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They did something similar in Indiana. It’s not a ‘the cops are coming’ thing. It’s more about having a law that the school can reference when whiny ass parents get mad when a teacher takes a students phone away because it’s disrupting class.
Yeah, that seems reasonable to me
I was trying to think how this could be enforced. It actually makes sense when you frame it this way, didn’t think about the parent side. “Sorry Karen, that’s the law! Your kid week get her phone back in a week!”
Most send it to the front office and the parent can pick it up after school.
When I was at school we weren’t allowed to eat in class. One day we had a supply teacher who caught a kid trying to eat a sandwich. The teacher confiscated the sandwich and ate it at the front of the class.
Now imagine if it had been a phone: kid tries to use phone, teacher confiscates phone, teacher tries to root phone and bricks it in the process. “You can have this back at the end of the day.”
Good. Kids don’t need cell phones, and they really are a huge distraction.
Kids don’t need cell phone
It looks like the ban isn’t on all cell phones. Dumb phones are permitted; it’s phones capable of Internet use:
Hochul said she would launch the bill later this year and take it up in New York’s next legislative session, which begins in January 2025. If passed, schoolchildren will be allowed to carry simple phones that cannot access the internet but do have the capability to send texts, which has been a sticking point for parents. She did not offer specifics on enforcing the prohibition.
Do kids need them? I mean, they obviously don’t need them. I didn’t have a cell phone when I was in school.
And they certainly can be a distraction.
But…the flip side of that is that they can also be a pretty important tool.
I use my smartphone as a reference, to reach Wikipedia, etymonline, various dictionaries, to get translations.
I use it as a tool. I have maxima on it, an open-source computer algebra system; think Mathematica. It’s a lot more useful than something like a TI calculator. I think I touched my graphing calculator about once after school. I have a unit converter on it. I have a weather program on it. I take notes, can search through them. Those are tools that I have with me all the time in life. If kids can’t have a smartphone at school – which is a mandatory part of a lot of the youth and teenage parts of their lives – that’s stripping them of access to a lot of important stuff.
At one point, I worked at a research lab that didn’t permit devices with cameras inside, a much lesser restriction. It was a pain in the butt, and that was a long time ago, before devices were as prevalent and important as they are today. I wouldn’t wish that on kids.
Part of functioning in the modern world is living in a world that has devices like smartphones. If a student literally cannot function in the presence of a smartphone, that seems like a much larger problem to me than anything else; employers are not going to cut them off from phones. I don’t think that this solution is a reasonable approach to “student is being distracted”. Like, part of socializing people for being able to function in society has gotta be to get them in a situation where they can function later in life, and if anyone should do that, it’s the school.
That’s a good take but I gotta say- kids are kids. They WILL slack off, they will goof off, they will use the phones for other things. This isn’t a critique- it’s what kids do.
If they need tools then a couple ipads or similar can be used. I don’t find the argument “they need to exist with smartphones in society” convincing for school. At work you know you’ll be fired if you’re caught using your phone too much, etc. and slacking off. Kids aren’t under the same pressure as that and quite frankly I wouldn’t expect them to act with that level of maturity as even some adults don’t and they’re older and should be wiser.
As for the problem of just existing with them? I feel like that is yet another thing that school won’t solve. That is up to their parents, etc. Good habits start at home. Expecting schools to solve all problems (especially ones so entrenched like socioeconomic conditions, poverty, etc.) is half of why we’re here in the first place. But guess what? If the kid is given a tablet or allowed to use a cell phone at the table and basically whenever/wherever they want, do you think their behavior will be different in school? Do you think it’s up to the school to be forcing this? That is yet another ridiculous burden I think we’d put on teachers and staff.
Moreover, don’t you think we should be conditioning these kids that it’s ok to exist without a phone?
These kids won’t be worse off without phones. Like you said- the rest of us did just fine without them. Let them have a calculator and computers in computer class and call it a day.
We did this a while ago in the Netherlands and so far the research results on the effects look promising.
Yes even the kids’ reactions generally seemed positive, some mentioned there were more conversations and joking going on in between classes, and cyber bullying was less prevalent (although ‘old school’ bullying seemed to make a comeback somewhat)
Makes sense. They’re distracting. Not sure why they were allowed in the first place.
Hey at least us parents could take comfort in that if there is a school shooting we might get a voicemail of our children’s last words
Lmao, Jesus
A bit dark!
So are school shootings
These seem all over the place - or maybe it is just this article that is not explaining it well?
For starters, “smartphones” aren’t the only SIM-carrying devices that can access the internet and install apps - dumbphones can do the former and tablets can do both, which you wouldn’t even be able to visibly see someone using, if it is in their bag and they use something like a watch interface to it. Laptops too…
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids act addresses algorithmic feeds. It would require social media platforms to provide minors with a default chronological feed composed of accounts they have chosen to follow rather than algorithmically suggested ones.
Ngl, that sounds awesome - and not even just for kids! But immediately after that the article continues:
The bill would also mandate that parents have more wide-reaching controls like the ability to block access to night-time notifications.
Isn’t this already built-in to various OS’s, so why put the onus onto the app itself?
Electronic devices like calculators have been a staple inside schools for half a century at least, and poor people who cannot afford one of every type of device will generally opt for one device that can install many different types of apps - so to now ban these apps, b/c they might be used in a certain particular manner… while simultaneously NOT stopping school shootings, it blows my mind.
“Political theater” is the phrase that comes to mind. Another phrase is “No child left behind”, given how the parents seem to be against these policies, but the State has deemed that it knows better™.
Then again, perhaps it has a real purpose in mind after all, as a law designed to extract money out of big tech companies as fees pile up?
Here we are on lemmy knowing the damage that big tech has done and continues to do. Yet some of us think keeping smartphones out of school children’s hands during school hours is controlling their lives?
We truly don’t value teachers, we don’t understand their contexts or education in general. School, especially public school is where we go to learn just not stuff from a board or a book. It’s where we learn to live in a community. Hopefully a place where we can learn empathy by meeting other humans our age from similar and different walks of life. Where grow and develop, gain and also contribute. Where we have to learn to compromise because we share time and space with many human beings as opposed to say home schooling which is primarily driven by conservative religious folks.
While police and law enforcement keep getting more and more funding and support. Public education keeps getting defunded. Not enough teachers, books or supplies. Do more with less has been the norm for decades. Mirroring capitalism and paving the way for charter school factories where teachers and administrators are burned out even at higher rates.
Control over education is control over your future population. The less fully formed, the less humanist, the less critical thinking, the more centered on simply future workers, the more dystopian the future becomes.
Nice to hear some positivity, especially about school.
While on the one hand I can agree there’s a place and time to be present and participate appropriately, on the other hand it’s so goddamned tiring to see politics that in situations of nuance zoom in on ‘control them’ as a thing everyone can rally to as if the solution of phone control was really going to be simple and accomplish its objectives.
I mean, criminalizing drugs seemed on its face to be a simple-enough thing to do, and a good idea- who could object to that, right? Who favors addiction, right? What could go wrong? Fundamentally, the ask for enough power to ban anything isn’t a trivial ask, and it shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.
But even if you decriminalized drugs (good!) you could still ban drugs in schools (also good!). Schools should be allowed to ban smartphones, which is what this bill would do.
Students phone usage in schools are problematic. It’s not just in the classroom, but (raises hand) can i go to the bathroom (to use my phone). You can’t lock down their at&t or t-mobile phones. Don’t know how an outright ban would work but it’s worth a shot. Education like democracy is in decline and in peril. Especially public education with the onslaught of charter schools.
We often make laws without a way to enforce them 100% effectively. For example, my road has a 25 MPH speed limit even though we haven’t yet installed speed limiting chips on every single car in the nation, we still went ahead and put a speed limit on our road though, and it mostly works, but sometimes someone drives 30 MPH.
There are devices that listen for phone traffic.
So they listen for phone traffic, then what? Track down every user throughout the school day and intercept them? I would wager people who respond with IT solutions don’t realize they at times sound like a ‘tech bro’ who believes they have s solution for everything even of they have no experience in education, no experience being an educator and understanding their contexts. It’s no wonder why teachers in general in America are treated so poorly. Even folks who say they support teachers don’t understand how much they have to do and with so many students and little time.
I’ll start with the start. Maybe?
Biggest issue is teachers using phones.
They should have a fat radio jammer in the head teachers office.
Funny-ly enough you can block their signal. Issue is it’s also going to block everyone within range
That is also v e r y illegal.
For us to do so yes. For the government, it constantly breaks the law
Make the whole school a Faraday cage!
So jamming is not a practical solution.
They should build Faraday cages around all schools, so they dont have to ban phones.
They don’t allow phones in actual prisons so why should schools be any different? \s
Foucault salivating involuntarily at this comment
Dumb ass American politicians don’t know how to govern beyond “ban or blow up something we don’t like”.
What do you suggest as an alternative?
I don’t know, maybe good parenting?
You could have just admitted that you have no alternative. It’s okay to do that.
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Tik Tok, abortion, delta 8
Yeah pretty much.
Only question I have is is there exceptions? I know a few kids with some medical conditions like diabetes that have monitors that synch to their phone to control medication or send alerts… Wonder how they are going to address those situations. Otherwise, I could see the benefits on a smart phone ban during school hours. I just wonder how they are going to administer that.
Schools with good administrations will make accommodations for kids that need it. Schools with bad administrations won’t until somebody sues.
I don’t mind it as long as the phones stay in the classroom in the students’ view, not stored in some office outside. The latter would make the owner worry about their phone being stolen or damaged while out of sight.
stupid. this will generate far more work and distraction than it hopes to prevent.
We have tests done in our schools in the Netherlands right now and the early results are that it has a positive effect. Students talk to eachother more, say they have more fun during breaks. Also that they can concentrate better on their schoolwork.
How? My first thought was this is good. Kids should have to be in the classroom when they’re in the classroom and not on the internet.
they said it themselves, parents dont want this. I dont want this for my kids. so they will be fighting both the parents and the students for enforcement. theres going to be a constant tit for tat… administrative churn from enforcement of some stupid state law. what is or isnt a ‘simple device’.
the reality is, this is a per-classroom thing plenty of teachers currently have a handle on. the teachers that do have a problem with phones just basket them as they walk in. the problem for phone distractions at the classroom level has been solved, per-teacher.
you dont need special
ruleslaws to send a disruptive internet surfing kid to the office.i dont want the state telling me my kid cant carry the device i gave them. they have plenty of real problems to solve.
The article defines a simple device as a phone that can send texts but has no Internet access
My kids have child phones on Google Fi which allows me to shut down their Internet with a couple of button presses. Are they simple devices if I geofence their internet access off while they’re in school? I somehow doubt it, but it does meet the definition as you’ve stated it, which in turn means it is as @originalucifer said, not exactly cut and dry.
k
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I wonder how many comments on Lemmy were written out under a desk in class.
