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Comment by scarface_74 | Hacker News Reader

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scarface_74

So if a child says they don’t have a phone are you going to search them?

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.

https://www.overyondr.com/phone-locking-pouch

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> So if a child says they don’t have a phone are you going to search them?

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.

You don’t have kids do you?

Just as a proxy, weee use is against the rules by definition for middle and high schoolers

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36863048/

I do, do you? I also used to be a kid myself. What does lifetime use have to do with smoking _on school property_?

So you think kids “follow the rules” and “say no to drugs”, don’t engage in underaged drinking, don’t lie and say they are over 18 to view porn etc?

Of course not. This is not some rhetorical gotcha you think it is, there’s a huge difference between rules like “don’t use a phone in class” and “don’t drink alcohol ever in your life anywhere”.

I fail to see the difference in “kids following the rules in this one specific case” and statistically we know that kids usually don’t follow the rules that adults set for them if they can get away with it.

Heck even when I was in school kids had beepers (late 80s - early 90s) when they were not allowed to.

No, but they are punished for those. I remember, kids used to smoke in schools. They got detention and their parents were told.

I don't get it, people break rules so just don't have them? What? Why would we do that?

You don't have to search the students. Or even put the phones in a locker. You just make the rules about them known, and if students are found using a phone during class, they can just be punished with detention/suspension.

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.

In Seattle they won't even expel students committing violent crimes in schools. There's no punishment available for any behavior.

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.

That's weird. I've mostly heard about the opposite at schools, like someone getting reamed for bringing cake and a plastic knife to cut it. But I guess that was probably over a decade ago. Has 'zero tolerance' so thoroughly reversed?

If they say they don’t have a phone, fine. If they later have a phone out in class, you tell them to put it in a cubby. If they have it and don’t take it out in class it’s not a problem.

That’s exactly what they use at some of the schools that tried it (and there’s an arms race where some kids figured out how to hack these devices and unlock them). Locking up thousands and thousands of dollars worth of phones for the day is way too much liability for a school otherwise.

Society can choose to pass on bowing to the God of insurance in this case :)

I imagine it is not difficult to make a phone detector. A phone is sending almost constantly. If a phone has to be in flight mode the whole lesson then there is no reason to bring one

It is extremely hard to make a phone detector that's able to detect only phones in a specific room, considering how far the cellular signals can travel, and how pervasive wifi is for everything

Just make every classroom a Faraday cage. No need to detect if you can disable.

Even airlines can’t really tell when all of the phones are in airplane mode…

Would you want it to ignore the teacher's phone?

If they don’t take it out and use it (or at least don’t get caught using it), what’s the problem? If they’re using a phone in class, take it like any other distraction.

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.

I don't see a problem with taking the phone, as long as it's returned by the end of the day. The school should have your phone number on file and can reach you in an emergency. The situations where your child would specifically need to reach you on their own phone with no other possibilities of getting help (or getting their phone back in a hurry) while at school are so uncommon as to be not really with considering.

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