I mean it kind of needs to be both. But it’s hard to find a compelling reason why kids need their smartphones fully accessible during class.
Well, by their teenage years, why not all the reasons adults need smartphones fully accessible? Looking up information from authoritative sources? Emergency contact? Coordinating schedules for office hours?
Schools often simultaneously demand more from children than workplaces do adults, and give them less opportunity to excel.
I’m not saying work-inappropriate phone use should be accepted, but taking them away entirely is downright irresponsible. Just like schools who still demand students write on a notebook instead of using a laptop. Raise your hand if you had RSI-related issues for a decade or more after high school? We old people tend to forget how bad school used to be (and can be) for physical and mental health AND for learning.
Well, you can quickly search up some information. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember that once in middle school teacher said something I wasn’t quite sure about, but also I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t more sure. So I looked it up, seeing that I was right, I asked if it rather wasn’t meant to be that other thing, he checked too and indeed he was wrong.
Also, my mind often wanders off. And it may happen that I suddenly can’t remember something. Could just be some word I could look up on my phone in less than a minute. Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.
Next, spine. I am currently in high school. Phones are allowed here. Any time. So, I utilized my scanner and digitized one 500 or so page book I couldn’t find on the internet, and then used it as PDF instead of a physical book. It is less likely that I would forget my phone. I wish schools would have options for e-ink tablets instead of having to carry many heavy physical books. That used to be problem mostly in elementary school and middle school. Same goes for note taking.
Obviously, the last example can be easily solved by modernization.
Fast talking teachers. I can’t write that fast. I mean, I can, but then I can’t decipher my handwriting, which is already hard anyway. Voice recorder is a quick solution. Obviously, it is easier to look through notes than audio, but IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE A REPLACEMENT FOR NOTES, just a help.
But do take that with a pinch of salt. Especially in elementary school, I used to be one of those weird kids who greatly preferred being liked by the teacher over having friends. So even though I had a phone at the time, I never used it during classes because teachers disliked it.
But at least during breaks it should be allowed. Otherwise kids will find much more dangerous ways to entertain themselves.
If you want to teach kids how to look up information, you can create spaces for that. They don’t need unrestricted access to their smart phones to accomplish that throughout the day. Hell you can relax your policies as they grow up and show the maturity to handle having a smart phone in the classroom. If schools want to do that, I am all in favor of it. But they would have to start early and build a system, which is a lot to ask of already overworked educators.
… yes, my phoneless childhood was super dangerous. it’s amazing i survived a couple of decades without one!
Yes, life was so dangerous before the telephone. It’s amazing anyone survived decades without them! 991, phaw, we had a bucket of water and a shotgun.
… in summary. The point should be that the next generation has an advantage over the previous, in all things.
I mean, comparing class with active kids throwing stuff around and ones just sitting and playing on their phones, I’d take the second. Cyber bullying may be hard to detect though, but it’s not like schools care either way.
Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.
Option C: Write it down.
It’s not like I am thinking about it to not forget what I wanted to remember. It’s that it will keep bugging me until I remember.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
Bugging you until you remember? You write it so that you can’t forget and so it stops bugging you.
Bugging you because you need that info itch scratched right now? Aka instant gratification. Then you have to learn to not need instant gratification. Seriously, it’s another skill.
All this is spoken like an entitled bratty immature kid. (No offense, it’s just your age and you’ll grow out of it)
There’s a reason why you can get a ticket or be charged with distracted driving while you’re on your phone and behind the wheel of a car. IT IS A DISTRACTION. FULL STOP.
Stop lying to yourself and to us in the process.
- Using phone while driving is much bigger issue.
- This phone issue has never affected me personally. I am defending OP and others.
- I am not talking about using the phone all the time for some stupid thing. It gives you access to a lot of information when needed.
Also if you trust kids with making life changing decisions, this is unfair.
Also sorry if I sounded as you described. I only started carrying the phone with me since I was 15. I was too worried about breaking it (it’s not cheap thing). That makes finding positive points (that would apply to younger kids) a bit harder.
Edit: Also, don’t be worried, I would almost never voice my opinions in real life.
Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.
The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?
Maybe you use your phone only for the most strictly academic things, but most people don’t.
Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.
Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.
Can’t disagree with this. I got a tablet when I was 8. With unrestricted access. On the positive note, it did help me learn quite a lot of stuff. Like English.
The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?
No problem, really. If someone wanted to search up something during class, teachers could just allow it, and generally they did. Except when I was in grade 9 and the school decided to prohibit even just having them at school, as if it were grenades. Some teacher would always just collect all into a bucket and return at the end of the day.
When we had free substituted classes, sometimes they would tell us something like “Sorry, I’d allow you phones now, but if I did I could have problems from it.” So clearly they would punish teachers for that. That’s just crazy.
And computers aren’t in every class. Even if they are, they might not always work. Now we use our phones even to do exams sometimes. But, yeah, school isn’t even mandatory for me anymore, so it’s already different.Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.
I wasn’t even talking about such late decisions. For example, when I was 10 I was given the decision between going into class A or class B since I had good enough results for A. A was class for a little more talented kids. They even had some additional subjects. Well, my dad discouraged me from going to class A. He told me “There won’t be any normal kids. I’d choose B if I were you.” So I did. I regret. I could have gotten to a better school later on.
Some explanation of those classes:
A - Talented
C and D - sport classes (basketball and hockey respectively)
B - everything elseNext, when I was 14, I told my psychologist about my living conditions. Including photos of how our home looks like. She told me that she could call social services. Then asked me if I agreed. I was scared, so I said no. I regret, once again.
And something that’s there always, choosing high school when you’re 15.
I am not sure how it works across different school systems. In Slovakia, they are focused just on 1 particular field of study determining where you’ll be for the rest of your life. 3 year fields are without graduation (e.g.: various mechanics and plumbers). 4 year and 5 year fields are with graduation, meaning you can go to college/university.
I’ve had a few classmates who only chose particular field because their friends were going there too, even though they weren’t interested in it.------------------------------
Oof, sorry. I got too much off topic.
What would you prefer the school do?
How could they motivate you to actually pay attention in class instead of playing with your phone? Honestly ask yourself if this “addressing motivation” would make geometry more interesting than tiktok.
Well said. Social media is designed specifically to hold attention and encourage addictive behavior. There’s no way to compete.
Maybe if they used blender(the software) to explain it.
If they try to use a blender (the kitchen appliance), I’m sure it will also become interesting.
“Today in class we will be finding out whether or not triangles will blend. Please put on these safety goggles before sitting at your desks.”
Wrong. Get off the phone.
School will never be as interesting as a phone. Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer. Your textbooks will never be as entertaining as your feed. What families and teenagers have to understand is that education is a choice. If you want to learn, you’ll probably have to put your phone down for long periods of time to actively listen and learn. It’s difficult. It tires you out. It’ll frustrate you. But you will eventually learn.
Then again - when I look at home prices and inflation, I understand young people’s feelings of futility.
Good luck young people. I’m really rooting for you to figure this out.
Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer.
Those influencers are entertaining?
people learn things all the time despite phones existing. the issue is not solely being more entertaining. people need to find their learning meaningful and aligned with their own interests and goals. students don’t, and so they go on their phones. go to a college classroom and you’ll see people more engaged on average. still far from perfect, and that system is broken in many ways too, but people are at least studying something they chose and are presumably interested in.
“I’m really rooting for you to figure this out” rings hollow. we all need to be part of the solution. gen Z feels like it’s carrying the expectation of fixing literally every societal problem right now and it sucks.
When I look at home prices I know that school never has been good. People don’t understand what they have to do to drive down prices.
Why can’t Tiktok be used to find the best courses? There is no need for teachers to teach when Tiktok can do it better. Let teachers become mentors.
Tiktok cannot do it better. Tiktok is an app designed to hold attention. If you are more engaged by cat videos than geometry tiktok will not try and show you geometry
The Tiktok algorithm can be limited to educational videos. Of course this requires cooperation from Tiktok or the introduction of a new app.
that would just be a new app and why would tiktok cooperate with that. There isn’t as much money in that area and even if there was an educational app kids would go on tiktok instead of it
“oh no i cannot play on my phone, how could school be so cruel”
I can try to make the material interesting and be engaging but if you’re watching Overwatch on your phone all of that is a moot point.
but if you’re watching Overwatch
You can just take away their phone in that case, no?
Not sure about OP, but my point is that phones can be useful. But if they’re clearly not…having to look at what the kid is doing and judge things on a case by case basis would eat into lesson time which is already stretched thin with class management as it is
You can just disallow phones during classes.
OP take a look back at this in about 5-10 years and realize how monumentally ignorant it is.
I don’t think OP is thinking that far into their future. I don’t think OP has any plans for higher education either. It’s been a few decades for me, but when I was an undergrad, if your pager went off in class --cell phones weren’t really a thing yet-- most professors would ask you to leave, which was not a good thing in the small upper division classes as they were very difficult and you had to pass with a B or better to move on in my major.
The amount of times I told my students they can use their phone for certain exercises, then 90% of them just went on Tiktok or played Clash Of Clans, is why is started not allowing phones.
I get that to the 10% it was super helpful but it’s just easier to not allow everyone.
Well, at least you gave them a chance. Thank you.
I’m all for giving them a chance to prove they’re able to be responsible. Especially the kids that always try hard and deserve to be trusted.
I found that a lot of kids struggled to accept any consequences of their actions, though taking their phones off them for playing games was pretty clear to them.
Like flight mode there should be school mode where students can only use a provided wlan that comes with content filters.
Block cellular with thick walls, then only allow them through wifi. Things like youtube can only be acces with a cabled connection. Something like this seems like a good start.
Offline games entered the chat. ProtonVPN entered the chat (specifically Proton with their bypass methods). Tor entered the chat.
They don’t even need to know what VPN or Tor is, it’s just “Download this app to access internet, bro”.
If there was a sort of national system for it, maybe some kinks could be worked out. And if some people still succeed, sure let them have it.
Also, limiting it to offline only already makes a huge difference
100%, if the schools were funded well enough, issuing school phones would be amazing!
School computers work well because they block most of the distractions but ofc students have 1001 distractions in their own!
If schools only focused on what students were motivated to learn, I’m not sure schools would really be accomplishing much. Not to say that schools shouldn’t foster motivation in students. Just that technology, especially social media, is very effective at distracting people.
You can increase motivation to learn by making lessons more engaging even if it’s a subject they’re not personally interested in. But making lessons more interesting and engaging is not easy and we can’t expect all teachers to have the skills and resources to do the research and development needed to produce lesson plans that are really interesting. I think it could be improved by putting more money into developing interesting lesson plans centrally and distributing the materials to teachers to follow instead of just producing dry curriculums. Teachers need support.
I have literally built a dungeons and dragons campaign to learn statistics, and had some students on their phones. I’m not a dancing bear, and having a dopamine panic-button makes it near impossible to engage with anything challenging (I struggle with it too and know it’s an anxiety crutch, but it’s super maladaptive).
I fully support kicking kids off their phones in class, I don’t think any lesson no matter how engaging can compete with that. I’m not supposed to be on my phone during meetings, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ban phones from class. I was just commenting that work can be done to make lessons more engaging when phones aren’t involved. There’s of course a limit to what you can do, and some subjects are just inherently harder to get kids into, like statistics. But seriously good on you for doing that. I’m sure that while it didn’t have perfect engagement, it was far better than just teaching it to the book.
Just curious, is there a place you can share that lesson plan to other teachers? It’d be a shame for all that work you did to not get to be used in other classrooms as well.
But also, screen addiction is very real
That aren’t motivated and are bored as hell; the average motivation level for schools where I live is a 2.9… out of 10. If kids aren’t motivated and they have devices on them, what do you think they would do in class?
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You’re not supposed to have fun. You’re supposed to learn so you can get a job that you enjoy.
Hi, elder leftist here. The whole education system is already set up to produce obedient workers. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself how much time is spent teaching kids to organise effectively, or advocate for issues they care about. Or even just build good communication with their classmates, like how to react to bullying.
All that matters is to follow the authority, don’t question the rules, put the things in your head that they give you and nothing else.
The reason kids are bored in school is because the current system doesn’t address the real problems they have, so why should they care about the system.
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What about during breaks? They’re doing that as well.
Take it from an old man, as you grow up friends drift apart. People change, you meet new people. You’ll always cherish those friendships you had back then, but you will never all be together in one place like you are now. People will have jobs, families, girlfriends, spouses, commitments. I love my best friend to death, we’ve been friends since jr high, but I see him once a year now.
Take advantage of the time you have with them. Go to the gas station and get a soda that’s too big, walk around town aimlessly, do boring kid stuff. You’ll have all the time in the world to be online here later, late nights writing comments at 10pm, thinking fondly about doing stupid teenager stuff with your friends 20 years ago
Yup, I haven’t seen one of my friends in person in years because he’s in the army. Another one lives right here in town but has a whole family to take care of, but every single time he’s asked me to do anything with him has been a bad time, and I kinda feel bad about it. The rest of my friends have mostly either moved elsewhere or I’ve just not kept in touch.
So yeah, even people that I kept in touch with for some time after I got out of school have basically not been in my life for some time now. I’ve got a few friends that I usually hang with online, but all my school mates have basically gone their separate ways.
Phones certainly decrease our level of motivation by decreasing our dopamine baseline. Huberman Labs episodes addressing dopamine are really interesting
One thing I miss about reddit is that I could just filter out r/teenagers
We’ve been so busy fighting extremists and gross fetish porn that we forgot to quarantine the annoying children.
I agree that the school environment should be more motivating, but there’s no way to compete with apps and games designed to be addictive, even adults have trouble avoiding their phones at work.
yeah, too many school authorities do act taht way. For a approach going more in the opposite direction, see, for example: https://piped.video/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU (maybe skip to aa minute in. presented, the idea, in that case, by sugata mitra. The Talk is not new, but still relevant I’d think, and relates to the post here. ) 💻🖥️
For anotger, similar, but also different example, see https://piped.video/watch?v=WNuv0_MLrKg this one specifically mentions phones early on, too.
So if you believe in, or are open to the idea, that the approach in in the main meme post isn’t the best, then the stories in the piped videos might be of some intrest to you.
tdlr: 🎶you can use your phone if yiu want to, yiu can leave your technophobe schoolmaster behind,… 🎶🎧
I don’t think it’s particularly unreasonable to conclude that any decent approach to the first will also include the second. That shit is literally designed to be addictive, even the best teachers are gonna struggle to compete.
Yeah, the second one will directly affect the first one positively. Essentially, school work needs to be the most interesting thing you can do in school, otherwise you will have low motivation. It’s not the job of the the school staff to make the material extremely interesting, it’s their job to remove every more interesting thing from the reach of students.
Read up on dopamine if you didn’t understand that.
(And yes, this affects adults too)
It’s not the job of the the school staff to make the material extremely interesting, it’s their job to remove every more interesting thing from the reach of students.
And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else. They should make the material interesting enough that people won’t have to resort to other stuff
Read up on dopamine if you didn’t understand that.
I know what dopamine (the joy hormone which the body uses as a “reward”) is. Since the body uses it as a “reward” if school gives students that, then students will like school
Make the material more interesting? Buddy, it’s school not Qanon.
They should make the material interesting enough that people won’t have to resort to other stuff
Nope. It’s all relative. Compared to what’s available via the phone and internet, 90% of school material is fundamentally more boring, because important things are often boring – and there’s almost nothing you can do about it. I mean sure, an incompetent/unmotivated teacher can make the material even less interesting, but that’s also why we need competent teachers. That’s a separate problem.
So the quest to make school material more interesting than the Internet is a dead end – it’s just impossible. So they need to make everything else less interesting. Which means that phones and computers can fuck right off. If there are kids for whom this is a difficult situation and they’re unable to cope, such kids will need intervention. I.e. restrictions in free time as well.
Did you hear what I said about dopamine being the “joy hormone” and used as a “reward”. Your body gives out happy hormones like this after an exercise and other good stuff for you (including school work if it is interesting)
And don’t you tell me that knowledge isn’t interesting. For something to be interesting (by my definition) it must give you knowledge.
Girls twerking on TikTok is not interesting - the way Hitler died is
Memes are not interesting (unless they contain important info)
These may produce dopamine in other ways but they are not interesting
Which means that phones and computers can fuck right off.
I could be considered “tech savvy”, I know a bit of C/PHP and a lot of shell script. Explain ro me how I could learn that without a computer (I’m also self-taught)
So they need to make everything else less interesting.
As I said, sleep is something that pupils prefer to schoolwork. Get schoolwork above a bar that low and then we can talk. Amyway, it just needs to be interesting enough that students won’t feel a need to check social media
I could be considered “tech savvy”, I know a bit of C/PHP and a lot of shell script. Explain ro me how I could learn that without a computer (I’m also self-taught)
By using the computer or phone at home. Roughly half of the programmer workforce currently alive went through childhood without a mobile phone, because they didn’t exist for regular consumers. And personal laptops for children would’ve been perhaps an option for the top 1%, but probably not even them. Since you just didn’t have electronics in school.
Way more than half. Let’s separate dumb phones from smart phones. Even smart phones weren’t all that capable for a long time.
Please don’t learn about how Hitler died through Tiktok. Befriend your librarian and read it in a book.
I dont use tiktok, I hate the app
You used Tiktok as an example for something that is more interesting than learning. (Of course it’s more interesting than learning, it’s digital crack cocaine.)
And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else.
I think this has more to do with sleep deprivation. I can probably count the number of days I got a full night’s rest while in high school and college on one hand. Rather than making classes more interesting (though they could do this as well I guess), they should focus on not completely overwhelming the students with homework, although I’ll admit that was more of a college thing.
staring at a wall is more interesting then (badly done) school
Hey at least they give you some books to read if you’re bored. They’re heavy as hell, but you might learn something and get a well needed break from the phone.
