Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/03/new-york-to-ban-smartphones-in-schools.html
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While one can certainly see their point, i think the definition of ‘smart…’ is going to leave them with some shouty circumstances
allowing only dumbphones that allow calls and messaging but not the distracting apps that come with iOS and Android.
“But but… messaging on my phone depends on a distracting app!”
(“told you the school district had to hire someone who understood all the system → app → general → messaging → announcements → flatuent_clown menu options!”)
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This is so fucked up. Kids need to have a phone so they can text parents in an emergency? I call bullshit.
Kids use their phones to text parents to come get them when they feel sick. They text them to bring the homework or sports gear they forgot. They text parents to get them to bring McFood to school. They text parents to complain about school staff. Parents text kids to make after-school plans. They text kids to remind them about things. 99.99% of the text traffic between students and parents could be handled in other ways. I remember life before cell phones. We managed.
In the mean time, kids are texting each other to start fights, arrange trysts, skip classes together, spread rumors, arrange drug deals, or just to have something to do besides listen to the teacher.
The schools should let the student email accounts work to email parents’ email addresses. They can send messages that way. There’s no need for phones in school. They add nothing good. Source: I raised 3 kids through high school and I worked in a school for five years.
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They’ve tried this before in NYC. Didn’t work. Teachers will now be the phone police, and they will constantly be at war with students using all of their ingenuity to circumvent these rules.
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This is unfortunately a war that most schools do not have the energy to fight. Many, many parents are terrified by the idea of school shootings, and will fight tooth and nail to keep some form of phone with their kid.
Source: between me and my spouse, teaching in schools for the past 17 years.
I think allowing dumb phones is a reasonable compromise. Kids are way less distracted by dumb phones.
I wonder whether apple watches will be included in the ban. Hopefully yes.
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If only there were a reverse-chronological lobby!
The article you linked to mentioned such a bill. “The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act addresses algorithmic feeds. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they have chosen to follow rather than algorithmically suggested ones.”
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How about leveraging these computers more powerful than the policymakers could have ever imagined when they were students and that these students happen to have and know how to use better than said policymakers and use them in engaging, creative, new, and exciting projects with curriculum that acknowledges that these devices are here to stay?
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Setting aside any debate of the pros and cons of cell phones in class I’ll just say good luck to NY. We have a school cell phone “ban” at the provincial level where I live and the net result was the provincial government telling district school boards they could ban phones, boards telling schools they could ban phones and school admin telling teachers they could ban phones in their individual classes typically with little to no policies or support to back it up. No one wants to take the reputational hit or argue with parents who disagree so the buck gets passed down to the teachers.
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Yes unfortunately that’s what this will ultimately come down to: yet one more responsibility unloaded onto teachers.
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I understand that people crave the illusion of control over their out-of-control environments; but I’m always puzzled by the genre of people insisting on the vital importance of communication under circumstances where there’s nothing they would be nothing they would be able to do with the information.
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My nephew’s middle school principal didn’t allow phones. If you were caught with a phone, it was taken to the office and you couldn’t have it back until your parent came in to get it. THAT policy worked. Then the principal retired and the new principal caved.
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This is such a retiree baiting policy. Is she trying to court older voters and assuming that the students will forget by the time they can vote? And that parents can be placated by “buy a second, easy to surveil phone, with a second mobile contract” stipulation?
This is a policy I’d expect to see from UK conservatives - it fits perfectly with bringing the draft back (they announced that electoral promise last week, calling it national service)
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Because that is the historic name for it.
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This strikes me as equivalent to banning calculators. Smart phones are a tool. Kids are going to use them one way or another. If you don’t want the distraction, use them in your curriculum.
I’ll take this as another excuse to plug Mastery-style teaching. If you set a standard for “A” work and allow students to pursue that standard however it works for them, you invert the “teacher pushes lessons and assignments to students” dynamic into a “student pulls what they need to reach standard from teacher” dynamic. Who gives a shit if they are on their phone if they’ve reached “A” level standard with their work? And if they haven’t, they are too busy to be distracted.
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Good idea in principle, but the kids will still use them to:
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And teachers… Schools that allow smartphones are hell to teach in.
Perhaps a dumb phone is easier to surveil in the “law enforcement gets a warrant for your SMS messages”-sense, but they’re definitely harder to surveil in the much more common “spy on the GPS location and track your kid”-sense.
Also, if dumb phone are normalized, it’s much easier for kids to get pre-paid burner phones.
I don’t see the surveillance angle here.
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“Tell me that you are still alive and unharmed.”
That’s it.
Logically, parents know there is little they can do in the case of an active shooter on their kids’ campus. That knowledge does nothing to alleviate the primal drive to stay in contact with one’s offspring during a crisis.
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They could make phones for kids with the parental option to lock out everything but core functions during school hours, or geo-fenced to school grounds (plus a generous margin to discourage sneaking out).
The school would have to have a way to audit the phones for an active lockout.
Just a rough idea.
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