Los Angeles Unified School District will ban cellphones from school day in 2025
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Why? Societal pressure is multiple times more impactful on teenage behavior than parents for acute dopamine pumps like this - especially when parents aren’t physically with their kids like in school
I have seen the social outcast aspect of not being connected to text groups for teenage girls it’s pretty isolating
The only way to not be involved in this is to legitimately be a counterculture family or one that has deep and diverse social networks across multi generations that aren’t also addicted to the smart phone system
I’m actually unaware of any groups in west - outside of the Amish - who are rejecting smartphone culture; and even then the Amish face challenges with this
Given so many people had no problems plopping their kid in front of an iPad/Phone/etc. since birth, I doubt they'd have problems signing a permission slip for cell phone use in school.
In class? Sure, zero tolerance.
But between classes and at lunch? What's a rationale that DOESN'T pretend like these kids aren't going to be connected 24/7 _outside_ of school?
On top of that, smartphones ARE the only computers that many people use these days. I think HN would agree that kids should have access to computers; I think there's an element of culture shock when folks here are reminded that the smartphone is still the device of the future.
That's without even bringing up ChatGPT, which anyone who went to high school can tell you, has been immediately adopted by lazy students and definitely changed the way that essays are written.
We live in a world of instantaneous communication and cheap, ubiquitous computaters. It hasn't made education less important, it's made it MORE important and highlighted which skills are uniquely human.
We should adapt our schools to reflect that instead of succumbing to "old man yells at cloud" syndrome.
What is stopping your mum from calling the school and having them pull you aside to let you know you are needed?
Am I that old that people have just forgotten what it was like when having a pager was like, a super rare thing for high end business folk?
I went to school when mobile phones were just beginning to be a normal thing. It took just a year or two before the teachers were like "why the hell don't you just phone your mom yourself?" and "Miss, there is no need to involve us, just call your child and resolve it yourself".
I used to get pretty bad headaches, I just called my mom for permission to go home and went. It'd be much more painful if I had to chase a teacher and convince them they need to call my mom and tell her I need to go home.
Realistically though, it seems like a great way to garner animosity of students against their teachers, and teachers against their handlers. Will also teach students how to more effectively and discretely break rules and disrespect power structures.
Raised more by toys and strangers than parents or extended family. I dare say real communities.
The consequences I face on the Internet - good or bad - are largely self imposed. Best wishes to anyone navigating this madness alone... yet that's largely what they get.
We don't punish consistently or provide healthy upbringings in many facets and have 'unruly' adults to show for it
Exactly — studies have repeatedly shown that consistent punishment is what gets results. If you ignore most transgressions and then randomly impose an arbitrary severe punishment you solve nothing except creating a culture of “it’s okay to commit crimes as long as you don’t get caught multiple times in a row.”
The only think being punished as a kid ever taught me was not to take the person punishing me seriously and strategies for avoiding that person.
We should do what forms them into successful adults and not worry so much about likely unattainable subjective ideals. We do far too much of this top-down imposing of ideologies with little to no data backing up their effectiveness. There is much knowledge encoded in the status quo that shouldn't be discarded lightly. Generations of kids have and continue to suffer under misguided ideology.
Eg a flick of the wrist when a toddler doesn’t listen so that they do listen when it’s a car they are about to run in front of.
I have thought about the car thing and wondered if I do the punishment wrong and make them run into the street faster.
Some of my son's teachers have a policy of no phones in class. The ones that enforce it have a bag with pockets hanging on the door.
If the student has a phone when they walk in to the classroom, it goes in one of the pockets. If they get caught with it on them, it's detention. Simple and effective.
Don't understand why this has to be something enforced at the school district level unless the teachers no longer have any authority to run their classrooms
It isn't just about concentrating on individual classes, it is also about creating a culture that isn't focused on and actively promoting excessive smartphone use.
You cannot expect individual children to create cultural change (and thereby socially segregate themselves); such change must be a top down approach to be successful.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1988/11/30/beeper-ban-in-scho...
Even with the advent of cell phones, I doubt those are going away.