Because people are out of touch, saved you an article
Well I don’t think that is the case. Parents and teachers are observing students not paying attention.
I would think if an educator can teach a full lesson, while also ensuring that students retain the information, when the student is watching YouTube, endlessly scrolling reddit or lemmy, or on Instagram this wouldn’t be an issue.
The problem is that students aren’t retaining the knowledge being provided to them.
So the students are out of touch?
Here’s the thing, in general. Phone or no phone, the problem your mentioned is down to the teacher. I’ve had good teachers that are able to make a lesson entertaining and guess what. That actually works, people aren’t bored to death and shit gets done.
To contrast, boring lessons, even without factoring in phones, nobody gives a shit for good reason. We just focus on something else, wetger that’s a phone or something else isn’t a factor. Its rather the lesson itself
To address the retaining info part. If somebody talked to you for about half an hour on some random thing you don’t care about. How much do you think you would remember or focus on. Spoiler alert, probably not much
It’s disappointing but not surprising to see so many people (on lemmy) willing to violently control children and their access to tech, information, etc.
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/kids-online-safety-act-still-huge-danger-our-rights-online
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/thousands-young-people-told-us-why-kids-online-safety-act-will-be-harmful-minors
- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/schools-and-edtech-need-study-student-privacy-year-review-2022
It’s pretty telling when people don’t want to do anything about the many other much bigger causes of psychological harm. Where’s the law that stops cops from harassing minority youth? Yeah right.
Peeps are literally upvoting Ron DeSantis. Fascism is not the goal here. Wake up, y’all.
Christ almighty, that was dramatic.
Not being able to use your cell phone for the duration of the school day is fascism.
Fascinating.
Come off it, not being allowed to be on your cell phone during school hours isn’t the same as KOSA.
The APA document you linked even specifically discusses the effects of social media (what do you think they’re using their phones for?) on mental health.
You don’t have kids huh?
I have a kid, I spent 10 years working with kids professionally, and I agree with this dude.
In fact, lots of people, myself included, are drawn to leftist anarchism BECAUSE of lessons we learned about the failures of authoritarianism in school from parents and teachers. It’s always super annoying to see parents and teachers settling comfortably into an authoritarian role with their own kids, after hearing them wax emphatically about the effects of authoritarianism in adult society. I’m surrounded by hypocrites, and it’s not harmless. It’s like everybody either forget what it’s like to be kids, or think that the lessons of adulthood give them license to stop caring about those “little” problems, (and be fricken condescending in the process) when actually they just find it “easier” or it “feels safer” to them.
I have friends who we’re excellent teachers, but left the school system in absolute despair because they went in intending to be collaborative, entertaining teachers and passionate advocates for the kids in their care… Only to run up against all the bureaucratic walls the education system throws up to prevent exactly that and create as much conformity as possible… And then the icing on the cake is the vast majority of parents who just don’t get it, Don’t even try to get it, Don’t listen, know what they know, their opinions are their opinions and talking to them is just effing hopeless.
Whenever I’ve dealt with really difficult children, 9 times out of 10 you meet the parents and you’re like “Oh, this all makes sense!” (I can actually only think of three exceptions and two of those were clinical sociopaths). Or you go to work with a school (I’ve worked with and at dozens of schools) and you’re like “Oh, I understand why the kids from this school that I see in my program are always behaving in X, Y and Z dysfunctional ways. How is everyone this clueless and incompetent??” I have watched teachers utterly fail to teach or connect with the kids in their charge, and then watched those same teachers play politics and keep their positions while teachers who are doing a great job get let go (or forced out through social bs) because they want to ignore all that crap. I have had teachers come up to me when I’m running a program or event at their school and had them say “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I saw the kids in your program and those are all the most difficult children we have!” And I’m like “these kids are fine! You’re an authoritarian in an authoritarian environment, aren’t you??”
And I’m literally surrounded by adults who like think they know what they’re doing, and aren’t even trying to get it and MAN do they have opinions they want to share and it pisses me the fuck off.
My kid creates super good boundaries, he emphasizes kindness in communication in ways I was totally unable to do it his age, he advocates for himself (and other kids) like someone a decade older, and if he’s on his phone in class, it’s because the teacher is failing to engage the class. End of discussion. When I see that situation, I’m almost always like “I could teach this class and these kids would not be on their phones, and I have the experience under my belt to prove it.” (And I have seen shit like that).
Respect. You and yours are the educators that treat kids as people and not cattle to be controlled. Mind bending how revolutionary that act is. Thank you
Thank you. But I don’t do it anymore. I could not earn enough money to have a stable life and family.
I have a whole different rant about that.
Just to counterbalance some of the disagreement replies you’ve got - I agree with you, it’s scary how many people are happy to be ageist, even when they’re so progressive on other forms of equality. If you can control people based on how long they’ve been alive, that’s very dangerous in several ways, both to the people who’s autonomy is being stolen, and to others who it sets a precedent for.
I am in full agreement that cell phones should not be out of the backpack or pocket unless there is an emergency or it’s lunch time / outside of class.
But for the love of critical thinking, also please ban the teachers from using ChatGPT to create their tests for them. I was appalled at finding out teachers at my kid’s school are doing that. While I support any tool (and funding!) that can make the lives and jobs of teachers easier, using a tool like ChatGPT is as irresponsible as telling kids to just Google it. And teachers/administrators should damn well know better.
There is no emergency that can’t be handled by the adults of the school.
I can understand needing a phone for the commute, but at school it should stay in the bag turned off.
I hear you. But my child will have a cell phone in case of a real emergency when the adults don’t properly act. While I trust teachers rather implicitly, my experience with most school administrators is far less stellar. Also, a student calling 911 when the teacher is having a heart attack or some other life threatening event will save time and possibly their life.
Barring any emergency situations, my child’s phone better be put away.
Our school had a buzzer, the office anawers the intercom, you tell them the emergency and they arrange everything. Cell phones really arent needed unless you are out on a field trip maybe
School shootings, intercom not working, teacher not available and student bleeding on the floor, etc, etc. There are numerous reasons for safety for the availability of a cell phone.
A dumb phone can do that without the damage caused by smart phones.
When did I mention the use of a smart phone?
There are emergencies the adults at the school won’t understand. This has happened a few times to my spouse, where the nurse/teachers kept brushing off issues they didn’t understand, ranging from things like asthma to strep throat.
Otherwise, I agree that the phones should be put away during class.
Depends how they use chatgpt, if they use it tlfor content that can be troublesome, but here its being used as a format tool. You copy some previous test and ask it to reorder the numbered questions ( to precent class before giving the AACDBA series of answers) or use to copy paste in a large test and tell it to strip out every other quesotion, renumber and replace body text with double line spacing. For stuff like that it is a godsend.
Perhaps. I concede maybe it makes mundane tasks simpler and quicker.
But it should most definitely not be used for fact-based research and testing. Not yet and not until it is proven to produce only credible fact backed by credible sources.
I agree with the conclusion of the article:
“School’s the same for 120 years, where kids go nine to three, have long holidays, sit at desks and have to regurgitate what the adults tell them to learn, basically all over the world. We’re blaming kids for falling academic standards, we’re blaming the rise in mental ill health, we’re blaming the rise of cyberbullying. Oh, well, it all must be the fault of the mobile phone,” Marilyn Campbell told Al Jazeera.
“I mean, what a simplistic view of how we are educating our children in a different world and taking away that main tool that we’re all using in society and saying, ‘No, the kids can’t have it now’.”
A balanced approach, involving regulated use and clear guidelines, may be the most effective way to harness the benefits of smartphones while minimising their drawbacks, experts say.
The general recommendation of Campbell and Edwards, who carried out the scoping review in Australia, was to leave it to individual schools to determine smartphone use and to focus on helping children to use smartphones positively.
As an educator and parent, I couldn’t disagree more strongly. Smart phones are addiction machines and childhood experience blockers. Children should not have smart phones at all until age 16. Age 16 would be a very appropriate time to introduce smart phones after their harms have been explained in detail at ages 12 through 15.
Banning cell phones during instructional time doesn’t go far enough. Students having a smart phone in their pocket is damaging. (Dumb phones are fine—SMS texting and phone calls are great.)
There has been a precipitous decline in youth mental health globally in nations where cell phones were affordable starting in 2010. The evidence is clear. Smart phones (and, more broadly, addictive dark patterns in all apps/games) are a big problem.
If you want to learn more, read the first chapter of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. (I’d recommend the full book if you want details, but chapter 1 is enough to give you a grounding in the data and the broad strokes of the argument.)
Out of curiosity, (given that in another comment you talked about home schooling) when you call yourself an educator, do you have a teaching certificate in your state, or other professional teaching certification?
I’m not trying to be rude, but since you began by invoking the title of “educator” as an appeal to authority in this area, I think it’s important to clarify that you are in fact such.
I’m certified to teach in my jurisdiction. I have a teaching degree, and I have completed additional professional training specific to this topic through conferences, books, and other professional development (PD).
I can’t source conference talks or teacher PD groups, so I sourced a popular press book that’s approachable to laymen.
Awesome, thank you.
“My jurisdiction” could mean their house and their degree could be from PragerU or some other sham online college. The way everything is worded so vaguely leads me to believe this is the case.
No reason to assume malice just because they’re not listing out identifying information. I don’t list my schools or company names online either. It’s not as though we could (or would) validate it anyways.
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I’m currently rebuilding my math foundation and part of that process was tracking down high quality educational resources with passionate instructors, rigor, and entertainment factor (because I want stuff to recommend to parents). I did eventually find something that was better than what I got in grade school, but I have to say that the Pythagorean Theorem just isn’t going to be as interesting as social media feeds and entertainment products custom tailored to my preferences. No teacher is realistically going to be able to compete with the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry for attention and tech companies are abusing psychology research to make their shit as addictive as possible. It’s not the biggest problem with the US educational system, but it is one of many, so I’m down with restricting smartphone access at schools.
I’m not sure why I see people treating banning smartphones in class like child abuse or something. The only explanation I have is that it’s a cultural thing. Obviously, if used appropriately, a smartphone is a valuable tool, but this is only if they are used appropriately, which some students will do and some won’t (and this varies as well from school to school and class to class). Where I went to school, a significant number of students did not use them appropriately during class, so not allowing them made sense since they distracted from the lesson.
So, why do I have so little confidence that they’ll be used properly? Some people are posting anecdotes about their time as teachers in this thread, so I’ll post one from the student’s perspective. Despite smartphones not being allowed in my classes in high school, people used them anyway. Why? The teachers wouldn’t notice, or some might just not say anything. I played the heck out of one mobile game with my friends in both of my history classes, and nothing ever happened. I knew people who’d be listening to music during class too, and completely ignore the lecture itself. Almost everyone with a phone out used it as a distraction from class, not as a tool to help them learn. Despite there being a rule against them, I’d estimate more than half of the people I went to school with used them during class anyway.
So why didn’t the teachers enforce it more strictly? My guess is because it wasn’t safe. Many of my friends carried knives at school for self defense. There were a lot of violent students, ranging from fights in the hallway to students being part of a gang. To be clear, this wasn’t by any means the majority of the student body, but it wasn’t an insignificant portion of it either.
The violence escalated dramatically after the 2016 election, where students (who were understandably upset about the result) got up and threatened all the white people in the school. I had graduated by then, but I knew people who had to barricade themselves in a room with a mob of angry knife-wielding students on the other side of the door. Many of the students in the room weren’t even old enough to vote. One teacher left the school because of all the threats she’d received.
Also, not sure how common it is to have a “senior prank day” at other schools, but we had one every year. The “pranks” ranged from spray painting threats to teachers on the outside of the gym, to destroying school property. Once they had to put classes on pause while a company came out to replace the locks on all the doors since the “prank” was to destroy the locks so the doors couldn’t be opened.
This school was pretty tame too, compared to some of the schools I’d heard stories of. One teacher I talked to at a different school had stories about all the times some student threatened her or pulled a gun out on her or whatever, and it honestly just sounded like hell.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say I blame the kids for this behavior, and while I have strong opinions against feed-driven social media, I don’t think it was a major contributor to these behaviors (this was before social media was as big as it is now). I think it really comes down to parenting, whether the parents are just bad at raising kids, or they don’t have time or resources to properly raise their kids, or their kids have needs they don’t know how to (or refuse to) satisfy. Regardless, a teacher can only do so much, so rather than trying to correct behaviors in students at the risk of their own lives, I think a lot of them just put up with it for the sake of the students who do want to learn.
So if the rule is going to be broken anyway, why have a rule against smartphones? It sets the expectation of students regarding smartphone usage, and gives teachers an opportunity to enforce that rule when they feel it’s appropriate (and safe) to do so.
Edit: I should also add that I don’t think most schools are this violent. This school was exceptionally bad, but it wasn’t as uncommon as you might think to have a school this violent.
Why not banning them in schools, are they needed for studying?
FA/FO
We’re on phase 2
