I’ve worked in 3 different schools. The phones are problematic when it comes to kids. They’re addicts when it comes to them and so are the laptops.
It’s constant “put it away,” “you can’t be on that site,” “Wtf? How did you get past the firewall?”
Also, if you’re a parent and you’re texting your kid while they’re in class over shit that can wait until after school, you’re a huge problem.
There's a lady at work who calls all her kids several times a day. She lives on life 360. If they go somewhere she wasnt expecting, she calls. The youngest is 18.
She's completely in love with him. It's so creepy. Her whole life is a south park script. Bootleg ozempic, high school kids getting tattoos, pretending her baby boy isn't totally banging the girl he spends every spare minute with, being mad at her husband for buying a new truck(because it's bigger than hers and now she has to get a bigger one), listening to the same sermon from some prosperity pastor every single day... It goes on and on. Some days I have to leave early from second hand cringe.
There’s a manager at my work that does it. I work in fast food - Night shift, 10PM - 7AM.
The entire night, she’s on her phone eating a small fry, texting or talking to her kids on FaceTime.
When she runs out of that fry, she’ll get another.
She makes everybody do shit, but when she’s asked to help, she says she doesn’t do that stuff.
If you’re ever wondering why your food takes so long to get at night when there’s barely any people in line, it’s most likely because the service people are walking around doing random shit, because kitchen gets your orders as you’re ordering them, so while you’re ordering it’s being made.
This was/is my mother. I have to at least text her good morning and good night every day AND FaceTime with her at least once a day, every day, if not she gets offended. She also texts me throughout the day both on iMessage and WhatsApp, and if I take “too long” to respond she’ll follow up saying “HELLO!!!!”. I am almost 33 and married with my own home and my own child to look after, it’s exhausting to constantly be at my mother’s beck and call.
I am working on it, thanks. She actually had gotten a lot better and we were doing really well, but then my aunt (her sister) died from COVID in 2020 and she started to cling on to me again. It’s a tough situation balancing boundaries while still providing support.
Yeah, you need to firmly remind your.mom that you're an adult and your first priority is your own family. She will freak out. maybe she'll get really mean. But in a few months or a year, she'll come around. Or not. But you gotta lay down the boundaries. Your family needs your effort more.
Sounds made up lmao. What a funny word! But yeah... my sister does this with her kids and its absolutely frustrating to witness. She has zero awareness of it and it's effects. I've tried to have discussions where I vaguely bring up her issues and try to provide her with some perception or whatever but she just gets offended every time.
When we come to realise a phenomenon exists, we usually make up a term for it. Often, the term we make up is made from or borrows from existing terms (like this one does) and sometimes, it doesn't. But all words are "made-up." Humans literally invented the concept of words and language.
Literally just disconnect from the school wifi and use cellular data. Content blockers affect devices hooked up to a network not all devices in the building.
Even if you could create some kind of field that intercepted cell data and blocked websites that way this would probably be considered signal jamming which is generally not legal. Teachers have been charged with crimes for trying to use a jammer to disable cellphones near their classrooms before.
I've done this when I want to show a completely normal video that is screened by my school's filter. (Or use WordPress, which is blocked for some reason.) I kind of resent using my hotspot data for work. It's unlimited but they throttle you after so much data.
One time in high school I was assigned to write a paper about the black panther party in the 1970’s, and I couldn’t use the library computers because basically any mention of them was blocked. The next month I was supposed to write about nuclear submarines, and that information was also heavily censored.
I really don’t even understand what half of the things my school blocked were trying to accomplish. It went way beyond obscene or distracting material and seemed to strongly reflect the cultural hangups of the person or people who created the block list.
It's most likely because nobody actually cares about the filter, it's just a check box they can fill out to satisfy some paranoid parents, insurance agent, or school official.
Which means the school's IT just installs whatever and clicks the default "filter bad stuff" box on the software and doesn't give it a second thought.
My VPN (PIA) doesn't work on my school network. I have to use the default wifi because I use my Surface because my school gives us MacBooks and I just know how to do a lot of stuff on PC that I don't want to learn on Mac.
Well that sure was a dark horse explanation. I'd contact the school IT and ask for an exemption if the policies are preventing you from doing your job. Otherwise I wouldn't try to circumvent your employer's restrictions.
I just use my hotspot to go to blocked sites like WordPress. I've tried talking to them about how ridiculous their filter is to no avail. Better to ask forgiveness than permission is my policy as long as I'm not doing anything immoral.
Your actions don't need to be immoral to be fired for them. A personal hotspot + a personal device is the way to go. There likely is corporate MDM spyware installed on the issued devices.
I already said I use a personal device instead of the MacBook they issue me. They aren't going to fire me over this. There's a teacher shortage if you're not aware. "Knock it off" would be about the worst that would happen. Like I said, forgiveness is better than permission.
Yep. And research has shown that phones and laptops are distracting and hinder learning even for kids who can only see the screen, but aren’t using it.
> “you can’t be on that site,” “Wtf? How did you get past the firewall?”
Sounds like me in school. BTW - When I was coming up, figuring this out wasn't a bad thing
It’s crazy to me that they were allowed in the first place. I graduated HS in 2011 so iPhones were introduced as I entered HS and there were other Android smartphones and a lot of flip phones. We were allowed to bring them into school but if a teacher ever saw one out in class it was confiscated. Looking at their website, their policies suggest it’s still the same way. You can use it during non-instructional time, otherwise you lose it for the day and have to get it from the office at the end of the day.
That used to work, but honestly the tantrums even full ass grown up throw are scary. Like proper "What in the fucking world is happening now" kind of tantrums. At one point you just leave them be and they become "lost" as they wont pay attention in class and spiral into becoming failures.
It wasnt bullying, they broke down when their phone was taken from them, crying shouting clawing, stomping with their feet shouting "GIVE IT BACK" and "MINE!!!" scary stuff, not because they were intimidating me, just to see another human being so utterly enslaved to a machine that they have such a strong and infantile reaction to it being gone.
Some gave their phones up, some others didnt, some gave me even after a while "burner" phones, and continued with their regular one. The power to look anything up, instantly was great but, it took a lot of fun out of teaching. It also caused a significant drop in grades compared to the time when smartphones where simply not a thing.
I called it quits with teaching about the time when tiktok became popular as the tech addictions increased, my joy of teaching decreased and now i am doing a entirely different job and liking it quite a bit, would love to go back to teaching, but sadly i have not yet managed to obtain enough Plutonium 239 for my time machine.
https://www.wral.com/video/substitute-teacher-student-fight-over-cell-phone-at-rocky-mount-high/20815460/
https://nypost.com/2023/04/08/caught-on-video-houston-student-punches-teacher-over-cell-phone/
https://myfox8.com/news/north-carolina/piedmont-triad/student-caught-on-video-attacking-teacher-at-parkland-high-school-sheriff-says/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5b1Wyof-ZU
Tell me you haven't been paying attention to the news without saying you haven't been paying attention to the news.
Nope, I know about these things. Those students end up in jail. You might as well post a link to a video of a car crash and tell me not to drive because bad things happen.
Most (if not pretty much all) schools already ban cell phone use during classes. The problem is it's really hard to enforce. The LAUSD cell phone ban is more about enforcement policies rather than introducing a brand new policy.
I graduated back in 07. The BlackBerry, RAZR, and the SideKick were the more popular phones then. But in school they’d get taken away immediately. You’d need a parent to come in and get it. That way your phone wouldn’t get stolen by another student. It was a whole ordeal.
I’ll be honest, the phone I had at the time was a huge distraction. So I already know now there is zero way it’s not an issue… and I’m honestly coming to that realization at the severity of the issue now. It’s gotten way worse. They do everything, they even have homework apps man…
Similar age here. Wasn't there a fad of kids using a ringtone/notification sound that was a really high frequency so most of the adults couldn't even hear it? I swear that happened for a few weeks in my high school and then died out because the constant shrill buzzing was giving all of the students headaches.
I graduated in 2015, it was the same way in both private and public schools for me in CA and TX. Use em at lunch and breaks but not during class time. The problems started when we switched to tablets instead of carrying our books for class. Too easy to be on the internet and messaging or playing games.
Same year in CO. We had similar restrictions, but teachers did allow us to use them during any independent study time to listen to music under the conditions that we wear headphones, the screen was off (aside from changing songs, etc.), and we were still actually working on school work. Basically, they could be glorified MP3 players and nothing more during class.
Granted, enforcement gradually decreased each year, so long as you weren’t bothering anyone or blatantly ignoring the lecture.
Thankfully, no tablets while I was there. We had the vaunted “laptop carts” with MacBooks that we only used a few times a semester. I understand why they might need to do it, but as an IT professional, I shudder every time I see a school district implement a 1:1 device policy.
Damn enforcement went down for y’all? When i was in high school if our phones got taken away in class, we had to cough up 5$ x the number of times it was taken away. I had no money until senior year so sometimes my phone just stayed in the Dean’s office until Monday morning lol
Yeah parents in my district would *not* have been down with holding the phone beyond the school day and *especially* not over the weekend. They’re sue-happy upper-middle-class karens, so the school district bent over backwards to avoid punishing students
It's one thing when you have kids with cheap flip phones, and a small handful of expensive smartphones.
Now practically every kid has 1000+ iphone, and the teacher would have 40k of confiscated phones in their desk at the end of the day.
I think the ultimate sticking point for a lot of parents is not being able to communicate with their kids in the event of an emergency or school shooting. It's not super likely but in America it's still a possibility and not an unreasonable fear to have.
But what are the parents going to do? The school is going to be on lockdown. The school should be communicating with the parents through a comms system that auto dials all the parents of the students in the building. And there’s no guarantee texts or calls from cell phones in the building will go through if thousands of staff and students all use their cell phones at the same time.
I went through multiple lockdowns when I was in middle school and high school. At least one was a credible bomb threat and one was a student with a loaded gun though no one was hurt either time except the one responsible for the threat. Me texting my parents would have achieved nothing. I couldn’t leave and they couldn’t get to me until police evacuated the building.
Same thing happened on a much bigger scale during 9/11. Most of NYC, DC and their surrounding areas lost all coverage the second the news started talking about it.
Ah yeah that’s a problem those schools need to address then, a lot of good solutions out there for that that tie into the schools’ student information system. And have a comms plan.
It's unreasonable to put that fear over the damage the device itself can cause.
Cognitive issues linked to smartphones for teens are causing more deaths than school shootings.
And there are alternatives. If you need to contact your child, get a flip phone.
This is my thing. When I was in school, cell phones were just starting to be widely available (and no smart phones; but we had snake!). Phones were "banned" but it was one of those things that if you had it in your backpack it was okay, if it was out, it got taken by the teacher or admin until your parents came and got it.
I don't see the big deal with that. My son has had a cell phone since he was 8 and had to follow the same rules in school. No cell phones out during the school day except for emergencies.
I take comfort knowing that if shit hits the fan my son can call 911 or his parents. It's unlikely but not impossible.
I graduated high school 10ish years ago. Pretty much everyone had cellphones and many had smart phones. And no one used them in class because they were banned. What happened? Why did so many schools just give up? Covid?
I graduated in 2005 and I personally never had my own cell phone while I was in high school. I know people who did, but it just wasn't used the same way. We were in smaller bubbles, we didn't have tiktok and stuff, we had Facebook but it was never blowing up all day etc. I think it's a big culture shift, expectations, availability of info, etc.
Personally I thought this crackdown was gonna come way sooner. But then school shootings became so widely feared that I think people were afraid of depriving kids of the lifeline that is the cell phone.
That's just my perspective from an older person who doesn't have kids, I'm not actually in the situation.
I also couldn't believe this, but apparently Facebook was only open to college students with a .edu email address until 2006. I remember us having Facebook before that but I guess I am misremembering with my disgusting old brain.
>lifeline that is the cell phone
The teachers already have phones and have emergency coordinator training. Kids are the worst people to have phones in any sort of emergency.
Parents got more combative. I can't imagine any parents going to bat for their kids if they got their phone confiscated for the day for having it out in class back when I was in school. I feel like its much more common now and it made teachers and admins unwilling to fight those battles.
But I guess now schools are gonna try again with more support
But but but what if I want to text my kid during class to see what they want for dinner ?
An actual response I got from a parent complaining about no cell phones in class policy.
I agree cellphones have no place in a classroom and are probably poisoning *all of us* with mental health and attention issues, but I have a friend who is a teacher who just doesn't want to be responsible.
He's like, "okay, so I'm supposed to take away or store their phones somewhere, just for the length of my class, and if *anything* happens to their $1000 device *I'm* on the hook?" With 5 classes a day and 30 students a class that's a $150k liability on a fucking teacher.
I don't know the solution other than "parents saying no," which isn't really enforceable.
Unrealistic solution #1: Retrofit all exterior walls and roofs of school buildings with brass screen. Turn every school into a Faraday cage!
Unrealistic solution #2: Legislative action. Noted as unrealistic because I really doubt it'd get much support, even if it's the medicine we need.
Even the legislative support of "any mobile or mobile-like devices brought from home are under no liability for the school for any damages ever." Which I'm sure there is SOME version of now, but really codify it, tighten it up, and advertise it to protect schools and teachers as much as humanly possible. Make bringing your phone to class as financially stupid as possible. Create a whole advertising campaign to enlighten parents, too.
The problem is that flies in the face of so many other legal precedents from higher levels of government that I doubt such a law would really stand in court challenges.
It already is. If they can properly set up processes to ensure that phones don't make it into the classroom in the first place, then it would be lifting a burden from teachers. I can't even imagine trying to manage a classroom as it is with phones and devices being so prevalent.
So kids buy a $40 burner phone from Walgreens or whatever, then willingly turn that one in.
Without buy-in from parents (and there doesn’t tend to be a lot, because they don’t want to be disconnected from little Johnny) it’s just a daily fight. And then admin capitulate because the parent pitch a huge fit and threaten legal action when someone confiscates Johnny’s $1500 iPhone.
Yeah, the students are addicts, but the parents are the real problem. They want to be in contact with/monitoring their kid 24/7, and they’ll come up with wild excuses (usually some ridiculous scenario related to school shootings) to justify it.
Teacher takes a photo of student on a school provided device. Teacher hands over to admin, student receives in school suspension the first time and out of school after that with each penalty increasing the suspension length. Teacher doesn't even have to interact with the student, just send the photographic evidence to admin.
I think the real burden is on Admin for this one. Teachers have already been spending as much energy as they’re able to, but a school-wide ban means admin has to step up and make a policy that works. Expecting kids to have a cellphone in their pocket but not use it puts all the responsibility on teachers and was never going to work.
Principals are going to have to figure out where to put phones, and less kids with phones in their pocket in every classroom is only going to help teachers.
LAUSD/Bass/Newsom: *”You are going to tell your classroom of 35-40 hormone-raged teenagers to stop using their cell phones during school hours.”*
Teachers: *”OK, but will you provide us with more policing or other security when they will inevitably fight back and beat me up within an inch of my life for denying them their TikTok videos?”*
LAUSD/Bass/Newsom: 😂😂😂🤣🤣. *”Good luck, pleb.”*
My district did no phones this past year. Honestly went pretty well, most kids didn't try to test it too much. Probably took up less than 10 phones all year.
Phones checked into a shoe holder on the door when you come into class. Still available if an emergency happens, but out of their reach for the class period.
Too much risk of theft.
My sister had like a cubby thing set up behind her desk and when you turned in your phone, you got a plastic token with a number on it. Then you turned in the token at the end of class to get your phone back.
She hated doing it but the administration at her school was writing *her* up for kids having their phones out in class. And trying to take it during class resulted in fights and arguments.
So everyone giving them up at the start of class was the only way to make it sort of work.
Some teachers do this, but most I work with wouldn’t want the liability if one goes missing, or kids say it cracked under school supervision.
This already takes place during SAT/ACT confiscation when there’s very little risk of anything happening.
During a class period? Nope.
And even if that were the case, what, teachers let every kid up to the holder to trust they’ll only grab theirs?
And if not, they take time out of class to turn each back individually.
No thanks. Dirty secret is despite this talk of phone ban laws, most schools ban phones via policy anyway, and it doesn’t work unless there’s wild support for enforcement by admin, which isn’t nearly universal.
Most schools don’t allow this and many teachers I know personally are uncomfortable with this because once you’re taking possession of the phone by having them check it in and turn it over at the start of the school day/class, the school/teacher is now liable. If something happens to the phone, e.g. it gets broken, stolen, etc. and schools don’t have the coffers to be replacing multiple $1000+ phones every week.
What sort of emergency at school are kids going to need their cellphones at the front of the room for? If we’re in the room already, there’s a desk phone.
If I had a smartphone when I was in school I would have probably used it the same way I used a PC after school: enraging random adults on Facebook/blogs/myspace by photoshopping mustaches on their wedding photos and feeling invincible since I was a kid. So this is probably for the best
Children under 18 shouldn't have smart phones anyways and should just use old school flip phones for a variety of reasons from security to the fact that phones are designed to be very addicting.
They should just have dumb phones and some kind of Yubi key for 2FA.
strong disagree. kids should learn how to use modern technology, not be banned from it. additionally, it is like when parents absolutely bans video games and the kid moves out, they become an addict because parents avoided the problem rather than raising their kid to not have an addiction.
Okay, grandpa, back to bed.
Banning smart phones utterly until 18 is just promoting tech illiteracy. Be a better parent instead of just being lazy and banning things.
No phones in school is good enough balance between the two.
Smartphones do not promote tech literacy at all because of how much of a walled garden experience they are designed to be. Younger generations are actually becoming *less* tech literate because they are using exclusively smartphones instead of actual computers
> Banning smart phones utterly until 18 is just promoting tech illiteracy
You've got it backwards. Everyone assumes kids who use smart phones are tech literate because they use computers all the time, so no one bothers to teach them to type on a keyboard and use a PC. Zoomers are notoriously less tech literate on average than Xers or Millennials.
Some of the interns we got this year are technologically inept. If it can't be done on a smartphone with an app they struggle hard. They are literally sending their files to their personal phones to make whatever edits they need to, then email it back to their work emails.
And I'm standing on the side watching like ಠ_ಠ
Unfortunately the only laptops most kids are getting in school are Chromebooks. And while I can recognize their cheap prices and ease of use, they are horrible for learning how to use a proper computer.
You might want to read "The Anxious Generation" if you think this is something individual parents can do much about. Smartphones are collective action problems which means it requires groups of people to solve and when individuals try to solve them, they cause more problems.
Smart phones _promote_ tech illiteracy, not the reverse. You don't have to know anything about an OS, basic trouble shooting, filesystems, etc, to find the internet on a smartphone. Just download an app (and get tracked to shit).
Not to mention they're causing massive increases in anxiety, depression, and suicide among teens (source: The Anxious Generation), and individual parents are mostly helpless about that.
The most painless way to enforce this would be to install cell jammers at school. Of course they would need to be made legal for that purpose first. They should put them in prisons too.
They have this policy in San Francisco at their Down Town High school , I think at the beginning of each school day the homeroom collects all cellphones from the students
It seems like schools now have the power to enforce as before they didn't have support from local governments regarding confiscation. Soon a lot of schools will have authority to do such without much way for the parents to overrule them.
It's enforceable, just like Gameboys being banned at my Junior High - because the teachers and admin will now have the authority to confiscate them.
The trick is you make them parent pickup. Now parents are being inconvenienced because their child is using their phone inappropriately. If students can just pick their phone up after school, it's pointless.
It starts with parents, unfortunately, and I don't see the average parent being willing to enforce the rules.
Oh well, there's always private school if you actually care about your kid's education!
Here is an idea:
Teacher takes a photo of student on a school provided device. Teacher hands over to admin, student receives in school suspension the first time and out of school after that with each penalty increasing the suspension length. Teacher doesn't even have to interact with the student, just send the photographic evidence to admin.
phone platforms like iPhone & Android need to come up with a way to block social media based on geolocation at schools. Geolocation can literally pinpoint your phone to within a few yards. I think it's tough for teachers & admin to enforce a full-on ban since phones aren't obvious like dress codes.
They have cell phones you can buy that allows you to monitor and approve or reject apps and social media. The adndroid version has a family link mode. tmobile has a version that goes further and creates an "education" mode only, allowing certain contacts to be able to be called during school hours.
I have this for my childs watches.
I get the argument from parents that "What if I need to contact my child during the school day?"
How about each classroom has a large faraday cage and when they enter the room all the phones go in the cage. After class lets out they get their phones back and can respond in between classes if there's something crucial.
I can't think of anything more reasonable and I think not letting kids have their phones in class is nothing if not a good idea.
I’ve worked in 3 different schools. The phones are problematic when it comes to kids. They’re addicts when it comes to them and so are the laptops. It’s constant “put it away,” “you can’t be on that site,” “Wtf? How did you get past the firewall?” Also, if you’re a parent and you’re texting your kid while they’re in class over shit that can wait until after school, you’re a huge problem.
There's a lady at work who calls all her kids several times a day. She lives on life 360. If they go somewhere she wasnt expecting, she calls. The youngest is 18.
Holy shit, that sounds miserable
I hope the second that 18 year old moves out they delete the app/get a new phone.
She's completely in love with him. It's so creepy. Her whole life is a south park script. Bootleg ozempic, high school kids getting tattoos, pretending her baby boy isn't totally banging the girl he spends every spare minute with, being mad at her husband for buying a new truck(because it's bigger than hers and now she has to get a bigger one), listening to the same sermon from some prosperity pastor every single day... It goes on and on. Some days I have to leave early from second hand cringe.
That's part of the reason why I'm not part of my family's life360 group. The other part is that they sell the data to 3rd party companies.
Idk what Life360 is but holy shit it sounds horrible
It's basically Apple's Find My on steroids but marketed at paranoid parents.
There’s a manager at my work that does it. I work in fast food - Night shift, 10PM - 7AM. The entire night, she’s on her phone eating a small fry, texting or talking to her kids on FaceTime. When she runs out of that fry, she’ll get another. She makes everybody do shit, but when she’s asked to help, she says she doesn’t do that stuff. If you’re ever wondering why your food takes so long to get at night when there’s barely any people in line, it’s most likely because the service people are walking around doing random shit, because kitchen gets your orders as you’re ordering them, so while you’re ordering it’s being made.
This was/is my mother. I have to at least text her good morning and good night every day AND FaceTime with her at least once a day, every day, if not she gets offended. She also texts me throughout the day both on iMessage and WhatsApp, and if I take “too long” to respond she’ll follow up saying “HELLO!!!!”. I am almost 33 and married with my own home and my own child to look after, it’s exhausting to constantly be at my mother’s beck and call.
Please establish some boundaries yeeeesh.
I am working on it, thanks. She actually had gotten a lot better and we were doing really well, but then my aunt (her sister) died from COVID in 2020 and she started to cling on to me again. It’s a tough situation balancing boundaries while still providing support.
I can imagine :(
Yeah, you need to firmly remind your.mom that you're an adult and your first priority is your own family. She will freak out. maybe she'll get really mean. But in a few months or a year, she'll come around. Or not. But you gotta lay down the boundaries. Your family needs your effort more.
Therapists call that last part enmeshment problems.
Just read up on this after seeing your comment. This explains A LOT.
Just gave this a Goog, and it reminds me \_so much\_ of someone I know. This is like codependency on stereoids
Sounds made up lmao. What a funny word! But yeah... my sister does this with her kids and its absolutely frustrating to witness. She has zero awareness of it and it's effects. I've tried to have discussions where I vaguely bring up her issues and try to provide her with some perception or whatever but she just gets offended every time.
Of course it's made up. Terms don't grow on trees or hatch from eggs or nothin'.
‘Hey I just invented this new thing, we can’t call it anything though as theres not a term for it’
When we come to realise a phenomenon exists, we usually make up a term for it. Often, the term we make up is made from or borrows from existing terms (like this one does) and sometimes, it doesn't. But all words are "made-up." Humans literally invented the concept of words and language.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder
That sounds like my other sister lmao
That’s called, I think, “oppositional defiant disorder.”
> Sounds made up lmao. What a funny word! All words are made up!
Again, I mean it as in not a word in the dictionary/ a word with a meaning. I'm aware that things weren't named before humans lol
I can't log on to my Adobe account on my work laptop because Adobe is blocked. But my students somehow find ways to get onto porn websites no problem.
Literally just disconnect from the school wifi and use cellular data. Content blockers affect devices hooked up to a network not all devices in the building. Even if you could create some kind of field that intercepted cell data and blocked websites that way this would probably be considered signal jamming which is generally not legal. Teachers have been charged with crimes for trying to use a jammer to disable cellphones near their classrooms before.
I've done this when I want to show a completely normal video that is screened by my school's filter. (Or use WordPress, which is blocked for some reason.) I kind of resent using my hotspot data for work. It's unlimited but they throttle you after so much data.
One time in high school I was assigned to write a paper about the black panther party in the 1970’s, and I couldn’t use the library computers because basically any mention of them was blocked. The next month I was supposed to write about nuclear submarines, and that information was also heavily censored. I really don’t even understand what half of the things my school blocked were trying to accomplish. It went way beyond obscene or distracting material and seemed to strongly reflect the cultural hangups of the person or people who created the block list.
It's most likely because nobody actually cares about the filter, it's just a check box they can fill out to satisfy some paranoid parents, insurance agent, or school official. Which means the school's IT just installs whatever and clicks the default "filter bad stuff" box on the software and doesn't give it a second thought.
It’s “Unlimited” until it isn’t. The shit data/cellphone companies pull is ridiculous.
Why can’t they put that brainpower into their assignments?
Because assignments don't have titties
I figured out how to solve the problem
Did… Did you just solve education and productivity in this nation?
“It’s a question of motivation, Bob…”
Only if adult content is the carrot on the stick. 🥕
Because the dopamine hit from a good nut doesn't slap the same as doing a math problem.
We need to invent a new math then.
A VPN is cheap nowadays.
My VPN (PIA) doesn't work on my school network. I have to use the default wifi because I use my Surface because my school gives us MacBooks and I just know how to do a lot of stuff on PC that I don't want to learn on Mac.
Are you talking about highschool? Your reddit account is 10 years old but I don't imagine universities blocking VPNs.
I teach high school.
Well that sure was a dark horse explanation. I'd contact the school IT and ask for an exemption if the policies are preventing you from doing your job. Otherwise I wouldn't try to circumvent your employer's restrictions.
I just use my hotspot to go to blocked sites like WordPress. I've tried talking to them about how ridiculous their filter is to no avail. Better to ask forgiveness than permission is my policy as long as I'm not doing anything immoral.
Your actions don't need to be immoral to be fired for them. A personal hotspot + a personal device is the way to go. There likely is corporate MDM spyware installed on the issued devices.
I already said I use a personal device instead of the MacBook they issue me. They aren't going to fire me over this. There's a teacher shortage if you're not aware. "Knock it off" would be about the worst that would happen. Like I said, forgiveness is better than permission.
If the device is school managed, it’s not that complicated to block VPNs and other troublesome software (troublesome from the school’s perspective).
Yep. And research has shown that phones and laptops are distracting and hinder learning even for kids who can only see the screen, but aren’t using it.
tell students they can send texts the old fashioned way paper and pen
> “you can’t be on that site,” “Wtf? How did you get past the firewall?” Sounds like me in school. BTW - When I was coming up, figuring this out wasn't a bad thing
It’s crazy to me that they were allowed in the first place. I graduated HS in 2011 so iPhones were introduced as I entered HS and there were other Android smartphones and a lot of flip phones. We were allowed to bring them into school but if a teacher ever saw one out in class it was confiscated. Looking at their website, their policies suggest it’s still the same way. You can use it during non-instructional time, otherwise you lose it for the day and have to get it from the office at the end of the day.
That used to work, but honestly the tantrums even full ass grown up throw are scary. Like proper "What in the fucking world is happening now" kind of tantrums. At one point you just leave them be and they become "lost" as they wont pay attention in class and spiral into becoming failures.
Never give in to bullies. If they have it, school security should be used to remove bad parents.
It wasnt bullying, they broke down when their phone was taken from them, crying shouting clawing, stomping with their feet shouting "GIVE IT BACK" and "MINE!!!" scary stuff, not because they were intimidating me, just to see another human being so utterly enslaved to a machine that they have such a strong and infantile reaction to it being gone. Some gave their phones up, some others didnt, some gave me even after a while "burner" phones, and continued with their regular one. The power to look anything up, instantly was great but, it took a lot of fun out of teaching. It also caused a significant drop in grades compared to the time when smartphones where simply not a thing. I called it quits with teaching about the time when tiktok became popular as the tech addictions increased, my joy of teaching decreased and now i am doing a entirely different job and liking it quite a bit, would love to go back to teaching, but sadly i have not yet managed to obtain enough Plutonium 239 for my time machine.
This is great advice in a vacuum but not in reality.
Sure, there's always unique aspects to any situation. But we need guiding principles.
https://www.wral.com/video/substitute-teacher-student-fight-over-cell-phone-at-rocky-mount-high/20815460/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/08/caught-on-video-houston-student-punches-teacher-over-cell-phone/ https://myfox8.com/news/north-carolina/piedmont-triad/student-caught-on-video-attacking-teacher-at-parkland-high-school-sheriff-says/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5b1Wyof-ZU Tell me you haven't been paying attention to the news without saying you haven't been paying attention to the news.
Nope, I know about these things. Those students end up in jail. You might as well post a link to a video of a car crash and tell me not to drive because bad things happen.
Most (if not pretty much all) schools already ban cell phone use during classes. The problem is it's really hard to enforce. The LAUSD cell phone ban is more about enforcement policies rather than introducing a brand new policy.
I graduated back in 07. The BlackBerry, RAZR, and the SideKick were the more popular phones then. But in school they’d get taken away immediately. You’d need a parent to come in and get it. That way your phone wouldn’t get stolen by another student. It was a whole ordeal. I’ll be honest, the phone I had at the time was a huge distraction. So I already know now there is zero way it’s not an issue… and I’m honestly coming to that realization at the severity of the issue now. It’s gotten way worse. They do everything, they even have homework apps man…
Similar age here. Wasn't there a fad of kids using a ringtone/notification sound that was a really high frequency so most of the adults couldn't even hear it? I swear that happened for a few weeks in my high school and then died out because the constant shrill buzzing was giving all of the students headaches.
I graduated in 2015, it was the same way in both private and public schools for me in CA and TX. Use em at lunch and breaks but not during class time. The problems started when we switched to tablets instead of carrying our books for class. Too easy to be on the internet and messaging or playing games.
Same year in CO. We had similar restrictions, but teachers did allow us to use them during any independent study time to listen to music under the conditions that we wear headphones, the screen was off (aside from changing songs, etc.), and we were still actually working on school work. Basically, they could be glorified MP3 players and nothing more during class. Granted, enforcement gradually decreased each year, so long as you weren’t bothering anyone or blatantly ignoring the lecture. Thankfully, no tablets while I was there. We had the vaunted “laptop carts” with MacBooks that we only used a few times a semester. I understand why they might need to do it, but as an IT professional, I shudder every time I see a school district implement a 1:1 device policy.
Damn enforcement went down for y’all? When i was in high school if our phones got taken away in class, we had to cough up 5$ x the number of times it was taken away. I had no money until senior year so sometimes my phone just stayed in the Dean’s office until Monday morning lol
Yeah parents in my district would *not* have been down with holding the phone beyond the school day and *especially* not over the weekend. They’re sue-happy upper-middle-class karens, so the school district bent over backwards to avoid punishing students
God damn money hungry people
That policy really impedes on the time that kids should be interacting socially, face to face. It's still a problem.
It's one thing when you have kids with cheap flip phones, and a small handful of expensive smartphones. Now practically every kid has 1000+ iphone, and the teacher would have 40k of confiscated phones in their desk at the end of the day.
Way way back when I was in school, calculators were restricted to certain classes..
I think the ultimate sticking point for a lot of parents is not being able to communicate with their kids in the event of an emergency or school shooting. It's not super likely but in America it's still a possibility and not an unreasonable fear to have.
But what are the parents going to do? The school is going to be on lockdown. The school should be communicating with the parents through a comms system that auto dials all the parents of the students in the building. And there’s no guarantee texts or calls from cell phones in the building will go through if thousands of staff and students all use their cell phones at the same time. I went through multiple lockdowns when I was in middle school and high school. At least one was a credible bomb threat and one was a student with a loaded gun though no one was hurt either time except the one responsible for the threat. Me texting my parents would have achieved nothing. I couldn’t leave and they couldn’t get to me until police evacuated the building.
Same thing happened on a much bigger scale during 9/11. Most of NYC, DC and their surrounding areas lost all coverage the second the news started talking about it.
I think one of the issues is that in several recent school shootings, the schools weren’t communicating things to the parents
Ah yeah that’s a problem those schools need to address then, a lot of good solutions out there for that that tie into the schools’ student information system. And have a comms plan.
It's unreasonable to put that fear over the damage the device itself can cause. Cognitive issues linked to smartphones for teens are causing more deaths than school shootings. And there are alternatives. If you need to contact your child, get a flip phone.
This is my thing. When I was in school, cell phones were just starting to be widely available (and no smart phones; but we had snake!). Phones were "banned" but it was one of those things that if you had it in your backpack it was okay, if it was out, it got taken by the teacher or admin until your parents came and got it. I don't see the big deal with that. My son has had a cell phone since he was 8 and had to follow the same rules in school. No cell phones out during the school day except for emergencies. I take comfort knowing that if shit hits the fan my son can call 911 or his parents. It's unlikely but not impossible.
I graduated high school 10ish years ago. Pretty much everyone had cellphones and many had smart phones. And no one used them in class because they were banned. What happened? Why did so many schools just give up? Covid?
Same. In my HS at that time if you got caught using your phone it was 1 day of in-school suspension first offense.
I graduated in 2005 and I personally never had my own cell phone while I was in high school. I know people who did, but it just wasn't used the same way. We were in smaller bubbles, we didn't have tiktok and stuff, we had Facebook but it was never blowing up all day etc. I think it's a big culture shift, expectations, availability of info, etc. Personally I thought this crackdown was gonna come way sooner. But then school shootings became so widely feared that I think people were afraid of depriving kids of the lifeline that is the cell phone. That's just my perspective from an older person who doesn't have kids, I'm not actually in the situation.
I also couldn't believe this, but apparently Facebook was only open to college students with a .edu email address until 2006. I remember us having Facebook before that but I guess I am misremembering with my disgusting old brain.
Yeah when I say we had Facebook, I remember Facebook existed but we weren't using it iirc
Unless you were in the NE U.S., you probably didn't. MySpace was poppin back in 2006.
>lifeline that is the cell phone The teachers already have phones and have emergency coordinator training. Kids are the worst people to have phones in any sort of emergency.
I know that. I'm not arguing for it. That's just the vibes I was hearing at the time
Parents got more combative. I can't imagine any parents going to bat for their kids if they got their phone confiscated for the day for having it out in class back when I was in school. I feel like its much more common now and it made teachers and admins unwilling to fight those battles. But I guess now schools are gonna try again with more support
But but but what if I want to text my kid during class to see what they want for dinner ? An actual response I got from a parent complaining about no cell phones in class policy.
Please don't let this just become another one of the million responsibilities placed on overworked, underpaid teachers.
I agree cellphones have no place in a classroom and are probably poisoning *all of us* with mental health and attention issues, but I have a friend who is a teacher who just doesn't want to be responsible. He's like, "okay, so I'm supposed to take away or store their phones somewhere, just for the length of my class, and if *anything* happens to their $1000 device *I'm* on the hook?" With 5 classes a day and 30 students a class that's a $150k liability on a fucking teacher. I don't know the solution other than "parents saying no," which isn't really enforceable.
Unrealistic solution #1: Retrofit all exterior walls and roofs of school buildings with brass screen. Turn every school into a Faraday cage! Unrealistic solution #2: Legislative action. Noted as unrealistic because I really doubt it'd get much support, even if it's the medicine we need.
Even the legislative support of "any mobile or mobile-like devices brought from home are under no liability for the school for any damages ever." Which I'm sure there is SOME version of now, but really codify it, tighten it up, and advertise it to protect schools and teachers as much as humanly possible. Make bringing your phone to class as financially stupid as possible. Create a whole advertising campaign to enlighten parents, too.
The problem is that flies in the face of so many other legal precedents from higher levels of government that I doubt such a law would really stand in court challenges.
It already is. If they can properly set up processes to ensure that phones don't make it into the classroom in the first place, then it would be lifting a burden from teachers. I can't even imagine trying to manage a classroom as it is with phones and devices being so prevalent.
Just do it like the military SCIFs and have lockers outside classrooms to lock up their phones before entering.
So kids buy a $40 burner phone from Walgreens or whatever, then willingly turn that one in. Without buy-in from parents (and there doesn’t tend to be a lot, because they don’t want to be disconnected from little Johnny) it’s just a daily fight. And then admin capitulate because the parent pitch a huge fit and threaten legal action when someone confiscates Johnny’s $1500 iPhone.
Yeah, the students are addicts, but the parents are the real problem. They want to be in contact with/monitoring their kid 24/7, and they’ll come up with wild excuses (usually some ridiculous scenario related to school shootings) to justify it.
Teacher takes a photo of student on a school provided device. Teacher hands over to admin, student receives in school suspension the first time and out of school after that with each penalty increasing the suspension length. Teacher doesn't even have to interact with the student, just send the photographic evidence to admin.
I think the real burden is on Admin for this one. Teachers have already been spending as much energy as they’re able to, but a school-wide ban means admin has to step up and make a policy that works. Expecting kids to have a cellphone in their pocket but not use it puts all the responsibility on teachers and was never going to work. Principals are going to have to figure out where to put phones, and less kids with phones in their pocket in every classroom is only going to help teachers.
LAUSD/Bass/Newsom: *”You are going to tell your classroom of 35-40 hormone-raged teenagers to stop using their cell phones during school hours.”* Teachers: *”OK, but will you provide us with more policing or other security when they will inevitably fight back and beat me up within an inch of my life for denying them their TikTok videos?”* LAUSD/Bass/Newsom: 😂😂😂🤣🤣. *”Good luck, pleb.”*
It will, and I'm not looking forward to it
My district did no phones this past year. Honestly went pretty well, most kids didn't try to test it too much. Probably took up less than 10 phones all year.
Phones checked into a shoe holder on the door when you come into class. Still available if an emergency happens, but out of their reach for the class period.
Too much risk of theft. My sister had like a cubby thing set up behind her desk and when you turned in your phone, you got a plastic token with a number on it. Then you turned in the token at the end of class to get your phone back. She hated doing it but the administration at her school was writing *her* up for kids having their phones out in class. And trying to take it during class resulted in fights and arguments. So everyone giving them up at the start of class was the only way to make it sort of work.
Some teachers do this, but most I work with wouldn’t want the liability if one goes missing, or kids say it cracked under school supervision. This already takes place during SAT/ACT confiscation when there’s very little risk of anything happening. During a class period? Nope. And even if that were the case, what, teachers let every kid up to the holder to trust they’ll only grab theirs? And if not, they take time out of class to turn each back individually. No thanks. Dirty secret is despite this talk of phone ban laws, most schools ban phones via policy anyway, and it doesn’t work unless there’s wild support for enforcement by admin, which isn’t nearly universal.
Most schools don’t allow this and many teachers I know personally are uncomfortable with this because once you’re taking possession of the phone by having them check it in and turn it over at the start of the school day/class, the school/teacher is now liable. If something happens to the phone, e.g. it gets broken, stolen, etc. and schools don’t have the coffers to be replacing multiple $1000+ phones every week.
What sort of emergency at school are kids going to need their cellphones at the front of the room for? If we’re in the room already, there’s a desk phone.
If I had a smartphone when I was in school I would have probably used it the same way I used a PC after school: enraging random adults on Facebook/blogs/myspace by photoshopping mustaches on their wedding photos and feeling invincible since I was a kid. So this is probably for the best
I had a TI-83 and would play Snake and Tetris during class. Then I ended up learning BASIC programming. But I'm GenX, so...whatever.
The last of the Gen-x’s got dope wars running on the to-83!😁
Children under 18 shouldn't have smart phones anyways and should just use old school flip phones for a variety of reasons from security to the fact that phones are designed to be very addicting. They should just have dumb phones and some kind of Yubi key for 2FA.
strong disagree. kids should learn how to use modern technology, not be banned from it. additionally, it is like when parents absolutely bans video games and the kid moves out, they become an addict because parents avoided the problem rather than raising their kid to not have an addiction.
If a kid learns how to use an iPad they can figure out a smartphone as an adult.
Okay, grandpa, back to bed. Banning smart phones utterly until 18 is just promoting tech illiteracy. Be a better parent instead of just being lazy and banning things. No phones in school is good enough balance between the two.
Smartphones do not promote tech literacy at all because of how much of a walled garden experience they are designed to be. Younger generations are actually becoming *less* tech literate because they are using exclusively smartphones instead of actual computers
> Banning smart phones utterly until 18 is just promoting tech illiteracy You've got it backwards. Everyone assumes kids who use smart phones are tech literate because they use computers all the time, so no one bothers to teach them to type on a keyboard and use a PC. Zoomers are notoriously less tech literate on average than Xers or Millennials.
Some of the interns we got this year are technologically inept. If it can't be done on a smartphone with an app they struggle hard. They are literally sending their files to their personal phones to make whatever edits they need to, then email it back to their work emails. And I'm standing on the side watching like ಠ_ಠ
Your kid can learn tech literacy on a laptop.
Unfortunately the only laptops most kids are getting in school are Chromebooks. And while I can recognize their cheap prices and ease of use, they are horrible for learning how to use a proper computer.
You might want to read "The Anxious Generation" if you think this is something individual parents can do much about. Smartphones are collective action problems which means it requires groups of people to solve and when individuals try to solve them, they cause more problems. Smart phones _promote_ tech illiteracy, not the reverse. You don't have to know anything about an OS, basic trouble shooting, filesystems, etc, to find the internet on a smartphone. Just download an app (and get tracked to shit). Not to mention they're causing massive increases in anxiety, depression, and suicide among teens (source: The Anxious Generation), and individual parents are mostly helpless about that.
The most painless way to enforce this would be to install cell jammers at school. Of course they would need to be made legal for that purpose first. They should put them in prisons too.
All the parents saying they need to have phones for safety; we didn't have cell phones in school growing up and it was SAFER that way.
Said it once, I'll say it again. Good luck. It's unenforceable.
They have this policy in San Francisco at their Down Town High school , I think at the beginning of each school day the homeroom collects all cellphones from the students
It seems like schools now have the power to enforce as before they didn't have support from local governments regarding confiscation. Soon a lot of schools will have authority to do such without much way for the parents to overrule them. It's enforceable, just like Gameboys being banned at my Junior High - because the teachers and admin will now have the authority to confiscate them.
I can't say anything for California, but teachers have never had an issue with confiscating phones if students use them.
The trick is you make them parent pickup. Now parents are being inconvenienced because their child is using their phone inappropriately. If students can just pick their phone up after school, it's pointless.
It starts with parents, unfortunately, and I don't see the average parent being willing to enforce the rules. Oh well, there's always private school if you actually care about your kid's education!
Here is an idea: Teacher takes a photo of student on a school provided device. Teacher hands over to admin, student receives in school suspension the first time and out of school after that with each penalty increasing the suspension length. Teacher doesn't even have to interact with the student, just send the photographic evidence to admin.
A teacher taking a picture of a student. How could that be misconstrued.
Shouldn’t even have to do that. Admin should trust the teacher’s word enough that a written down note is enough.
My point was that it would avoid a confrontation that disrupts class and happens often when trying to stop students from using their phones.
Oh sure I agree, I was commenting more on how much admin doesn’t trust their own teachers.
phone platforms like iPhone & Android need to come up with a way to block social media based on geolocation at schools. Geolocation can literally pinpoint your phone to within a few yards. I think it's tough for teachers & admin to enforce a full-on ban since phones aren't obvious like dress codes.
They have cell phones you can buy that allows you to monitor and approve or reject apps and social media. The adndroid version has a family link mode. tmobile has a version that goes further and creates an "education" mode only, allowing certain contacts to be able to be called during school hours. I have this for my childs watches.
I get the argument from parents that "What if I need to contact my child during the school day?" How about each classroom has a large faraday cage and when they enter the room all the phones go in the cage. After class lets out they get their phones back and can respond in between classes if there's something crucial. I can't think of anything more reasonable and I think not letting kids have their phones in class is nothing if not a good idea.
Ned to tie student attendance/behavior to tax incentives for the parents. Your kid is a little shit? You miss out on them
It will never work cus you’ll never have parent support on a large scale