Bill limits smartphone use in California schools
gov.ca.gov
gov.ca.gov
Only after school were teachers laxe for obvious reasons. During lunch time we were not expected to use phones.
This is Melbourne Australia.
I remember being 'caught' with a Game Boy Advance, tried to hide it, teacher saw me, and actually told me it was fine.
- 2007(7th): The mosquito ring tone was a popular notification ring tone. I recall a friend testing it with my math teacher during class. He could not hear it.
- 2010(10th): The last time I recall passing notes in class... I got caught. Apologies to my Geometry teacher. He was one of the best teachers I had.
- 2012(12th): I(late to the party) bought my first phone... The only time I recalll using my phone was when went to the bathroom and accidently dropped it in in the toilet. :'( ... 3 days in a bag of rice and it worked just fine. I'm sure I must have used it in the toilet too many times for that to have happened, but I don't recall ever using it in class, as the punishment was confiscation of the phone and it wouldn't be returned until a parent signed off in person.
Much more likely the case, the phone makes a sound, vibration or otherwise, and gives away the child's location to a would be shooter.
This seems reasonable to me.
But if you want the outline of why this sort of thing shouldn't be a law, the issue here is that it might be that the best educators will ban devices. It might be that the best educators encourage and leverage devices. Or it might even be that they take no position on the matter. Any which way, either there is consensus and the Californian legislature doesn't need to act because the schools can, or there is no consensus and the Californian legislature should leave it to parents and educators to sort out without pretending it has some sort of competence to add anything to the mix.
Legislating everything that seems like a good idea at the time is a pretty safe way to end up doing real damage as people initially had many options to act cleverly but now do not. This is not something that the politicians have any reason to be dealing with.
However, this bill doesn't appear to specify how phones are restricted, just that there is a school policy. Further it gives protections to students who need it. This is why I find it reasonable.
Schools still appear to have a choice in implementation. That said I'm not a Californian, I'm childless, and I only scanned through the bill.
Pretty much every school allows teachers to ban phones in their class, so we have the fully devolved approach already, but it just puts the burden on teachers, it's not real autonomy.
“vocal minority is very loud, everyone else disagrees but are too busy to come yell at electeds, so we can’t fix this obvious problem. Done. Problem festers”
Some of it is students having a genuinely disturbing attachment to phones specifically, like a sense of anxiety when the phone is gone. There's also parents who get really freaked out about school shootings and are anxious that they won't be able to be in contact with their children. I guess it's kind of similar. Anxiety does not bring out the best in people. (And I note the page specifically refers to this concern)
As a parent it's also handy to be able to communicate with my child about logistics during the day. Parents can be kind of whiney about that sort of thing. Whiney parents should be the basis of policy, but obviously it happens...
Nobody wants their kid to have an "abnormal" upbringing. Well, except the ones who do, but they're the homeschooling/Montessori crowd anyway.
Redirect them, sure. Teach about tech literacy. Find the middleground between these two stages of life. But at this point, it should be ultimately the student's choice.
> In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone. You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care.
On the job, you will fail if you have a tiktok addiction. On the job, there are no phone cubbies.
On top of that, I don’t think the kid quietly using their phone and ignoring class is the main issue here… it’s causing issues with the other kids and making the experience worse for a lot of kids.
Phone addiction is an immensely complicated problem. This strategy of blanket bans will not rehabilitate students, just as the war on drugs failed prior.
I just went to whole foods the other day and the butcher didn't know how to convert between fractions and decimals. They were American btw, in 20s or 30s
Maybe they'll fail after high school? Who knows? But anyway, at least they'll know how fractions work. At least they'll have basic reading skills and be capable of voting and participating in society
That said if it was 1/2 lb and they were having issues... Yeah not good!
lol now I kind of want to try this at the butchers and see the response I get
While I'd love to see higher college attendance, the reality is that high school must prepare students for every possible outcome.
It says each school district is required to come up with a policy to prohibit or limit smartphone use. The policy has to allow teachers to grant permission for phones, and it says:
> The goal of the policy shall be to promote evidence-based use of smartphone practices to support pupil learning and well-being.
That sounds like the middle ground you're talking about. Kids will have plenty of time to pick up tech skills at home, and they can still be taught tech literacy in class. But that doesn't mean they have to be allowed arbitrary use of phones to disrupt their own learning or their peers', just like they don't have to be allowed to skip as many classes as they want.
Because your prefontal cortext does not fully grow till you are in your early 20s. A 17 years olds brain is very different from that off a 22 year old. There are different repercussions to arressting development vs letting the brain "grow" and then have it face the issues of the day. Both will still have impact but the latter gives them the best fighting chance.
Doesn't take much imagination to think how a viral Chase money "glitch" can get past common sense when kids ignore the lesson and doom scroll tiktok.
You can get fired or people can stop associating with you though. Not allowed to do that to students.
> You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care. So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?
Because it disturbs and distracts other students, mostly.
> Redirect them, sure. Teach about tech literacy.
Nobody does that for you in adulthood either though, so that's not a good argument when it's used selectively like that. School is not adulthood, it's totally different, and phones are a pretty insignificant part of that.
Sure, that may not be most office jobs. But not everyone is a desk monkey.
Not to mention movie theaters, churches, funerals, weddings, the driver's seat of a car, etc.
The other apt comparison is that as an adult, nobody will tell you you can't have liquor, and you'll be expected to moderate it yourself. Shall we stock vending machines full of beer in the cafeteria as well? The dopamine hit from most popular phone apps is no less neurochemically problematic.
The teachers are so happy.
Not being able to contact their kid 24/7 is apparently a travesty. I don't get it.
Some of the kids still do their best impression of Gollum, but for the most part, the teachers have suddenly found themselves able to actually, you know, teach again. Some for the first time in years.
This message is intentionally short. I would have preferred to put it long form with less sarcasm but that would require hope for improvement and more attention than I'm worth.
An angry parent that can't possibly imagine life without immediate access to their kid throughout the school day is likely to respond differently to the statement "This kid can't have their phone on during the day." when the reason is "local school policy" than when the reason is "state law".
In the former situation, a sufficiently-offended parent will likely try to get the administrator in question fired (or -at minimum- make their life dreadfully difficult). In the latter, the only people the parent can really appeal to are the folks in Sacramento. Busybodies like that rarely have the clout to do anything meaningful to the governor or his staff.
Anyway. It's quite possible that local school administrators requested that the governor help them out by making it so they can say "Sorry, I'd love to help, but The State says I have to order teachers to ban phones from classrooms. You know how it is. Take it up with the governor if you're mad about it.".
As for private schools, yes, they should be left to their own policies. But I haven't seen anyone suggesting otherwise.
There's a perfectly fine topic for debate here, but you'd do much better to word it in a less inflammatory way.
The internet has a lot of material, but kids also learn a lot from being around their peers. Lots of families have both parents that work and can't watch their kids at home, or take them to extracurricular activities. Also, depending on what area you're in, many teachers that I know have Master's degrees and do in fact know what they're doing, but are hamstrung in other ways.
"require every school district, charter school and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026"
sounds like this explicitly allows responsibility, and requires it be taken.
Governor Newsom signs bill to protect kids from social media addiction
When we will we start designing society AROUND and WITH the inevitable pace of progress instead of making it a wall in the way?
And besides, these bans _are_ designing society around the existence of cell phones.
Although it's worth noting that many jobs, office jobs included, prohibit phone use.
Game boys and walkie-talkies weren’t either. Playing cards. Marbles (in the classroom). Instamatic cameras. And the ban on passing notes is basically ancient.
Those same things but on one tiny computer doesn’t suddenly make them good to allow in schools.