You get a cabinet with a bunch of cubbie holes, kids put their phone in at the beginning of class, they take it out at the end of class. They can even lock and each kid takes a key with them if theft is a concern. It doesn't seem that complicated. They have these things outside every SCIF. I know they exist.
So the current situation with out-of-control phone use in schools is interesting/puzzling to me, because clearly something's changed since then—but I don't think "better smartphones" are the differentiating factor here. Something's shifted with how schools enforce (or don't enforce) these policies, or with kids' relationship to their phones (and believe me, I was plenty hooked on mine back then too :P), or something else entirely.
It's also puzzling when people argue that smartphones have opened a Pandora's box that makes it impossible to control student behavior—because I know firsthand that that's not true!
[1] I think the threat of punishment also forced us to be relatively discreet about it. If you're texting in class, you have your phone on silent, brightness all the way down, barely sticking out of your bag...
[2] Some teachers admittedly gave more of a shit than others, but I rarely saw students taking advantage of that in a disruptive way—the most blatant thing you'd see is a kid listening to music on headphones during art class or something. I might've been the biggest offender in that regard, because I would occasionally bust out a Wiimote and N64 emulator to play Mario 64 on my phone, but I knew when I could get away with that and when I couldn't.
These parents not only want, but EXPECT, to be able to directly communicate with their child at any given time. It's also extremely common for them to track their children's phones via Life360 and thoroughly monitor every aspect of their kid's lives. This even, now, extends to college. Parents will literally email professors and perform tasks for their kids (or adults).
The helicopter parenting in the US has gotten completely out of control and nobody knows what to do. Kids aren't playing outside because of phones; they're not playing outside because parents are terrified.
Kids no longer even have to argue for their grades. The parents will, literally, side with their kid and force better grades for their kid. Parent-teacher conference isn't what you think it is anymore.
Teachers don't give a shit because they can't. Nobody supports them here. I mean, they can't even implement a late policy anymore. Seriously, if you don't accept an assignment that's 1 week late, you'll never hear the end of it. And then the principal complains, and then you're fucked. Which is why we have no late policy and infinite retakes and on and on. They couldn't enforce no phones because they have no power.
They got addicted to the dopamine feedback loop smartphones provide when their brains were even further undeveloped and don't remember a time before that so this is their norm.
Parents have thrown up their hands and given up, pretending that it's impossible to avoid buying their kids expensive super computers engineered to steal the attention of their users rather than just buying their kids dumb Nokia bricks and letting them learn to be bored and cultivate the ability to direct their attention and concentration.
When you were in high school, none of your teachers had grown up with smartphones. Today, many have, maybe even a majority depending on the teacher demographics at a particular school.
Not saying this is the entire explanation, or exactly what it might explain, but it seems likely to at least be related somehow.
To elaborate: Certainly for me as a highschooler, I was bored out of my mind with how easy and mind-numbing the curriculum was, and as my mother refused to let me drop out and try for college early, I felt stuck for years just feeling utterly imprisoned and wasting my time. Books, drawing, writing, sure, but no doubt about it, my phone (and through it, the internet) was also one of my big escapes back then.
Noted because yeah, I can actually tell that prior to thinking about this now, in the place of many teachers I might have been very sympathetic to teens using their phones "discretely", even if it might not at all be the best thing for most of them. Especially anyone for whom it's the only source of entertainment or anti-boredom.
Can't say I understand it for elementary schoolers, or students who are obvious underperformers, but it does seem teachers who grew up with smartphones before they were out of high school could be a big aspect, just from the empathy factor.
Kids complain to parents.
Parents complain to teacher. Teacher tells parent to pound sand. Parent complains to administration about unfair teacher. Administration takes a “customer is _always_ right” mindset for various reasons, and teacher told to not enforce. Or the rule is changed.
Some parents refuse to allow their child to do anything wrong (by moving the goalposts of “wrong”, assuming their child is always right, etc), some have anxiety if they can’t reach their child instantly via text, some parents refuse to enforce rules they don’t understand or agree with.
Have you ever gotten into that situation, as a kid, where you argued with an adult about how stupid their kid was? That's the summum of the situation you just described. Good times.
This is it. The other parts are tangential to the true cause.
Plus, the phones are much more expensive than they used to be. A teacher confiscating a phone could very well be confiscating $1,000+, making it a harder justify to a lot of parents.
Yes, sorry, I meant enforcement in general. Parents and admins are absolutely a big part of that.
"A teacher confiscating a phone could very well be confiscating $1,000+, making it a harder justify to a lot of parents."
Those parents should probably reconsider their justification of buying a $1k device for a child if that child can't be responsible with it.
I think the lack of discipline (not just punishment, but more order and integrity) in schools will only worsen the societal problems we are already seeing. Is there any reason to think that allowing kids to be thugs in school won't lead to them being thugs in life?
Almost every kid has a phone...if the phone isn't in the cubby they aren't counted as being there. Cabinet locked at beginning of class.
There are only 2 students out of his entire year that don't have a phone and he makes allowances for them.
> In talking to teachers across the country, the reasons phone policies don't work or are not implemented center on three main issues: safety (parents want their children to be reachable, especially during our era of heightened school violence), liability (phones are expensive, and in some districts, teachers have been held liable when they confiscated a phone the student later claimed was damaged), and lack of clear, consistent policy support (it can be difficult to rally an entire staff around a policy, maintain energy for its consistent enforcement, and make sure the work of its enforcement is upheld equitably).
Phones are powerful tools. Ideally kids would learn how to use them properly while respecting their sharp edges. Ya know, more work for teachers on budgets that are already under attack and such.
By the way, most parents I speak to would love to have their kids off their phones and focusing on school during the day. This whole "parents, emergency" argument seems highly suspicious to me.
Solutions exist for those who care to look.
Respectfully, most parents I've met do not agree with you. And I don't think that the random events like school shootings and bomb threats have helped them relax into the same environment we had in the 90's.
I’m certainly in the camp of personal devices having no place outside of a backpack. We shouldn’t let our anxiety run things.
The parent has to talk to the school on the phone to release their kid from class anyway.
What does this actually accomplish that improves kids' safety?
Especially when to satisfy their anxiety, they give their kids expensive electronics that drastically increase their risk for depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, disordered eating, executive dysfunction, etc.?
But you don’t even have to take the phone out of the possession of the student.
They use these at some phone free concerts.
If a child says they don’t have any cigarettes or a knife etc. etc. are you going to search them?
Most kids follow the rules. A few troublemakers with phones won’t make a difference and can be easily handled by existing disciplinary actions.
Just as a proxy, weee use is against the rules by definition for middle and high schoolers
I don't get it, people break rules so just don't have them? What? Why would we do that?
Heck even when I was in school kids had beepers (late 80s - early 90s) when they were not allowed to.
I don't understand why this is hard to enforce, or requires special laws. We had rules about not using (feature) phones back when I was in middle school (~2002), and you just kept your phone in your backpack/pocket until the class was over. It worked.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/student-discipline-are-...
If someone brandished a knife at my workplace they would be immediately fired, never to return. At SPS that's just a stern talkin' to.
I have four kids in school and while extreme incidents are rare, if I set my kid to school with a phone it would be to contact me in an emergency. I completely agree with no phones out, on silent, etc., but I’m unsure how I feel about schools taking away tools that could be used to get help.