My kid's school banned phones not just in class but in school completely. Since one of the main reasons my daughter has a phone is so she can be in contact on her way to and for school, leaving the phone at home defeats the purpose. So I told her to ignore the rule. She just keeps it in her backpack all day, but banning phones across the board is such a lazy solution, and it punishes the entire school
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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When I was in school that was the rule. Phones were "banned" as in you can't use them but we all had our phone in our pocket for when we were outside the school
Yeah! Plus some kids commute pretty far to extracurriculars right after school, and they need to stay in contact even more.
Seems like a good compromise. The idea of the rule is probably just so they won't have them out anyway.
I have mixed feelings about the necessity of this.
On the one hand, I know they don't really need the cell phones, because they didn't exist when I was in school.
On the other hand, the kids who are paying attention to their cell phone rather than the teacher probably wouldn't listen to the teacher if the cell phone wasn't present, either, and some of them would be far more disruptive toward other students who are trying to listen.
On the third hand, expecting the kids to pay attention all the time even if they've already mastered the subject and are bored out of their skulls by the repetition needed for the kids below the class median to have a chance of understanding too is a problem in and of itself.
Fortunately, I am not a teacher, a student, or the parent of a student, so I have no horse in this race and am not required to make a decision on whether the bans are useful or just obnoxious.
I mean with school shootings going up and the connected nature of life now. On top of saying back in my day is not a good reason, there is so much good progress we have made since then.
I do have a feeling cell phones have made more kids worse since we were in school. I can actively feel my attention spam getting worse from the clip nature of news, short form content on the internet, and endless scroll content of sites like Reddit or even here on Lemmy. And I used to be a good student who read constantly, now it's just basically my phone lol.
My schools all banned cell phones from middle to high school. If one would go off or if you were caught by the teacher, they would confiscate it and you'd have to pay money to get it back by the end of the day. It was really funny watching kids covering each other no matter who you were if someone's phone went off in their backpack. We'd all start collectively coughing and making loud sounds to cover it up. Teachers for the most part were pretty relaxed on the phone going off in your backpack policy though. They only enforced the policy if you were caught using your phone during class.
Instead of teaching media and online literacy just forbid it, sounds like a good solution.
I am fully competent when it comes to online literacy, and smart phones didn't even exist when I was in school. We had computer labs, computer classes, and libraries with computers in them, we learned just fine.
You don't need to be on social media or Tiktok, or cheat on your assignments with ChatGPT during school hours.
Smartphones have other uses, but more importantly forcing anyone to comply with this rule is gonna make them want to disobey more. It's the responsibility of the education system to educate ofc but also streamline education, make it easier. Keep their attention. If the kids aren't distracted by their phones while they hate their school, I guarantee you they'll find other ways to distract themselves. I'd be maybe fine with banning certain apps. I always say smartphones aren't addictive, they're useful. It's apps that are designed to be addictive.
Have you been in a school recently?