Not the power of the paycheck, that’s for damn sure…
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I don’t understand your logic.
My son goes to a school where given access to their phones some might be doing some of those activities. But should we avoid dreaming big about how we might transform education because a few people don’t use the phones “right”?
Anything that seeks to reverse the GOP’s very intentional dismantling of the public education system in Amerika is helpful in my book. Putting powerful computers in students’ hands and meeting them with powerful curriculum that engages them to use their phones in transformative ways is an idea worth pursuing. Just because a few people will inevitably fuck up doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim for a moonshot in improving public education in this country.
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I suspect that there’s a lot of incentive for one to lead to the other: enforcing “only schoolwork on phones while in school” is downright Sisyphean: phones switch between applications quickly, are generally not dependent on your wifi(and, even if they are, typically aren’t under the sort of control that would be required to defeat even trivial evasion meaures); and students outnumber you 20-30 to one.
“No phones during school” is hardly zero-effort; but it’s vastly closer to being viable to actually enforce; and what slips through the cracks is more likely to be the less disruptive activity because anyone who wishes not to be caught actually has to evade attention rather than just switch applications quickly.
That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good idea; but it’s fairly clearly the might-actually-be-possible variant of the application-specific phone enforcement.
Anyone who can do curriculum that out-engages the people targeting smartphones for pure engagement while also teaching the desired material would be a shoe-in for a giant pile of pedagogical acclaim.
Anyone who can turn computers being powerful into making their users more knowledgeable or prepared to do better thinking would probably land somewhere north of Gutenberg in terms of educational importance.
It’s just the small matter of actually doing those things.
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Also, they’ll likely be using the phones to connect to the internet, and we all know how reliable information on the internet is right now… 
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It’s more nuanced than that. This isn’t students on their phone anytime and they’re only an application switch away from something else. If they’re not doing an activity that needs a phone, not having one out at all is an easy policy. Certainly far less than a law that prescribes only dumb phones are allowed with no nuance at all. When my kids have needed to use a phone instead of a Chromebook for actual work, they ask first. When kids are doing self guided work in the classroom, once they’re done, if they’re not disruptive, what’s the difference. When they’re supposed to be paying attention, using a phone below the table or writing a note under the table are both distracting. Blaring a loud phone or a radio are both the same. Yet, there’s no law against radios.
A disruptive kid or one not paying attention is a disruptive kid or one not paying attention. If that’s with a phone, notes, rubber bands, doodling, reading a book, singing a cappella, or whatever they’re still a problem.
It’s just a hammer solution and every problem is a nail.
There’s times at school when kids should clearly not be on their phones and be paying attention. There’s other times, when it doesn’t matter at all. Those times are likely different in every grade level too.
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Why do you hate progress, Smulder!!! WHY!!! /s
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I agree!
If you haven’t, please read Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms.
Is there part of Project 2025 where they take away our smartphones?
Yes, I see the point of your point in calling out my absolutism but do you honestly think that somehow we will not be using smartphones in the future?
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… as far as I can tell, whether you and I will be using smartphones in the future is not the topic of the article being discussed here 
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When I was in school we had distracting games on graphing calculators. There was at least one class I don’t think I could have endured attending otherwise.
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Good point! I mean… maybe the solution to kids being distracted in class is to stop having public schools be so authoritarian and rigid? Maybe bring in pedagogies that aren’t about shoving knowledge into the heads of young people in only “one correct way” but by understanding that education can be fun and interesting and mind expanding. It can be done in a way that addresses various learning styles and helps kids reach their potential and go where they want to go in life. Maybe part of the reason kids end up distracted by their phones is that the way many schools operate is a mini-prison rather than a place of learning and inquiry.
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Well, we may know different kids. I’m not going to pretend to know all the kids, or even to be confident I know what the “average high schooler” can do. I’m sure my experience is myopic, and is mostly centered in a couple states.
But for what it’s worth (hopefully it doesn’t sound like I’m being a jerk, I’m trying to compare notes), I can give you my credentials, and you can see how it compares to your knowledge of the “average” high school kid.
I’ve been working with high schoolers in technology for nearly 20 years. Through my years as an educational software developer I regularly ran coding classes for kids. During that time I was probably in 30 schools or after-school programs. I then ran the STEM program at an urban after-school, including coding and other computer-related tech. I then got a second master’s degree in STEM Education (my thesis was research on how kids learn through “tinkering” in both electronics and programming), and am now starting work in a middle school as a STEM/science teacher.
During my time, I have seen a decline in the average middle school and high schooler’s ability to even realize that unlocking devices was a possibility. The number of students I meet who don’t understand that computers can have their own files on them is also high – many students only know the browser and files on Google Drive.
Many more students know some basic programming through Scratch, which is awesome, but I have met very few high schoolers that understood developer environments that required multiple text files to be saved and then compiled.
In my experience, kids also have a much fuzzier idea of how the internet “works,” in terms of servers and routers and stuff. Also (in relation to the suggestion of sideloading OSes), we have a 3D printer than accepts USB sticks when it refuses to connect to the WiFi, and none of the kids this year had seen one before.
Obviously there are plenty of students who do understand these things, but in my experience there are simply fewer of them. (To be clear, they understand all sorts of other things, and are awesome people.)
Hmmm, can you show me an example of someone making these work through a school-managed student account? Most sideloading of OSes through USB sticks require starting the machine in developer mode, which schools nowadays can lock down. (I think they used to be able to re-boot into developer mode, but these days they say “developer mode is disabled on this device by system policy.”)
I could be wrong, though, I’m not a systems admin (thank god). But I have my fifth grader’s chromebook here to test on if you point me in the right direction.
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You have outstanding credentials for this topic!
If I might suggest, though? You seem to be describing changes in relevant technology rather than changes in the students. When I was in high school, the average student could barely operate a computer, and that’s being generous. Coding was for the nerdiest of nerds. Those of us who did regularly use them cared a lot about files and file structures as well as memory and memory allocation. But now those are no longer limiting factors so they aren’t functionally relevant. Likewise unlocking devices, which is very oughts but now is largely irrelevant.
Contemporary kids know what’s relevant to them: DRM, VPNs, contemporary network navigation, etc. They often know more about coding than people give them credit for through games like Minecraft.
So I get where you’re coming from but also wonder if you might actually be too close to the problem to see it clearly, with all respect for what you do. I love teachers!!!
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I love how there are charger cables supplied.
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It’s been a long time since I did these sorts of things, but back in the day before ubiquitous laptops, you could alter the boot order on windows boxes then boot to CD (and later, USB).
The first popular one was KnoppixKnoppix - Wikipedia, which was basiclly just Debian run in RAM. Later came Backtrack (now Kali), which enables a whole other level of fun.
Awesome point! I did worry as I was writing that wall of text (sorry) that I was focusing too much on the file system. And in any case your point is valid.
In my experience, though, things like VPNs and cracking DRM still typically require more permissions on a chromebook than schools give them. Cracking DRM (the only way I know how, for, say, ebooks) requires running a program over a file. (A quick browse didn’t find any good online alternatives, but I may just not know.) Setting up a VPN on a chromebook requires access to the network settings or the ability to install an extension.
(Hence the relevance of unlocking devices. If the kids can hack out of the student mode, and even just reboot into dev mode, then the world is their oyster.)
You’re almost certainly more capable of me! But… I think you might still find it hard on a modern managed student chromebook. I’m happy to be proved wrong, though (and I won’t even narc on the kids, promise!).
Ok. Apologies all for using up more than my share of air time.
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I had hoped that kids would use their smartphones for homework, but the truth is they don’t. The kids use their phones as distraction engines. They are addicted to them, and not in any way that produces useful schoolwork.
(Source: 21 year veteran of NYS schools.)
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My district in NYS pretty much bans them already, and it makes a big difference. They are not helping our kids academically. Kids will reach for them instead of doing their work, and it was a constant struggle to teach them because of this addictive behavior.
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