Is it, though?
The point being responded to was the fallacious idea that parents would be completely unable to get a hold of their children at school in case of emergencies and vise versa without the use of cell phones, which in most cases is not true.
Technology is great most of the time, but relying upon it to the extent that one can’t even fathom functioning without it is highly problematic.
No. Just no. That was never the point. Nobody stated that. Not in the thread I posted in anyway.
Uh… yeah, it is, actually; it’s the point of this entire post:
France imposes “total ban” on mobile phones in schools…
Nice stealth edits. Moving along now.
Okay, sure, I agree with that.
But there’s been a tangent in the discussion when @Glaurung stated that cellphones can be useful to kids outside of school, and got answered that they should just use landlines.
Have you no faith in BYOD and its transformative power?
Petty concerns like “do all the users have equipment of suitable capability?”, “is it configured correctly?”, "is it set up to retain and/or transfer the resulting data as needed?), and “are the assorted 3rd parties we are effectively making mandatory for the users compliant with our legal obligations(much less our aspirations)”? Are the fork-tongued lies of the hidebound IT monopolists who want to shove you into a homogeneous beige cage forever…
On the other hand, one could hardly want a more dramatic example of the difference between having data and having knowledge.
There have always been ways to be unproductive or counterproductive with data; back since before you could afford margins to scribble in; but it’s hard to beat a cellphone for the combination of data technically made available and slacking off strongly encouraged.
Didn’t mean to be sneaky, my first version was inaccurate, so I amended it for precision.
That reminds me of a happening from Calc class back in the day: calculators were allowed, because whoever made the rules knew that the standard issue TI units could provide fairly accurate numeric approximations for integration and differentiation; but couldn’t provide symbolic results, so they just asked for those.
The couple of people in the class with cooler calculators(I think they were one of the later HP48 models, the ones that were actually closer to the HP49 architecturally but slightly cut down in peripherals, not 100% sure at this point) cheerfully took advantage of the fact that those could do symbolic solutions, including showing their work.
Most proofs would require a bit more calculator; and computer generated proofs have a reputation for being really, really gross; but computer generated proofs are something we’ve been working on since it was practically obligatory to append -NIAC to the name of whatever vacuum tube monster you had cobbled together; and I suspect that contemporary proof assistants and automated theorem solvers can probably do a serviceable job in some of the less hairy areas.
(Obviously, once you get into the more hairy areas, such tools are allowed again; as are any means aside from plagiarism; but the argument when tools comes up is always a “and will you succeed at whatever comes next if you let computers do what comes now for you?” If the answer is “sure, no problem.” then it is hard to justify banning any tool or imposing any tedious hand work. The trouble is that, at least for a great many students, it doesn’t seem to be the case that they can arrive prepared even if they skip the boring stuff. Being in favor of sending a human to do a machine’s job for it’s own sake is the sort of depravity on the same scale as demanding exquisite cursive penmanship; but being in favor of it because students plunked right at the margin of what calculators can do for them without preparation often seem ill prepared is a different matter.)
And the fucked up thing about that is BRUSSELS SPROUTS ARE EXTREMELY DELICIOUS and why did it take me a quarter century to figure that out… WHY???
And all it took was my partner explaining that they were really just baby cabbages. Boom. Now we’re off. I might as well call my cast iron the sprouts pan.
Depending on the details of implementation, that can be the downside of item #2 “It’s based on a firm belief that culture is important, and that their job is to instill it in all citizens… and that there is a national culture, in the first place.”
We spent generations boiling all the flavor out of them. I thought I hated them too, until I roasted some.
Easy answer, to piggyback on Manybellsdown’s; they were being cooked incorrectly.
Roasted with a little olive oil and garlic or rosemary, they’re quite tasty.
Beets though… Borscht is the only way I can stand them
You’re better than me; I can’t stomach them in any form.
My kid, though?
LOVES them. And brussels sprouts, and asparagus too…
Because getting off your butt to go play is important as well. Socially, physically, mentally, creatively, even just to use your eyes to look at things further away than your hand.
I’m going outside to play right now 
Reading back over the exchange, I see what happened now.
I was addressing the actual topic at hand; phone usage being banned in French schools, on the premises, during school hours.
Somehow, Glaurung expanded that to mean that students were forbidden to have them at all, (even turned off in their bags, for use after school) and chose to get needlessly snotty with me about his misperception… so instead of clarifying, I just quit paying him any attention.
And then you jumped in, only compounding the misunderstanding.
SMH
To be fair, @Glaurung was originally responding to @Mister44 stating that phones shouldn’t be brought to school at all.
And sincerely I wouldn’t put it past French legislators to consider it in a typical bout of maximalism.
That was where I misunderstood that portion of the conversation, and that’s on me. The needlessly shitty attitudes, however… that’s not.
Glad the miscommunication’s been rectified, moving on now.
Cheers.
I would not limit to SMS. I would only have a phone completely devoid of texting on any platform. If there is an emergency then she can call me. In fact, I will likely give her one of my SPOT Gen IIIs to have in her pocket.
You and others have successfully identified the real problem. It’s not the kids, it’s the parents. There are some people who bend over backwards to make sure they can monitor/communicate directly with their kids all day, every day. The only way to get those types to agree to give up the phones involves implanting a chip and letting them track their kids using an app. This is because they are already using the phones to track their children. If the phone is in a locker or a drawer, it cannot meet the parents’ needs.
What always makes me laugh is that kids spend much more time communicating with their peers. This is why there are apps and settings to force children to answer their parents’ calls and texts.
