Hacker News Reader

Comment by RocketOne | Hacker News Reader

Its overdue. As a principal I used to ban phones in our school. Back before every kid had one.

If they were caught playing on them or if it rang during class, the phone went to the teacher's desk til the end of class. If it happened a second time, it came to my office til the end of the day. And a 3rd violation meant it stayed in my office til the end of the week.

That last one rarely happened as any child who lost access for a whole day nearly went into panic mode without their pacifier for an entire day.

View on HN

At my son's school, they all have to put the phones in the 'phone hotel' at the beginning of the day and pick them up at the end. Sorta worked, until the kids all just started bringing in old phones to drop in the phone hotel and keep their actual phones with them. That and the Apple watches and chromebooks mean pretty much no kid has any trouble doing whatever they want even without their phones.

What could you actually do with an Apple Watch though? Sounds like a better solution if you really need a communication link that isn’t as distracting as a smart phone. Texting is still possible, just not very convenient.

Yes, texting. They text amongst their friends who are in different classes.

Parental control the watch's functionality during school hours to just calling or texting 911 and mom/dad?

Do students these days learn to text without seeing the screen? It strikes me as more difficult to do with a touch screen, but we used to do it with T9 phones back in the day.

Try SwiftKey... Not the same but I can do it without looking that much - and one-handed.

Maybe there's a technical solution for this.

Companies could give students a special form of (e)sim card where the school could disable data and block calls that does not go to family, emergency services etc. during class, and then unblock it automatically when there are no classes.

I'm sure it's not as simple as suggested above, otherwise someone would have made it already. But perhaps there is a similar technical solution for this problem, as parents and schools are unable to fix it on their own.

Build a giant Faraday cage around the classrooms. Blocks telecomms.

Then you’ll get a visit from the FCC.

Faraday cages are not illegal, actively jamming by emitting ypur own signals is what the FCC cares about.

No, they will not get a visit from FCC for any form of passive blocking.

Maybe in a banana republic, but certainly not in U.S.A.

When I taught high school English, admin never drew such a hard line. Teachers were additionally told that we would be personally responsible for the replacement cost of a phone should it become damaged/lost if taken from a student. As you would expect, phones were rarely taken off students, and they were a constant frustration.

Schools take away so much control from students that it’s natural they want to hold on to whatever they have left.

Did you see the video of the teacher getting pepper sprayed by a student for doing that? Seems like In some places rules a simply unenforceable

Reply on news.ycombinator.com