, but hey, the stonk number goes brr!!! And taxes are lower!!!!!! (Education budgets is usually the first thing that gets slashed because it takes about 10-20 years to show a noticeable negative effect) [1] https://www.nctq.org/research-insights/amid-budget-and-staffing-battles-can-four-day-school-weeks-save-the-day/ https://www.nctq.org/research-insights/amid-budget-and-staff... [2] https://thecounter.org/summer-hunger-new-york-city/ https://thecounter.org/summer-hunger-new-york-city/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_States_(2021%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta... [4] https://19thnews.org/2025/08/teachers-spending-school-supplies-debt-crowdfunding/ https://19thnews.org/2025/08/teachers-spending-school-suppli... [5] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2025/12/28/number-of-homeless-students-jumps/87620804007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2025/12/28/numb...
  - MichaelRo 7mo ago
- iambateman 7mo ago
  What would be better policy, in your opinion?
  - CJefferson 7mo ago
    Having taught in schools for years? Treat companies that make addictive products the same way we treat drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Kids want them, particularly teenagers. We aren't perfect at stopping their access. But we can make a best attempt. It would be hard, and it would be 'anti-capitalism', but, I think we have done real long term damage to a generation, and I think in 20 years, like Tobacco, it I'll turn out the companies knew how much they were damaging children and covered it up.
    - deaux 7mo ago
      > It would be hard, and it would be 'anti-capitalism' These things are opposites - the former is a downside, the latter an upside.
    - ch4s3 7mo ago
      It's not anti-capitalism to not spend public money on nonsense that doesn't further the goals of education, no is it anti-capitalism to control the learning environment in schools. What we have is a collective action problem.
  - assaddayinh 7mo ago
    Faraday cages built into school buildings.
    - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
      there will be one school shooting and no one would be able to call 911 and then there will be a public outcry. the big tech companies making these phones and apps will amplify that outcry hard, and the phones will be let back in. the addiction will continue.
- jimt1234 7mo ago
  Don't forget that teachers these days are also expected to be active shooter experts, ready to literally put their own lives on the line.
- deaux 7mo ago
  > I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not dealing better with society's issues. "Just teach kids how to use technology", "just ban phones", and "lock down irrelevant websites" is a pretty big ask when the entire industry is focused on getting kids to use these devices, apps, and sites as much as they possibly can. Hey, you only have a >$13 _trillion_ dollar modern tobacco industry behemoth up against you, including 90% of this very message board. Just, you know, stand up to it, duh. The $13 trillion is only Meta/Apple/Google/Microsoft, so it doesn't even include all the gambling, crypto, gacha games and so on whose sole aim is to enslave the kids you're teaching. Good luck!
- eudamoniac 7mo ago
  I'm not that old. "Just ban phones" worked perfectly fine when I was in high school in 2010. "Just ban cigarettes" also worked, and no one was smoking in the classroom. It's not a hard problem; the administration just refuses to solve it.
  - Teever 7mo ago
    How do you expect anyone to take what you just wrote seriously when there's such a blatantly obvious difference in the detectability of the use of these two different products?
    - eudamoniac 7mo ago
      The two products of phones in 2026 and phones in 2010? In 2010 they were smaller.
    - array_key_first 7mo ago
      It's just not relevant. When I was in highschool some teachers had a thingy on the wall where you would hang up your cell phone in a pouch. If it wasn't there, you better have a good explanation, or you'll be counted absent. The solutions are simple and effectively free. That's not the issue. The issue is nobody wants to do the solutions. Schools don't, parents don't, kids don't. Everyone is just lying to themselves. You can't on one hand claim to care about kids and then on the other dismiss obvious tactics like banning cell phones.
    - pas 7mo ago
      what do you mean? if some kid doesn't want to pay attention they can draw doodles, daydream, read a book under the table, talk to other students, and finally ... be on their phone. we did all of these! (played snake on a 3310.) up to a point the teacher's job is to notice these, and motivate the student to pay attention (report cards, detention, extra homework), or ask for them to be removed from class if they are disruptive, if necessary permanently.
DenverR 7mo ago
real Free Laptops has never been tried.
maerF0x0 7mo ago
If we're spouting off unsubstantiated claims. I'll add teachers unions and the mandatory spend of tax money on their near monopolies versus a voucher system that allows parents to choose the best education the money can buy. (To be clear I do think we should fund educating our children, I disagree with forcing the purchase to go to a specific solution / system)
- beej71 7mo ago
  Even with vouchers, there are specific solutions and systems you're allowed to use.
- markdown 7mo ago
  The entire point is that parents make poor choices (phones in class, etc) and that's why an entire generation has been dumbed down. Parents don't know best. Parents are the problem here.
- TimorousBestie 7mo ago
  Teachers’ unions are pretty inconsequential in much of the United States. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/states-with-teacher-unions https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/states-with... Also, https://teacherquality.nctq.org/contract-database/collectiveBargaining#map-1 https://teacherquality.nctq.org/contract-database/collective...
  - Aurornis 7mo ago
    I don’t know how you came to that conclusion when the most populous coastal states were almost saturated at 100% and very few states came in under 40% in your map. Teachers unions are highly influential.
    - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
      > Teachers unions are highly influential. In popular imagination, perhaps. It’s not the sixties anymore.
- 7mo ago
bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
>whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier. >teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" if after laptops there is a worse result then it seems to argue that laptops in the hands of bad teachers are worse than books in the hands of bad teachers, at least.
- telman17 7mo ago
  No, thus why I said it could be boiled down to. However as I say in another comment, most of my family are educators so these experiences represent what they've been dealing with for the past 20+ years. > before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" I think both could be true and I'm not excluding either. The issues I've heard almost always come down to entitled parents who don't want to raise their own kids but have the schools do it for them, then complain when their kid brings home a disciplinary document for not being able to follow simple conduct rules in class.
  - beepbooptheory 7mo ago
    20+ years feels like a very long time for this to be the norm. Smartphone hegemony in general isn't that old.
    - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
      Close to twenty years. First iPhone was 2007, I got my first one in 2012 or so. Before smartphones, texting during class was very common when I was in high school. That’s more or less how I learned that 9/11 happened.
- bubblewand 7mo ago
  > you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier No stats, but it’s extremely real. I know lots of teachers. Parents who flip shit if their kids can’t answer their texts while in class are common. Parents who call their kids in class just to chat are less common, but not as one-in-a-million as you’d think. The attitude you (I’m assuming) and I were raised with, when it comes to school, is less universal than you perhaps believed. And I mean among adults.
anon-3988 7mo ago
We should treat phones on kids the same we treat alchohol. "What the fuck, is that a phone? Give me that!" The only other solution involves evaporating our privacy. Fuk 'em kids. I guess they don't get to use phones, we survived, why can't they? In fact, it is probably better for them to "struggle" and figure out by themselves how to find a way to circumvent it. Make them think instead of having thoughts feed into them.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 7mo ago
  One small problem is that we used to have landlines to call friends (for chats or homeworks) and those are practically dead
  - jen20 7mo ago
    Perhaps in America. Woe betide anyone in the UK who used a landline phone to call their friend before 6pm when the evening rate kicked in.
jimbokun 7mo ago
This is an insane take. We have overwhelming evidence on how addictive and distracting electronic devices are and zero evidence for wide spread use of electronic devices improving educational outcomes. The experiments have been done and the results are in and computers in education are a failed experiment.
glitchc 7mo ago
> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. Sure. Teachers would love to ban cellphones and punish kids who disobey. The problem is, the parents who sit on the school boards as trustees won't let them. Adding parents to the school system has single-handedly destroyed the North American education system. Why is there no homework? Because parents complain that kids find it too hard or too much. Why is there no discipline? Because parents complain that discipline is making their kids miserable. Why is there so much emphasis on schools to teach practical skills? Because parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach these skills at home, where they belong. Parents are no experts on education yet they get to decide what teachers do in the classrooms. The law of averages dictates that 50% were below average students themselves. Guess who sits on the school boards? It's not the over-achievers, those people are too busy being successful in their careers. There's a global competition for talent and our children are falling behind. Now you know why.
- throwaway439080 7mo ago
  > Guess who sits on the school boards? People who get elected to sit on the school boards? I think you're actually just complaining about democracy. My local school district has banned phones during school time (enforced by an auto-locking pouch gadget that releases the phone when school ends), and parents overwhelmingly support it.
  - bandrami 7mo ago
    > I think you're actually just complaining about democracy Local participatory democracy is in fact pretty terrible: HOAs, school boards, neighborhood impact hearings where people complain that building apartments would let the poors move in and we can't have that.
    - mlrtime 7mo ago
      I see this troll response all the time stating families don't want "poors" as some kind of attempt at manipulation to feel I am a bad person. I [given the chance] would also vote against apartments in my particular neighborhood, and it has nothing to do with being poor at all.
synergy20 7mo ago
it's actually extremely hard to ban websites unless all students can only use chrome book, middle and high schoolers know how to install tor and free vpn to bypass all those domain blacklists in a few minutes with their laptop or phone.
- gruez 7mo ago
  Whitelist sites instead of blacklisting? I'm also not sure how kids are getting admin rights to install a VPN in the first place. For the overwhelming majority of cases a kiosk like experience should suffice, which should virtually eliminate any jailbreaks.
  - jonhohle 7mo ago
    Yeah, this never made sense to me and I’ve suggested it to the district, especially for lower grades. They will never block all of the websites they need to unless they block all of the websites. Allow teachers to unblock specific sites for the students they’re responsible for.
  - toast0 7mo ago
    If you're using a whitelist approach, you may as well just turn off the internet. Maintaining a whitelist is almost hopeless. Turning off the internet isn't a bad idea, but it is a big change. Maybe some form of archiving interesting pages for kids to look at, but even that feels like too much work. Plus, if you're using the google docs ecosystem, I suspect it's hard to avoid kids chatting in shared text files, and eventually figuring out how to get spreadsheets to fetch webpages for you.
remarkEon 7mo ago
You are sort of giving away the game here. You are acknowledging that technology, specifically the smartphone, is bad for learning environments. This is a statement that extends beyond the classroom, because why would a smartphone be bad in the classroom for learning but not bad for learning when they're doing homework outside the classroom? I'm old enough to have straddled the analog to digital transition. This likely results in a higher amount of internalized skepticism about technology than those who grew up as digital natives. With that out of the way, I think your lockdown plan is a bit misguided. We should not lockdown technology like this, we should ban it for learning. I know that may sound insane, but every interaction I have with younger people who grew up as digital natives shows they have a weaker and weaker grasp of everything from the underlying theory of whatever technical issue we are talking about to the basic ability to communicate their thoughts in writing. This is only going to get worse with AI. There's a reality here in 5-10 years from now where there's a bunch of olds who know roughly how things work, and the following generation who has no clue and not only has no impetus to learn, but no ability. That's the difference between the prior "old man yells at cloud eras". At least in prior instances the follow-on generation could actually learn the job.
DaveCharlieLen 7mo ago
And what CC item can you point to for that. Teachers often have to write the actual thing they are teaching as a CC item on the board. Want people to teach tech, go to meetings and make them.
itishappy 7mo ago
No teacher (or parent) has ever managed to lock down a computer that was in my possession to a level where I wouldn't get distracted by it. You could shut the power off, and I'd still be poking around the hardware. I spent hundreds of hours programming my calculator instead of paying attention in class. Informative? Yes. Distracting to myself and those around me? You bet. I completely agree with your phone take. There is no level of administrative control that can remove the distraction from the device. Why would you think laptops are different?
- Noumenon72 7mo ago
  We could reduce it to the level of distraction of a notebook and pen. Grayscale would help.
  - itishappy 7mo ago
    For sure, I love my ReMarkable, but I think of it as an expensive toy. It functions slightly worse than a notebook and pen for over 100x the cost. I suppose it would enable students to save their notes digitally, but at no point have I ever felt the need to return to my earth science notes. In fact, I have fond memories of burning all my high school notebooks immediately after graduation.
mynameisash 7mo ago
> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. My kids have had Chromebooks for years at school, and their schools have had the devices pretty much fully unlocked. My eldest, who has struggled with ADHD and other mental health issues, was spending his entire day on YouTube and Discord. Accordingly, his grades were terrible. The school's IT said they don't lock it down because, more or less, "by this age, kids should be mature enough to make appropriate decisions about how to use technology." But they did concede that my son should have his account locked down. Why on earth schools don't start from the perspective of whitelisting YouTube videos/channels, websites, etc., instead of allowing a wholly open web is mind-boggling to me. I fully endorse making schools entirely phone-free. Get rid of Chromebooks altogether.
pertymcpert 7mo ago
There is a large body of research that shows it's not what you're saying it is FYI.
heisenbit 7mo ago
Classroom ‚management‘ and teens can not be observed at the same time and space. The problem is that these terns have not had meaningful interactions with technology at home where there roughly a 1:1 relationship parent:kid. Now try to get meaningfulness into kids where the ratio is 1:20+ in a classroom.

japhyr 7mo ago

> the real culprit could simply be boiled down to a failure in classroom management and lack of enforcement against cell phones in class I was a middle school and high school math and science teacher from 1994 through 2019. I watched the advent of internet in schools, then desktop computers in classrooms, and finally smartphones in students' hands. I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not dealing better with society's issues. "Just teach kids how to use technology", "just ban phones", and "lock down irrelevant websites" is a pretty big ask when the entire industry is focused on getting kids to use these devices, apps, and sites as much as they possibly can.

telman17 7mo ago
I can definitely see the push for using technology in schools - what you're saying makes sense. It's not the individual teachers I blame. I come from a family of educators and a lot of the crappy enforcement falls to the district level, who just want to make the parents happy. There is literally no reason a child needs a cell phone in class. Computers are great. Lock them down. There is nothing unreasonable about this.
- xethos 7mo ago
  Are we sure it isn't the offensively-well-funded tech industry that's being referenced here?
  - salawat 7mo ago
    You're not suggesting the most overinflated asset class in the market might somehow be involved though predatory pushing of product into education to get em hooked while they're young are you?! /s
- carabiner 7mo ago
  Tech industry composed of many of the smartest people in the world with the most money, and the backing of the current US presidency vs. average middle America school district. Hmm.
mschuster91 7mo ago
And on top of that, in many countries (not just the US) teachers, school and the students themselves don't have anywhere near the financial resources that they need. Schools are (literally) falling apart, here in Germany it became apparent during Covid that a ton of schools had windows that rotted so far they couldn't be opened, in the US there are states that introduced 4 day school weeks due to budget constraints [1], way too many school children live in utter poverty meaning they get their only warm meal at school [2], with that meal sometimes being of even lower quality than prison food to the tune it was a recurring joke in The Simpsons, class sizes are too huge, teaching material is outdated or censored to the point of being useless [3], students are too poor to afford basic supplies meaning teachers step in [4], teachers lack the time and budget to actually educate themselves and keep up with modern development, teachers lack the budget, room and/or political backing from their superiors to actually use what they learned in university or in after-graduation continuous training in practice, students lack the privacy at home (and often enough: a safe home or EVEN A HOME AT ALL [5]) to learn in peace and safety. And on top of that comes the deluge of ChatGPT slop, sexual abuse both domestic and amongst students, bullying, domestic violence, "parents" using their kids as weapons to hurt their ex partners, stalking, gang violence, in Europe you got traumatized kids coming from war torn countries with zero support structure, in the US you got kids scared to hell and beyond about ICE. Honestly, I'm not surprised that both students and teachers are checking out into the dream world of their phones. We are failing our children, but hey, the stonk number goes brr!!! And taxes are lower!!!!!! (Education budgets is usually the first thing that gets slashed because it takes about 10-20 years to show a noticeable negative effect) [1] https://www.nctq.org/research-insights/amid-budget-and-staffing-battles-can-four-day-school-weeks-save-the-day/ https://www.nctq.org/research-insights/amid-budget-and-staff... [2] https://thecounter.org/summer-hunger-new-york-city/ https://thecounter.org/summer-hunger-new-york-city/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_States_(2021%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta... [4] https://19thnews.org/2025/08/teachers-spending-school-supplies-debt-crowdfunding/ https://19thnews.org/2025/08/teachers-spending-school-suppli... [5] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2025/12/28/number-of-homeless-students-jumps/87620804007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2025/12/28/numb...
- MichaelRo 7mo ago
iambateman 7mo ago
What would be better policy, in your opinion?
- CJefferson 7mo ago
  Having taught in schools for years? Treat companies that make addictive products the same way we treat drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Kids want them, particularly teenagers. We aren't perfect at stopping their access. But we can make a best attempt. It would be hard, and it would be 'anti-capitalism', but, I think we have done real long term damage to a generation, and I think in 20 years, like Tobacco, it I'll turn out the companies knew how much they were damaging children and covered it up.
  - deaux 7mo ago
    > It would be hard, and it would be 'anti-capitalism' These things are opposites - the former is a downside, the latter an upside.
  - ch4s3 7mo ago
    It's not anti-capitalism to not spend public money on nonsense that doesn't further the goals of education, no is it anti-capitalism to control the learning environment in schools. What we have is a collective action problem.
- assaddayinh 7mo ago
  Faraday cages built into school buildings.
  - red-iron-pine 7mo ago
    there will be one school shooting and no one would be able to call 911 and then there will be a public outcry. the big tech companies making these phones and apps will amplify that outcry hard, and the phones will be let back in. the addiction will continue.
jimt1234 7mo ago
Don't forget that teachers these days are also expected to be active shooter experts, ready to literally put their own lives on the line.
deaux 7mo ago
> I've lived a life of watching teachers and schools get blamed for not dealing better with society's issues. "Just teach kids how to use technology", "just ban phones", and "lock down irrelevant websites" is a pretty big ask when the entire industry is focused on getting kids to use these devices, apps, and sites as much as they possibly can. Hey, you only have a >$13 _trillion_ dollar modern tobacco industry behemoth up against you, including 90% of this very message board. Just, you know, stand up to it, duh. The $13 trillion is only Meta/Apple/Google/Microsoft, so it doesn't even include all the gambling, crypto, gacha games and so on whose sole aim is to enslave the kids you're teaching. Good luck!
eudamoniac 7mo ago
I'm not that old. "Just ban phones" worked perfectly fine when I was in high school in 2010. "Just ban cigarettes" also worked, and no one was smoking in the classroom. It's not a hard problem; the administration just refuses to solve it.
- Teever 7mo ago
  How do you expect anyone to take what you just wrote seriously when there's such a blatantly obvious difference in the detectability of the use of these two different products?
  - eudamoniac 7mo ago
    The two products of phones in 2026 and phones in 2010? In 2010 they were smaller.
  - array_key_first 7mo ago
    It's just not relevant. When I was in highschool some teachers had a thingy on the wall where you would hang up your cell phone in a pouch. If it wasn't there, you better have a good explanation, or you'll be counted absent. The solutions are simple and effectively free. That's not the issue. The issue is nobody wants to do the solutions. Schools don't, parents don't, kids don't. Everyone is just lying to themselves. You can't on one hand claim to care about kids and then on the other dismiss obvious tactics like banning cell phones.
  - pas 7mo ago
    what do you mean? if some kid doesn't want to pay attention they can draw doodles, daydream, read a book under the table, talk to other students, and finally ... be on their phone. we did all of these! (played snake on a 3310.) up to a point the teacher's job is to notice these, and motivate the student to pay attention (report cards, detention, extra homework), or ask for them to be removed from class if they are disruptive, if necessary permanently.

DenverR 7mo ago

real Free Laptops has never been tried.

maerF0x0 7mo ago

If we're spouting off unsubstantiated claims. I'll add teachers unions and the mandatory spend of tax money on their near monopolies versus a voucher system that allows parents to choose the best education the money can buy. (To be clear I do think we should fund educating our children, I disagree with forcing the purchase to go to a specific solution / system)

beej71 7mo ago
Even with vouchers, there are specific solutions and systems you're allowed to use.
markdown 7mo ago
The entire point is that parents make poor choices (phones in class, etc) and that's why an entire generation has been dumbed down. Parents don't know best. Parents are the problem here.
TimorousBestie 7mo ago
Teachers’ unions are pretty inconsequential in much of the United States. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/states-with-teacher-unions https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/states-with... Also, https://teacherquality.nctq.org/contract-database/collectiveBargaining#map-1 https://teacherquality.nctq.org/contract-database/collective...
- Aurornis 7mo ago
  I don’t know how you came to that conclusion when the most populous coastal states were almost saturated at 100% and very few states came in under 40% in your map. Teachers unions are highly influential.
  - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
    > Teachers unions are highly influential. In popular imagination, perhaps. It’s not the sixties anymore.
7mo ago

bryanrasmussen 7mo ago

>whiny parents who rage when their children are told they can't be playing video games in class you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier. >teachers who are using computer programs to teach the kids instead of actually teaching. before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" if after laptops there is a worse result then it seems to argue that laptops in the hands of bad teachers are worse than books in the hands of bad teachers, at least.

telman17 7mo ago
No, thus why I said it could be boiled down to. However as I say in another comment, most of my family are educators so these experiences represent what they've been dealing with for the past 20+ years. > before laptops there were bad teachers who used books to teach the kids instead of actually teaching - as in: "read chapter 7, there will be a test!" I think both could be true and I'm not excluding either. The issues I've heard almost always come down to entitled parents who don't want to raise their own kids but have the schools do it for them, then complain when their kid brings home a disciplinary document for not being able to follow simple conduct rules in class.
- beepbooptheory 7mo ago
  20+ years feels like a very long time for this to be the norm. Smartphone hegemony in general isn't that old.
  - TimorousBestie 7mo ago
    Close to twenty years. First iPhone was 2007, I got my first one in 2012 or so. Before smartphones, texting during class was very common when I was in high school. That’s more or less how I learned that 9/11 happened.
bubblewand 7mo ago
> you have stats on that? It seems like an outlier No stats, but it’s extremely real. I know lots of teachers. Parents who flip shit if their kids can’t answer their texts while in class are common. Parents who call their kids in class just to chat are less common, but not as one-in-a-million as you’d think. The attitude you (I’m assuming) and I were raised with, when it comes to school, is less universal than you perhaps believed. And I mean among adults.

anon-3988 7mo ago

We should treat phones on kids the same we treat alchohol. "What the fuck, is that a phone? Give me that!" The only other solution involves evaporating our privacy. Fuk 'em kids. I guess they don't get to use phones, we survived, why can't they? In fact, it is probably better for them to "struggle" and figure out by themselves how to find a way to circumvent it. Make them think instead of having thoughts feed into them.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 7mo ago
One small problem is that we used to have landlines to call friends (for chats or homeworks) and those are practically dead
- jen20 7mo ago
  Perhaps in America. Woe betide anyone in the UK who used a landline phone to call their friend before 6pm when the evening rate kicked in.

jimbokun 7mo ago

This is an insane take. We have overwhelming evidence on how addictive and distracting electronic devices are and zero evidence for wide spread use of electronic devices improving educational outcomes. The experiments have been done and the results are in and computers in education are a failed experiment.

glitchc 7mo ago

> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. Sure. Teachers would love to ban cellphones and punish kids who disobey. The problem is, the parents who sit on the school boards as trustees won't let them. Adding parents to the school system has single-handedly destroyed the North American education system. Why is there no homework? Because parents complain that kids find it too hard or too much. Why is there no discipline? Because parents complain that discipline is making their kids miserable. Why is there so much emphasis on schools to teach practical skills? Because parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach these skills at home, where they belong. Parents are no experts on education yet they get to decide what teachers do in the classrooms. The law of averages dictates that 50% were below average students themselves. Guess who sits on the school boards? It's not the over-achievers, those people are too busy being successful in their careers. There's a global competition for talent and our children are falling behind. Now you know why.

throwaway439080 7mo ago
> Guess who sits on the school boards? People who get elected to sit on the school boards? I think you're actually just complaining about democracy. My local school district has banned phones during school time (enforced by an auto-locking pouch gadget that releases the phone when school ends), and parents overwhelmingly support it.
- bandrami 7mo ago
  > I think you're actually just complaining about democracy Local participatory democracy is in fact pretty terrible: HOAs, school boards, neighborhood impact hearings where people complain that building apartments would let the poors move in and we can't have that.
  - mlrtime 7mo ago
    I see this troll response all the time stating families don't want "poors" as some kind of attempt at manipulation to feel I am a bad person. I [given the chance] would also vote against apartments in my particular neighborhood, and it has nothing to do with being poor at all.

synergy20 7mo ago

it's actually extremely hard to ban websites unless all students can only use chrome book, middle and high schoolers know how to install tor and free vpn to bypass all those domain blacklists in a few minutes with their laptop or phone.

gruez 7mo ago
Whitelist sites instead of blacklisting? I'm also not sure how kids are getting admin rights to install a VPN in the first place. For the overwhelming majority of cases a kiosk like experience should suffice, which should virtually eliminate any jailbreaks.
- jonhohle 7mo ago
  Yeah, this never made sense to me and I’ve suggested it to the district, especially for lower grades. They will never block all of the websites they need to unless they block all of the websites. Allow teachers to unblock specific sites for the students they’re responsible for.
- toast0 7mo ago
  If you're using a whitelist approach, you may as well just turn off the internet. Maintaining a whitelist is almost hopeless. Turning off the internet isn't a bad idea, but it is a big change. Maybe some form of archiving interesting pages for kids to look at, but even that feels like too much work. Plus, if you're using the google docs ecosystem, I suspect it's hard to avoid kids chatting in shared text files, and eventually figuring out how to get spreadsheets to fetch webpages for you.

remarkEon 7mo ago

You are sort of giving away the game here. You are acknowledging that technology, specifically the smartphone, is bad for learning environments. This is a statement that extends beyond the classroom, because why would a smartphone be bad in the classroom for learning but not bad for learning when they're doing homework outside the classroom? I'm old enough to have straddled the analog to digital transition. This likely results in a higher amount of internalized skepticism about technology than those who grew up as digital natives. With that out of the way, I think your lockdown plan is a bit misguided. We should not lockdown technology like this, we should ban it for learning. I know that may sound insane, but every interaction I have with younger people who grew up as digital natives shows they have a weaker and weaker grasp of everything from the underlying theory of whatever technical issue we are talking about to the basic ability to communicate their thoughts in writing. This is only going to get worse with AI. There's a reality here in 5-10 years from now where there's a bunch of olds who know roughly how things work, and the following generation who has no clue and not only has no impetus to learn, but no ability. That's the difference between the prior "old man yells at cloud eras". At least in prior instances the follow-on generation could actually learn the job.

DaveCharlieLen 7mo ago

And what CC item can you point to for that. Teachers often have to write the actual thing they are teaching as a CC item on the board. Want people to teach tech, go to meetings and make them.

itishappy 7mo ago

No teacher (or parent) has ever managed to lock down a computer that was in my possession to a level where I wouldn't get distracted by it. You could shut the power off, and I'd still be poking around the hardware. I spent hundreds of hours programming my calculator instead of paying attention in class. Informative? Yes. Distracting to myself and those around me? You bet. I completely agree with your phone take. There is no level of administrative control that can remove the distraction from the device. Why would you think laptops are different?

Noumenon72 7mo ago
We could reduce it to the level of distraction of a notebook and pen. Grayscale would help.
- itishappy 7mo ago
  For sure, I love my ReMarkable, but I think of it as an expensive toy. It functions slightly worse than a notebook and pen for over 100x the cost. I suppose it would enable students to save their notes digitally, but at no point have I ever felt the need to return to my earth science notes. In fact, I have fond memories of burning all my high school notebooks immediately after graduation.

mynameisash 7mo ago

> Ban phones from class. For real. Lock down websites that are irrelevant to the subjects being taught. These are all technically possible with the tools schools have. Even Youtube. If something is important enough to show the class, the teacher can show it on their larger screen. My kids have had Chromebooks for years at school, and their schools have had the devices pretty much fully unlocked. My eldest, who has struggled with ADHD and other mental health issues, was spending his entire day on YouTube and Discord. Accordingly, his grades were terrible. The school's IT said they don't lock it down because, more or less, "by this age, kids should be mature enough to make appropriate decisions about how to use technology." But they did concede that my son should have his account locked down. Why on earth schools don't start from the perspective of whitelisting YouTube videos/channels, websites, etc., instead of allowing a wholly open web is mind-boggling to me. I fully endorse making schools entirely phone-free. Get rid of Chromebooks altogether.

pertymcpert 7mo ago

There is a large body of research that shows it's not what you're saying it is FYI.

heisenbit 7mo ago

Classroom ‚management‘ and teens can not be observed at the same time and space. The problem is that these terns have not had meaningful interactions with technology at home where there roughly a 1:1 relationship parent:kid. Now try to get meaningfulness into kids where the ratio is 1:20+ in a classroom.