this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Right, it's kind of a trolley problem. Is it better to do lesser harm through action (banning cell phones, meaning a few students like this can't reach their family during school hours), or greater harm through inaction (loose cell phone policy, harming the learning process for everyone, inviting violence against teachers who are competing against addictive algorithms for their students' attention)?
Cell phones barely existed when I was in school and were certainly out of reach for students. Bullying still happened (personal experience, yay) and staff would shut that shit down when they saw it or it was reported.
I also went to school with no cell phones, and was bullied mercilessly. Staff didn't care then, and I doubt they care now. I'm glad you went to a school where the adults cared.
When was this? I was in high school during the early 00's. There were no cell phones, not because of policy, but because they just weren't commonplace.
It's not lesser harm since no one else is gonna pay for the mental health bills nor could revert the damage done from the bullying. And when someone snaps from bullying you are gonna see blood for sure. (and little kids/teens snaps from very little things, talking from experiences.) have you ever seen clip where a chubby kid slams a bully teasing him upside down? the bully got slammed could be paralyzed for life, or worse dead, the chubby kid that got bullied could bear that trauma for life, it happens when bully think no one is watching and it's "life as usual", picking on this bigger kid to have some power fantasy or bragging to his mates. If the chubby kid had the tool, pull out a phone and push a button and say, "I'm live streaming this and will report to teacher and my parents, watch your action and leave me alone." Wouldn't the violence resolved without potential life changing events?
I meant harm in that it affects "one or a few students" rather than affecting "practically all students."
school is place to learn 2 things:
And IMO, the first point is way more important than the second. Let's see the implication by breaking down the proposed ban.
From the anti-bullying side:
From the learning, focus during instructional time:
For engagement, from my old self and what my friends here from different background/countries/age bracket discuss their past, the one common thing is fun knowledgeable teacher and how enjoyable their class was last life time long. It shapes their understanding, how they engage other people or topics involving different areas. kids and teens are like herds of fun chasing animal, if even half of your class is having fun and discuss the materials and exchanging questions etc, the rest will follow cause they don't want to be "left out".
In short, if a teen can learn how to calculate DPS and build sets for their favorite game but fails the math about probability and expected value, the teacher is doing something wrong.
Again, your old self, and mine for that matter, didn't have the constant, always-on global communications device in your pocket with precision-engineered addiction algorithms frying your dopamine receptors. Yes, I'm going to boomer out here and say that ShitTok and their ilk are a scourge on youth and on society as a whole. The predictive promotional algorithm, flashy multimedia content, and, let's be honest, what amounts of soft porn in many cases, absolutely lays waste to attention spans and studious pursuits β doubly so in young, fertile minds. No teacher, no matter how good they are, can compete with that.
I can't link to it right now for obvious reasons, but there was a post a little while ago on /r/teachers from an experienced educator lamenting on how the behaviour of students has degraded dramatically in just the last few years. They not only lack respect for their teachers, they're actively disrespectful and sometimes flat-out violent towards educators and staff (particularly when their dopamine pumps are confiscated), and willfully destructive. Students lash out, destroy expensive equipment for fun, and are just downright ineducable.
I may be mixing my sources right now, I believe this was from a corresponding YouTube video that was linked in the post or comments, but the concluding notion I was left with is that there's an epidemic of emotional dysregulation among youth, induced by combination of poor parenting, lack of effective authority, and β the big one β smartphone addiction. The sentiment that lingers in my head: kids today are no longer interested in learning, they're only interested in how they can be entertained in the next five minutes.
I think there could be an agreeable balance where students are expected to leave their devices out of sight and on mute during instructional and recess periods. This could be a teaching tool for them to learn about the common courtesy of not being disruptive in settings where attentiveness and other activities are expected and appropriate. Or, really, they could just leave their phones in their lockers. We survived just fine without them at all.
That is what the adults needs to do, push for regulation(ie. on very basic level, no NSFW content gets to feed into minor's feed), setup app screen time with parent control or even do something similar that works with schools boards. If district, school or PTA needs that implemented, hire some professionals and do the jobs properly so no algorithms feed apps during school hours.
Let me just say this, banning or taking the device away does not solve the issue, they still have that dopamine hit if they have a 2nd device hidden away.(thus regulation on the provider side is important.) I had classmates in high school literally buy a new weekly manga since it was confiscated by the teacher just to finish his weekly follow ups.
If people give 3yo phone/tablets to watch youtube to keep them quite and not engaging them, it's not hard to see how they grow up to be, right?
PS. also, non-verbal people really needs their phone to communicate properly or people that are neurodivergent and would require time to compose legible sentences. I doubt any common chomps understand what they said if they use the talking board.
This is what exceptions are for. That doesn't invalidate the need for rules.
Yet you did not address my main points. How are you going to enforce the rules?
I am simply arguing that taking away the device does not address the fundamental issue of engagements, but it does take away good tools when it's needed. It's like parents shifting blames of "additive XXXXX' (replace anything that get blames for in the past, rock bands, violent video games, porn streaming, now tiktok.) The parents and teachers are responsible for pushing regulation and putting in time learning new stuff and "educate" their young how to behave and self regulate.
Enough with the strawmen. If teachers see students using a phone, they confiscate it for the period. They can confiscate a second phone, too.
If are/were kids playing video games, listening to music, and watching porn in class, guess what, those things are rightly confiscated as well.
It's not straw man cause that's exactly what kids do, they are not stupid and let you see their 2nd device. every time you confiscated something highly sought after, they get smarter and better at hiding, finding excuses to get a peek at stuff they want. I don't know which era you come from but from my high school year/region you can get expelled possess indecent material(like playboy magazine) and people still manage to sneak in and hide at some secret spot. If you are in the "club" you get to know where to check it out. And people go "poop" for extended time back then. What? You gonna stop them to go pee or poop?
Even if you TSA setup the entire school, if the class is boring there will still be no engagement, now what? Gonna blame the student is just bad and drop them out?
The entire preface of no phone == no distraction is laughable. And yet what's your solution about stop bullying? Remember that's what trigger the whole discussion? I guess you don't care since it's less harm done.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot, the guy I mentioned above that find spots to hide magazine later graduated from top university in my home country and still kick ass in his domain leading about 50 people sized team. Who knew the quick thinking and strategic minded can be applied in real world, right?
I don't know why you seem to be so adamant about defending phone use in class. Maybe we're getting hung up on the details here. "Ban" doesn't necessarily mean turning schools into a phone-free zone, it could (and probably should) just mean keeping phones out of sight and out of mind during instructional time.
Bullying is, was, and will continue to be a thing, and it's beside the point here, because phones are not some magic solution you think they are.
Edit: Wall of text warning, I have a kid so I care very much about teaching and bullying.
Let's get the tiktok out of way first. The app I already mention you can have parental control over, the web you can have professional help to setup exclusions. And then regulation regarding how the push feed needs to be adjusted when they have access when allowed.
Let's move on to the
Except it's not how it works. The goal is to engage and learn what's teaching in that instructional time, The main difference between kid's phone and school provided chrombook/laptop/tablet is that kids does not have admin access to those, they are also not some special version and could have the same exploits available and you could literally search "how to jailbreak school chromebook" then you instantly get tons of hits. So in short, even school provided equipment needs professional help to maintain/update and setup restrictions properly. (Edit: accidentally sent so continue here) So let's assume phone/chromebook are properly restricted, firewall/dns properly configured, and it doesn't matter if you use your own device or school provided one, then back to this instructional time here, our happy learning experience. Bad teaching won't deliver well, the material and teach is in sight but not in mind. The mind can literally be anywhere they wanted to be if they are not interested.
If you want engagement you need the main group lead or top dogs to enjoy and love your teaching so the rest will not want to be left out. It's by itself a dynamic social balance. In this day and era, where information updates so quick(do you know how many moons Saturn has this month?) The "I am teacher so my information is correct, you are kids so you are here to learn from me" is not always valid. Sometimes it's a thing that kid's picked up, like is the teacher really enjoy teaching the thing? Do the teacher even care what I think during the "any questions" time? Do the teacher know that I can just ask ChatGPT and get some answers really quickly?(without knowing answers could be flawed.) I can list more.
Teachers needs to adapt, teachers also needs too keep learning, it's not a shame or dent to pride when you learn something from the kids. Use the technology, put yourself in kid's head space and talk to them at their eye level, be their equal and show them your special interests, let them show theirs' too and maybe adjust your material so everyone involved is having a good time learning.
===========================
Bullying is a thing because of failed parenting and teaching, from all sorts of adult fucked up(neglecting, couldn't read their own kids mental well being, heck or even abusive to their own kids). Be it physical, verbal, or sm cyber bullying. It was sort of hardwired by statistics distribution(some people have less empathy or none, some people are more aggressive by nature), but it is adults failure to raise a kid that does the bullying and think it's okay, not a big deal.
Without modern phone, physical or verbal goes under radar in grey area when no adults watch. sm/cyber bullying is recorded on internet, so if your kid can't even talk with you about their feeling about those, see above. I look up the chubby kid slam video, here: https://www.pinkbike.com/video/186158/ and story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366797/Ive-The-moment-victim-snaps-slams-bully-floor-wrestling-move.html
It is recorded, from probably another kid, guess how many incident before that point wasn't recorded? Why is the kid got slammed think it's okay to land a punch on another human being? Why is other students watching while doing nothing? All sorts of failure. In a society that if you accidentally bump another person you would normally say sorry, why should we think bully is a normalized thing that can just exist and try to brush it off? My son's school do those bully awareness every Feb and there are all other awareness to teach kids to become better adults. And if adults don't give a fuck about those then kids won't.