American high school teacher here (Midwest region). We implemented a policy this year banning cellphones in instructional spaces during instructional time. Enforceable by confiscation if teachers saw or heard a phone. We have a strong set of administrators who supported teachers in any case where there was student pushback. It has been a huge success in terms of limiting distractions during instructional time. All of our students are provided Chromebooks so there really isn’t much of an instructional reason to have phones anyway. It has also contributed to a drop in student-on-student behavior problems.
I do feel for the girl in this article for whom it was used as a coping mechanism for bullying. No policy comes with zero downsides. However, it sounds like she was allowed exceptions in certain cases, which is exactly what should happen.
I do feel for the girl in this article for whom it was used as a coping mechanism for bullying. No policy comes with zero downsides
Right, it’s kind of a trolley problem. Is it better to do lesser harm through action (banning cell phones, meaning a few students like this can’t reach their family during school hours), or greater harm through inaction (loose cell phone policy, harming the learning process for everyone, inviting violence against teachers who are competing against addictive algorithms for their students’ attention)?
Cell phones barely existed when I was in school and were certainly out of reach for students. Bullying still happened (personal experience, yay) and staff would shut that shit down when they saw it or it was reported.
I also went to school with no cell phones, and was bullied mercilessly. Staff didn’t care then, and I doubt they care now. I’m glad you went to a school where the adults cared.
When was this? I was in high school during the early 00’s. There were no cell phones, not because of policy, but because they just weren’t commonplace.
It’s not lesser harm since no one else is gonna pay for the mental health bills nor could revert the damage done from the bullying. And when someone snaps from bullying you are gonna see blood for sure. (and little kids/teens snaps from very little things, talking from experiences.) have you ever seen clip where a chubby kid slams a bully teasing him upside down? the bully got slammed could be paralyzed for life, or worse dead, the chubby kid that got bullied could bear that trauma for life, it happens when bully think no one is watching and it’s “life as usual”, picking on this bigger kid to have some power fantasy or bragging to his mates. If the chubby kid had the tool, pull out a phone and push a button and say, “I’m live streaming this and will report to teacher and my parents, watch your action and leave me alone.” Wouldn’t the violence resolved without potential life changing events?
I meant harm in that it affects “one or a few students” rather than affecting “practically all students.”
school is place to learn 2 things:
- proper social interaction and becoming a responsible adult.
- essential knowledge and skills before you branch out and find your thing to earn your own meals.
And IMO, the first point is way more important than the second. Let’s see the implication by breaking down the proposed ban.
From the anti-bullying side:
- deterrent tool is taken away
- bully now have a “safe” grey area to do their thing and become he says/she says.
- teachers or admins could not keep eyes on everyone, and some of them don’t care if there are no bodily harms happened.
- you know how much teens will listen to what adults said, even with laid out consequences.
From the learning, focus during instructional time:
- I grew up without any gadgets(45yo) so no gameboy until I was at high school. Everyone still found ways to distract themselves from boring classes.
- for schools without student chromebook/laptop/tablet, you lose a big chunk of diversity in “asking questions” or “find alternatives”. aka, I feel teacher said something off, how do I find something to support my talking point or argument? Fact checking, math checking, etc.
- The guys that are not interested in your material and have nothing to distract themselves with will just stare at something they interested in or day dreaming stuff. It will not help average score or engagement.
For engagement, from my old self and what my friends here from different background/countries/age bracket discuss their past, the one common thing is fun knowledgeable teacher and how enjoyable their class was last life time long. It shapes their understanding, how they engage other people or topics involving different areas. kids and teens are like herds of fun chasing animal, if even half of your class is having fun and discuss the materials and exchanging questions etc, the rest will follow cause they don’t want to be “left out”.
In short, if a teen can learn how to calculate DPS and build sets for their favorite game but fails the math about probability and expected value, the teacher is doing something wrong.
Again, your old self, and mine for that matter, didn’t have the constant, always-on global communications device in your pocket with precision-engineered addiction algorithms frying your dopamine receptors. Yes, I’m going to boomer out here and say that ShitTok and their ilk are a scourge on youth and on society as a whole. The predictive promotional algorithm, flashy multimedia content, and, let’s be honest, what amounts of soft porn in many cases, absolutely lays waste to attention spans and studious pursuits — doubly so in young, fertile minds. No teacher, no matter how good they are, can compete with that.
I can’t link to it right now for obvious reasons, but there was a post a little while ago on /r/teachers from an experienced educator lamenting on how the behaviour of students has degraded dramatically in just the last few years. They not only lack respect for their teachers, they’re actively disrespectful and sometimes flat-out violent towards educators and staff (particularly when their dopamine pumps are confiscated), and willfully destructive. Students lash out, destroy expensive equipment for fun, and are just downright ineducable.
I may be mixing my sources right now, I believe this was from a corresponding YouTube video that was linked in the post or comments, but the concluding notion I was left with is that there’s an epidemic of emotional dysregulation among youth, induced by combination of poor parenting, lack of effective authority, and — the big one — smartphone addiction. The sentiment that lingers in my head: kids today are no longer interested in learning, they’re only interested in how they can be entertained in the next five minutes.
I think there could be an agreeable balance where students are expected to leave their devices out of sight and on mute during instructional and recess periods. This could be a teaching tool for them to learn about the common courtesy of not being disruptive in settings where attentiveness and other activities are expected and appropriate. Or, really, they could just leave their phones in their lockers. We survived just fine without them at all.
I’m surprised that this wasn’t something that was already implemented. When I was in highschool in the early 2000’s cellphones would be instantly taken away if they were spotted by a teacher during class.
I don’t understand parents needing constant contact with their children. As a kid I would’ve hated that, helicopter parenting x1000.
The article mentions kids being able to call their parents when being bullied. Having an emergency contact option is always useful.
Understandable, but I doubt much bullying is happening during class time, where I feel that having cellphones put away would be the most beneficial. Several times I’ve been asked to put my cellphones in pouches that set off alarms when opened during small comedy shows/concerts, I feel that might be an alright solution to in class device lock down. Then when the class is over phone can come out.
In terms of bullying I think that’s more a failure of the education system that these students don’t have someone to turn to, in the faculty, to deal with it. It sucks because I couldn’t imagine what bullying is like now in the digital age. I always felt that teachers and admins never got enough power to deal with severe bullying without blow back from parents.
I think cellphones should be banned in classrooms and allowed between classes. I’m not sure why they should need to be banned during students’ freetime. This is how it was when I was in high school during the very early years of smartphones and it worked out fine. If I wanted to listen to music while walking down the halls or during lunch, that was a really important coping mechanism for me with how dramatic high school can be. It also allowed me to keep in touch with my friends and meet them around the school. I think it’s overly reactionary to do a blanket ban like that. I completely understand the need to ban them within classrooms. That’s reasonable to me as classrooms should only be for learning.
Phones aren’t the problem, applications are. No one ever complained about having Nokia 3310s in their pockets.
Bright colorful screens that mess up serotonin are also part of the problem.
At my high school most of my teachers didn’t allow cellphones in class, and would take them away for the period if they caught the student more than once.
There isn’t a lot of need for cellphones in a classroom, especially if the students have access to school laptops/computers.
I assumed cell phones would be banned in classrooms. When I was in school any sight of a walkman would get it taken away!
When I was in highschool (late 10s) you were allowed to have your phone on you in class, it wasn’t instantly taken away if they saw the outline in your pocket, but you weren’t allowed to use it in class.
At least when I was in secondary school teachers did not have to confiscate phones, reasonable usage of cell phones was permitted (or laptops for that matter) while unreasonable usage would first result in the instructor asking you to put your phone away and subsequently result in confiscation. Reasonable usage could be using a English-French dictionary online, or taking a photo of a white board. I think it also helped that the school wifi blocked social media and the building had horrendous reception due to the building style, and most VPNs would be blocked so it was difficult to circumvent anyways. I think a complete ban is unreasonable, students should learn how to use technology effectively to ameliorate their education while also learning when it is not appropriate to use it at all (e.g. when the teacher is lecturing).
Edit: I should add for primary school I feel like devices are significantly less useful, and only school owned devices should be used under supervision of staff if necessary (e.g. a computer lab, or a chromebook cart). I do not know how many students bring phones in that age group now, since when I went the most anyone had was an iPod usually except for the rare person with more.
Looks like a ban on smartphones would be more reasonable, while allowing certain kinds of old school phones (the kind for example Hasidic Jews use), to allow for emergency contingencies.
Schools have dress codes, and people adapt to those. Maybe we just need tech codes.
This is just silly. Just ban the phones.
Right? I survived just fine withiut a cell phone until partway through high school. If there was an emergency, my parents would just call the school.
In Montreal, it is common for students after a certain age to start commuting back home with public transit. Using the school as the single point of contact is not always possible.
The ban isn’t preventing students from bringing a cell phone and keeping it turned off in their lockers all day.
As an aside, hello fellow Montrealer.
let’s just #AbolishGovernmentSchools
No, abolish homeschooling and religious schools. Enough with the propagation of idiocy.
There’s a lot of people here immediately jumping to the “cell phones bad!” conclusion.
Phones are a part of kids lives nowadays. Banning them in schools isn’t going to help anyone. How are children supposed to learn to use technology safely and effectively if we just take it away from them instead? I don’t want to imply that it is only a teachers job to teach kids about safe technology use, because it isn’t, but kids spend 30+ hours a week at school. It is a large portion of their lives and what they learn in the classroom often ends up reflected in their lives outside of school.
I think everyone who jumps to the conclusion to ban cell phones in schools is missing the point. All it does is encourage kids to use their technology in unsupervised spaces instead. It doesn’t teach them how to use it safely or effectively, and it doesn’t prevent them from participating in cyber bullying. All it does is push issues such as that outside of the school where kids have arguably less resources and support systems to deal with it.
We can all agree that alcohol isn’t bad by itself and that we can learn to use it safely (don’t drink too much, knowing when we had enough etc…). And yet we keep away alcohol from children. Why? Because it is a well-known fact that children may not have the capability to limit themselves; they might very well become addicted and fall into it.
Why should it be any different for mobile phones? We know it can become an addiction. And we also know that children do not have the means to limit themselves because of their young age.
Deliberately letting a kid having a phone for an indefinite amount of time is being irresponsible. What would be responsible is only allowing to use the phone for a limited time.
Schools banning phone could be one way towards that. It would be a good way too because the kid would not be suffering from any social pressure from their peers as everyone would be concerned with the ban.
This is just a bad comparison, comparing a drug to electronics makes literally 0 sense.
We don’t let kids eat during class because it’s disruptive, should we ban eating in schools all together? Kids aren’t allowed to play sports in the hallways, sports can cause injuries, ban sports at school?
That’s the logic of this comparison, that is, none at all.
It’s an analogy. It’s inaccurate as all analogies are. Yet it’s useful to make the point that banning children from doing X or Y isn’t unprecedented or unacceptable.
Kids go to school for much more than what they learn in class. A fully formed human being that can function in a society requires a lot of social interaction training. That’s what school is for in-between classes. If kids are staring down their phones during that time instead of interacting with each other, that training is lost. Worse, instead of that, they get trained on a false social reality as portrayed by whatever enshittified platform they’re currently on, based on whatever behavior makes the most money today. Is this enough to visualize the damage phones in hallways cause?
I am comparing a drug to a drug that’s the whole point. Phones are drugs. For adults and children alike.
The problem is not in the phone itself. It’s in the lack of doing things that kids should normally be doing at that age. They will play with their phone instead of playing physically (less tonus), sleeping (constant tiredness), talking with their parents (learning) or other kids (socializing).
I know kids like that in my family. You can tell from the dark lines under their eyes that they spend most of their day staring at a screen. And if you ask them to play outside they just don’t know what to do, they need access to a screen even with other kids. It’s really a scary sight. And its a drug yes
I started learning to code at 9 years old and that helped me become a professional developer in my teens. Preventing access to technology is just removing opportunities from your children. Teach them responsible usage, if it was possible 30 years ago it’s possible now.
Nobody does programming on their phones
I’m all in to get programming classes where children learn to code on PCs. That’s a high pass for me. But AFAIK children aren’t doing programming on their phones.
In general i doubt using a phone at school is going to help them program or teach them about technology. They have plenty of time to explore phones on their own when they get home, especially now that kids don’t go much outside anymore. It’s not like a school ban would be cutting that away from them.
In that case there should be some time dedicated to that topic.
Otherwise, they have all that technology in hand as soon as classes finish. The younger generations are all born with tablets and smartphones in their hands.
I’m really not worried about them learning how they work.
Heck, we had a PC at home and I learned how to use DOS as soon as I learned how to read just so I could play games.
I think you’re understanding these kids.
I’m not necessarily saying they need to learn how the devices work (although some kids do). I’m more saying they need to learn how to use them, as in, when it is appropriate and effective to use their phone, and what they should be using it for. Scrolling through social media in class? Obviously not a good choice when you should be focusing on your learning. Using it as a calculator? Great! We have a calculator in our pocket for just that reason. Fact checking something to make sure what you’re writing in your essay is true? Great! Always back up your writing with sources!
Phones are just mini computers. We use computers in the classroom because we understand they’re a useful tool. Showing kids how to utilize those tools is important. The younger generation (myself included, although I graduated high school 7 years ago now) see cell phones as an extension of themselves. It’s a tool I use daily to find information, view traffic in real time, keep up to date on current events, and communicate with my family and friends. I use it all the time. I’m very strongly of the opinion that technology is never inherently bad. We just need to teach and model appropriate and effective use.
I get your point and it’s very valid.
However, it’s still a big distraction. Smart phones are purposefully programmed to distract, get your attention and keep it. With all the apps that send push notifications making your phone buzz every minute, it’s hard to focus on anything else. I leave mine in “do not disturb” mode to stop getting distracted all the time, and even then I still see the god damn things pup up on screen and will change my attention from my work to my phone.
I really don’t think they have their place in the classroom just for that reason alone.
Phones are a part of kids lives nowadays.
It has a time and place. I think the point here is that the time and place is not in class.
I give my children unfettered access to technology. It is very much a last resort for them, only picking up a device when they have exhausted all other visible opportunity to do something more interesting. Suggesting that they do almost anything else is met with “Yeah! Let’s do that!”
If a student is reaching for their phone in class, the problem is with something about the class. Being old, cell phones came in giant bags when I was a student, but we played with our calculators, doodled, or anything else to stave off the same boredom when we had a horrible teacher who had no clue as to what they were doing. The phone is just a more modern version of the exact same quest for distraction.
I think the point is that we need to question why we are wasting our students’ time in classes which are not providing value. There is a lot of sentimental attachment to school, but ultimately there is no need for make work projects. The focus needs to be on delivering value and where that is not being delivered a rethink is necessary.
Phone use, or any such distraction, is a symptom telling us that there is a problem in value delivery. Suppressing a symptom does not cure the illness.
You don’t have to look very far to know your n of 1 isn’t representative.
And adding more distraction opportunities doesn’t help.
This is going to be my hot take of the day.
Cars are very much part of our lives and we decided that there was a minimum age to own and operate them. I could potentially get behind a system where we don’t let children below a certain age operate / own a phone.
It’s illegal to smoke with a kid in your car, but we have no problem giving a 10 year old kid unfiltered internet 24/7 as a society.
This is a hot take that I can get on board with. I think in order for this to happen we (as a society) will have to come to grips with the real damage device addiction can do to our lives. The harm is easy to find with second hand smoke and alcohol but we do a great job turning a blind eye to all the issues we’re causing for ourselves by being stuck on our devices.
Ban phone just not the right thing. In nowaday, can get help if the person get school bully? Just click power button 5 times to call police. Something happen? have a call. give the chridren some money for snake or launch? phone. lost direction, phone.
