Banning phones in school has dramatic results | Hacker News Reader

Banning phones in school has dramatic results

smh.com.au

19 pointsgrzm5 comments

My wife is a public school teacher, and based on what she tells me, I can believe what the article says, that forcing phones to be put away solves 90% of the problems.

All this "family emergency" crap is, as another commenter suggests, probably mainly about lacking spine when dealing with whiney kids.

There are legit reasons to contact a kid during school hours, and for that you need a dedicated phone (or two) used by assistant principals, with a phone number published to parents. That's how we did it in the 70s, with POTS.

Although the results are not surprising, it is interesting to think how this became a problem in the first place. You'd think a school would know what's appropriate for the classroom and have banned phones from day one.

I'd get in trouble just for bringing card games.

Wait, phones weren't already banned? I'm actually surprised by that. 15 years ago when I was in school they were already banned.

What changed?

The phone has become a vital bodily organ... it is unthinkable in the modern day to separate a student from their devices.

I think (hope!) this is just the pendulum swinging from "my kids should be my friend, so I won't support things they don't like even if it's against their best interest" back towards "I should parent my kids effectively, even if they they're upset with me for a few years". I feel like a lot of parenting and educational issues these days are attributed to parents who are overly permissive / lack a spine, for lack of a better phrase.

I feel like we had a reasonable compromise when I was at school - you carried your phone on your person and could use it during breaks, but if you were caught using it instead of paying attention in class it would get confiscated for the day (and detention etc. issued as appropriate for repeat offenders).

People who used obvious common sense about this were bullied as boomers stuck in the past, or who only wanted to control people for some sadistic authoritarian pleasure, and similar kind of pushback to the suggestion that phone use should be restricted in schools.

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