- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
they could have incorporated similar tech to teach children better. or we could figure out why class is so boring when the subjects can be so interesting.
but nooo lets ban phones instead because we want things to stay like they were 40 years ago.
Good idea. Its of the main reason why education today is faltering. Allowing too many screen in the class room is simply a bad idea. These kids have the no ability to stay focused in any way. They way they learn guarantees many will never learn to read without a screen and the internet. I see it often in my current job.
Ontario has now passed two different bills banning cell phones in school. It’s a great distraction from actual problems. I fully expect we’ll pass a third in a few years if our provincial government is re-elected
Teachers don’t need a sheet of paper at a legislature somewhere to take away cellphones. They can do that already, and if the kids disobey a legislature won’t help. I assume no one is expecting kids to go to prison for having a cellphone
The key thing is that teachers can ban phones in their individual classrooms if the school permits it.
There are many schools in which the senior admin don’t institute phone bans (you’d be surprised how common this is).
Legislating it helps maintain consistency and parity between schools nation wide, which is important as it’s a quality of education issue, so the policy should be consistent across all schools.
I’m not from North America, but the situation is similar across most western democracies.
This sucks, because smartphones could be such fantastic tools in a classroom. Not that I’m under the illusion that they’re being used in any sort of productive way (or even would be), I was once a kid scrolling through shitposts and memes in class. But having all of the textbooks in one place, the ability to record lectures and whiteboards for later review, and automated schedule management would’ve definitely made my high school education a lot smoother.
The other side of the coin on this. Cell phones as day planners are invaluable. So kids who have spent their lives organizing their schedules on digital calendars are being told “Oops! Sorry. You can’t use that anymore. We caught someone else using it incorrectly.”
Incidentally, I’m old enough to remember how every graphing calculator in the school had video games installed on them and half my class carried a gameboy someone on their persons. This is going to be pure wack-a-mole as a policy. Selectively enforced, with lots of high profile punishments for minor infractions and inevitably highly intrusive misconduct by individual teachers and principles. Richer, whiter students will almost certainly be exempted from the policy through loopholes. Poorer, blacker students will be shoved even more forcefully through the School To Prison Pipeline. Cops will inevitably get involved in the worst possible way.
And all of this will be sold as a means of “reducing distractions”.
When using the right tools, phones are already incredibly powerful in an educational environment. There’s a reason why Kahoot achieved meme status: it’s because students love it.
Yeah, and there are some analytical apps for smartphone cameras and sensors, like measuring physio with accel or gyro. But I guess that’s okay to include as a part of a course and not really needed for rest of the school day
I’m 100% in favor of this move. If parents really need their kid to have a phone at school, get them a basic flip phone.
You’re free to parent your own children however you like.
As long as it’s within the legal limits where you live.
smartphones are a distraction in schools. The teachers shouldn’t have them either, tbh
A lot of public school districts now provide laptops or Chromebooks to the students to use during class while doing… let’s say…minimal oversight at best.
So most of the same inappropriate garbage behaviors and distractions will just be offloaded from the personal phone to the school device.
Is she going to ban hats next? Put in a law telling students exactly how they can decorate their lockers?
Surely there are more pressing things to be legislated?
As someone who went through the NY public school system many years ago, I can confirm hats were/are hard banned. Like unless it was for religious reasons you really couldn’t even think about putting something on your head.
Cell phones were also banned in my youth but I guess times have changed?
Oh yes, but by the school. Not the law. We have elected positions specifically for figuring out how schools should teach children. Also top down negative mandates about clothes are already borderline abuses of power. We want laws preventing admins from going overboard, not mega bans in state law.
The research showing the impact of cellphones during class outweighs an individual’s opinion. This has nothing to do with fashion and can’t be compared to hats or locker decorations.
The research showing the impact of cellphones during class outweighs an individual’s opinion.
More broadly, any kind of in-class interruption can hurt academic performance. This same logic has been applied to dress codes, speech constraints (most famously Bong Hits for Jesus), and behavioral edicts.
But this wack-a-mole strategy of prohibitions isn’t championed because it is particularly effective. There’s always some new distraction in the classroom you can chase after next. The strategy is championed because its cheap. Banning cell phones has very little budgeted cost as a public policy. By contrast, reducing class sizes and providing more hands-on learning opportunities and hiring/retaining highly educated teachers has an enormous price tag.
Nevermind which strategy has a proven history of increased student performance. We just need to keep locking enormous pools of children in tiny windowless classrooms and throwing increasingly byzantine standardized tests at them, then chasing any student who produces a “distraction” from this mind-numbing educational policy.
Yes. It’s the children who are wrong.
It’s no different than sleeping through class or just doodling and ignoring the teacher. If the kid can’t not have their phone out then they get banished to the back of the class. If they play noise they get sent to the office, just like disruptive kids in every generation.
Let’s give them a suspension, send them to their lead painted home with a pack of smokes, just like every generation.
Okay Mr modest proposal.
It’s no different than sleeping through class or just doodling and ignoring the teacher.
And there you have it folks, doodling is the same as these social media apps designed to be addictive that also lead to all kinds of bullying and social anxieties and harassment.
I’m sorry, you think banning smartphones at school is going to stop cyber bullying? Because bullies infamously follow the rules and kids are at school 24/7?
Stop? No. But results so far have shown a decrease.
You said it was the same as doodling. I responded to that. All that other stuff you added was just fabricated in your own head.
If you’re more worried about your kid at school getting shot than them getting distracted during their education, You might be the one living in a shit hole country.
I believe in educating kids to know how to ignore distractions. The phone will be there in every work/life situation and will be a tool used to get them further in their careers and life in general. It’s stupid to let them use them openly during class… It’s also stupid to make legislation about them. Notice we don’t have country wide dress codes for schools. Just legislation that says when such codes have gone to far. Banning students from having items they carry daily is just a stupid over abuse of power being instated for what reason? Failed parenting and failed educators?
You text during class you get told to stop, happens again you get detention/thrown out of class/sent to the dean and eventually thrown out of the school. Always was that way. No need for laws around it.
You text during class you get told to stop, happens again you get detention/thrown out of class/sent to the dean and eventually thrown out of the school. Always was that way. No need for laws around it.
It’s more complicated. Teachers can’t take away the phone because it’s an expensive piece of property and it opens all kinds of doors for the school being liable if it goes missing or gets broken. Not to mention if something does happen, the parents might sue the school.
And we aren’t talking about mere distractions, but things designed to keep kids addicted to them. You’re pitting school teachers and admins trying to get kids to pay attention to something often found as boring, against billion dollar businesses pushing punping money into keeping and grabbing kid’s attention. Plus having kids miss school because of a cell phone just doesn’t make sense, especially if the parents are pushing the kid to bring it.
The law just makes it clear and reduces liability for the school, and it’s better for kids.
I wish the world were the way our describe it, and that would work. But it doesn’t.
You pretty obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, almost every class my children have been in for middle school and high school had the children commit to not using their smartphone and sent home a slip to be signed by parents acknowledging that the phones will be taken away and have to be picked up by a parent if they become a distraction for the student. They include similar language in the school student handbook as well.
This law is just ridiculous authoritative nonsense, being used to score a victory for political marketing purposes.
Agreements and enforcement are two different things. Have you talked to any teachers about how this plays out?
Teachers
can’tshouldn’t take away the phone because it’s an expensive piece of property and … the schoolbeingis liable… Not to mention if something does happen, the parentsmightshould sue the school. The law just makesit clearthis legal and reduces liability for the school, andit’s better foras usual kids are told it’s better for them to be controlled and lack agency.FTFY.
things designed to keep kids addicted to them
You really think that’s what electronic engineers do?
Given the current legal climate, this really isn’t terrible. At least there are some benefits.
Taking away freedoms for some possible benefits. The patriot act would like a word
Early testsresults in the Netherlands have shown great succes. Less cyber bullying, more socializing by students, and better engagement in classroom. The students actually prefer it too.
I thought it was stupid too, but I’ve come around to it. A box full of dopamine hits is not for teenagers to decide wether they can interact with it or not.
Out of curiosity would you argue against compulsory education?
I don’t understand how a state governor can “introduce” a bill.
Isn’t that the legislature’s job?
Anyone can introduce a bill, including you. Only the legislature’s vote on it counts.
It’s dumb as fuck.
Hate it if we want (and I have major problems with how young phones and similar devices become glued to kids), but they’re here to stay. They’re a part of modern life, and trying to completely ban them is the most idiotic waste of time and resources possible.
You gotta find a way to limit use in a consistent and evenly applied way so that parents and school staff are all on the same page. Then you just keep enforcing the rules amd explaining them over and over. Eventually, it becomes a manageable annoyance instead of the chaos it currently is
A lot of things are here to say that you don’t bring to school.
so that parents and school staff are all on the same page.
That’s the problem, they aren’t on the same page. Teachers and admins have to live in the reality of kids having these devices in school, while parents just live in the anxiety of the very rare “what if something happens?”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“I have seen these addictive algorithms pull in young people, literally capture them and make them prisoners in a space where they are cut off from human connection, social interaction and normal classroom activity,” she said.
The smartphone-ban bill will follow two others Hochul is pushing that outline measures to safeguard children’s privacy online and limit their access to certain features of social networks.
In New York, the bills have faced pushback from big tech, trade groups and other companies, which collectively spent more than $800,000 between October and March lobbying against one or both of them, according to public disclosure records.
This differs from other state-level bills across the country, which place some reliance on self-policing by tech companies to decide which features could be harmful by completing assessments of whether products are “reasonably likely” to be accessed by children.
“Meta itself admits its own parental controls aren’t widely used – they’re often confusing and frequently fail to work as intended,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a policy advocacy organization.
The major social media firms have faced increasing scrutiny over harms against children, including sextortion scams, grooming by predators and worsening mental health.
The original article contains 922 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Every teacher I know is happy with this move. Personally, I think kids could do fine with a flip phone. Maybe this will bring them back more on the market, too.
I work in a high school in a California school district where they’re discussing banning cell phones.
Most teachers I’ve talked to about it think it’s really fucking stupid because you’re not going to be able to ban them, partly because a TON of parents showed up at the school board meeting to say they would send them with their kid anyway for a variety of reasons. The board also talked about different things they could buy to take phones and lock them up during class or as students come in. Most of the solutions were pretty expensive, and some of the schools are literally falling apart, so that also pissed people off.
A great start would be to have a campus-wide rule that is CONSISTENT. Some teachers give out a detention if they even see the phone. Some do activities with QR codes and use them as tools. Some have boxes on the corner of their desk and students are required to keep their phone in the box so the teacher can see if they reach for it. We have students with free periods, and if they don’t go home, they hang out outside around campus or in the library. Should phones be banned then too? Or just during class?
There are so many ways to try to deal with it, and at least in my school (not even the district as a whole), every teacher deals with it differently. I doubt the state of New York is all that different.
That makes sense, too. Admittedly, my circle of teachers I know may be less than yours, but the ones I know seemed very exasperated with them. What do you sense a good, consistent rule would be?
Honestly, I’m at a loss. It’s so hard to get a single school of teachers to stick to one policy, let alone at a district or state level. When I send an all-staff email at my school (and they’re occasionally important with scheduling details), Outlook often tells me that only 67% of them even opened it.
I feel like you’d either have to: a) incorporate cellphones as a tool in class and have standard repercussions (e.g. 1st/2nd time earn a detention, 3rd time earn a Saturday school) for kids texting/on social media, or b) do something like a box on the desk so it’s visible but they can’t touch it.
I just don’t think it’s possible to ban them at school. Too many parents don’t respect any school authority figures after COVID with all the culture war stuff (fight to return to full day school, fight to not wear masks, fight to censor bipoc and lgbtq+ books/lessons/celebrations, etc.). I think either way, it’ll just end up being another shitty part of a teacher’s job.
It’s a tough job =(
Good. We already did that here.
