In California, a high school teacher complains that students watch Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students use gambling apps to place bets during the school day.
Around the country, educators say students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.
The hold that phones have on adolescents in America today is well-documented, but teachers say parents are often not aware to what extent students use them inside the classroom. And increasingly, educators and experts are speaking with one voice on the question of how to handle it: Ban phones during classes.
I may be a creaking ancient, but is the policy not “get in trouble if your phone is seen in class, or even taken away”?
It used to be, but nowadays it seems that students don’t really give a shit. They’ll downright just refuse to do what a teacher/other figure of authority will ask/tell them to do.
Yeah, so problem isn’t phones. Problem is that teachers don’t have enough authority. If teachers cannot take away the phone, then just toss them out.
I feel like this “ban phones” is getting common but it does not fix the actual problem of teachers not being able to keep discipline in class.
Can’t they just be asked to leave class if they refuse to cooperate or have some other kind of sanction imposed such as a complaint to the parents or a deduction in the grade?
The problem is parents arguing that they want their kids to have them at all times. Then they call and text their kids all day during school. I even had a football coach call one of my students during class.
The culture of instant communication at all times is really killing our kids’ education. Parents just need to back the fuck off.
What good does that do when the parents go pick it up that day and give it to the kid? It’s the parents not following through with the punishment and cutting the authority of the school off at the knees.
If you do that as a teacher, not only will you be getting pushback from that student and others, but also said student’s parents.
When I was a kid, you respected teachers and if you didn’t, you got punished at school AND at home. These days parents are rude assholes too, and god forbid you try and correct their precious snowflake’s shitty behaviour.
And bans only really work if the school management has your back and make it a schoolwide ban. Otherwise it’s simply not worth the fight.
“When you were a kid…” No they fucking did not. Some kids have always been little shits and some “parents” only qualifications were functional gonads. It’s always been that way and always will.
Your memory is fading so you don’t remember.
https://news.ucsb.edu/2019/019669/kids-these-days
Just like many other distractions before them, phones take kids attention away from school activities. Kids have always looked to avoid classwork. Pre-cell phones, teachers were collecting comic books, different popular toys, friendship bracelets etc… it’s just the lastest issue on constant battle: Teachers try to get kids to learn, kids do everything they can to avoid it.
Most schools around here have implemented a no phone policy during class. If the phone is out, it’s sent to the office for them to collect at the end of the day.
Because of this policy, in my kids middle school some very talented kids are creatively bypassing school controls on their Chromebooks to play games. It’s an ongoing battle between a loosely organized group of 50 kids and the schools IT department. By my count the IT has squashed 9 different versions each more sophisticated than the last. The kids are hands down winning right now with a truly elegant and devious solution.
While I agree students shouldn’t be distracted with their phones during class I don’t think enacting a law is the best remedy for the malady. This aught to be resolved by school district or even just a classroom policy.
The issue with local policy like that is that school boards or individual teachers are hugely susceptible to parental rage. Countless teachers will talk about how every parent has some reason why little Timmy just absolutely must have his TikTok machine on him at all times, just in case his mom needs to text him and can’t be bothered to call the school office.
Having some state-level precedent makes this much easier for local officials, who can just say that they’re following state guidelines.
That’s a fair point. But what’s worse for a student, not paying attention in class or getting a cop sent into the classroom to arrest/assault them?
If it’s a law, and the school has a cop on premises it’s just a question of when will a teacher ask a cop to deal with it.
I am not sure if a law enforced by the government and courtrooms without much room for exception is the best idea. What if a student genuinely needs a phone in class?
Why couldn’t the precedent be a school policy similar to how some schools might have a uniform policy? Why would it be easier to enforce a uniform policy than a no phone policy?
Also, what is the difference between a highschool and a college interms of phone use during class?
To be very clear, I was not suggesting that a cop arrest a student for opening Instagram.
My point is that schools will be significantly more able to resist parental pressure when the school boards quite literally do not have the authority to make the decision. Perhaps there is some room for exceptions with legitimate need, but I’d argue that the bar needs to be pretty high for that, because again, it was in fact possible for students to attend school without phones for essentially all of human history. If a parent really needs to get a message to a student, they can call the office.
You are assuming that the only reason for a student to have a smartphone in class is to make a call.
Besides special needs students that may require their own set of regulations if laws are to be drafted. We are only considering what smartphones are currently capable of. What if in the future they are capable of things that are considered essential learning tools? If a law was passed to blanket ban specific devices or sweep up even more technology then it will be hard to revoke when required.
The school system already has all the tools it needs to deal with distractions in the classroom. The issue at hand seems to be more a systemic one than a technological one.
has some reason why little Timmy just absolutely must have his TikTok machine on him at all times, just in case his mom needs to text him and can’t be bothered to call the school office
And that’s a problem why exactly? Why is every comment here pretending that there is either being glued to the screen of your phone or having it locked away, no inbetween?
Schools can somehow enforce completely rediculous clothign regulations but “the phone stays in your bag unless it’s an emergency” is somehow impossible because it’s some kind of law of nature that you must stare at the screen 24/7.
Do you want to have to watch your 25+ students every minute to enforce your rule, or would you like to teach your lesson?
I don’t have kids, and when I was in school no one had phones, so I’m way out of the loop, but there were various electronic devices that could be a distraction. Portable music players, handheld games, even a graphing calculator in a non-math or science class, any one of these would have been confiscated if used during class.
I can not think of a single reason a student should have access to a phone during class that can’t be solved another way.
I don’t think the issue is that teachers don’t want to take away the distractions, it’s more that they aren’t given the needed authority any more.
Students have notably less respect for their teachers and will often simply refuse to obey, and physically forcing them is obviously out of the question. Not to mention the absolute shitstorm that breaks over any teacher when one of the students complains at home and so invokes the fury of a helicopter parent.
We used to sneak Tiger electronic handheld games into class. Just put it in your lap and pretend you were reading the textbook.
I mean yeah, we got caught sometimes. But not often enough to stop doing it.
The scourge in my grade school was Rubik’s Cubes.
would have been stolen*
What I actually like about phones in classrooms is a transparency. Every fuck up like teacher being rude or kids picking fights with each other would be recorded from a couple of angles. 20-30 teens collected together in a small room and feel bored is a recipe for something to happen, especially when teacher is that bad at getting their attention. That’s a highlighted reason why the same law was introduced in my country - to defend teachers from responsibility while they are to indocrinate youth with things even kids don’t find believable and use force if necessary.
If you are into surveillance wouldn’t it be easier to just install cameras everywhere and record everything? Then phone can stay away and locked.
To be clear, I’m not advocating for this, it sounds like a 1984 nightmare. It’s just that you don’t need kids with phones to enact surveillance
As someone with severe ADHD, if I don’t have something to listen to(through headphones obviously) or to mess with in my hands, I can pay attention to about 3 words before I am completely distracted with how the ceiling tiling looks. I get that a lot of students simply don’t pay attention as a result of their phone, but for some of us, it’s the only reason we can pay attention.
Not to mention, ebooks are a thing, and when you’re pirating them you don’t have to worry about overdue fees or your book getting stolen/damaged.
Final point, a lot of my teachers were dogshit, so learning from Wikipedia and other sources was vastly more entertaining and informative than listening to them try to explain addition to that dumbass in the back for the 8th time when he can’t even read
On the other hand, this is how we know about teachers doing things they absolutely shouldn’t do.
I read books in class. I drew pictures in class. I just looked out the window and daydreamed. Kids aren’t going to pay attention just because you take away their phones.
EDIT: I’m honestly amazed people are against that. Are you not aware that this is why we have videos like this that expose racist teachers?
https://abc7.com/fontana-sequoia-middle-school-teacher-racial-slur/13092208/
I’m bored and could use the downvotes, so here are a bunch more examples of students filming teachers doing things that are unacceptable or just plain illegal in class because they have their phones:
https://www.wdbo.com/news/news/local/student-films-teacher-whipping-students-belt/nmJzW/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/student-teacher-qanon-video-shouting-b1951071.html
https://www.yourtango.com/news/video-math-teacher-mimicking-native-american-culture
https://www.yourtango.com/news/california-teacher-robert-bean-threatening-slam-student-against-wall
Wow, that math one! They did the same thing in my kid’s math class! It was during Covid, so the teacher recorded it himself without a second thought! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!
I hear what you’re saying about recording. But Im not sure phones in class are the answer.
I don’t know what other answer there is to stop teachers getting away with this shit. The racism and sexual harassment I saw on display when I was going to school in Indiana in the 80s and 90s was not a secret. But since it was always the teacher’s word against the kid’s, the teacher always got away with it. The only time I can think of that it didn’t happen was when a very devoted girl and her family in my high school spent a lot of time and money in court suing a teacher who sexually harassed her in middle school. He had his job the whole time (he was finally fired when he lost the case).
Security cameras in classes? They have them on busses.
Exactly. If a student doesn’t want to pay attention, it won’t.
Removed by mod
I think the exposing teachers part is even more important. I edited my post to show a link to a student who filmed a teacher being racist above.
Here’s another link to another incident to show that isn’t a one-off
https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article275311416.html
I got all kinds of mistreatment by teachers in school and saw even worse stuff happen to other kids. Racism, sexual harassment, violent threats, etc. But we didn’t have phones with cameras in them back in the early 90s, so they got away with it. They can’t anymore… unless they ban phones, of course.
EDIT: I don’t suppose one of the many downvoters would take the time to explain why giving children the ability to expose teachers like this should be taken away from them in the name of getting kids to pay attention.
EDIT: I don’t suppose one of the many downvoters would take the time to explain why giving children the ability to expose teachers like this should be taken away from them in the name of getting kids to pay attention.
To give you a genuine response, it is at least conceivable that the potential harm caused by allowing students with adolescent brains constant access to platforms that are explicitly and intentionally designed to be as addictive and distracting as possible is greater than the positive impact of outing the occasional bigoted teacher.
I’m not saying this is definitively the case because I’m neither a sociologist nor a psychologist, but I think it’s fair to say that we can objectively state that this is at least possible.
If it is because people think it’s occasional, I hope they’ve changed their minds now that I’ve posted 7 links. 5 of them I found within a few minutes of searching (all five in total, not each). The other two I found instantly.
Because I disagree entirely that this potential harm is worse than the actual harm on these videos.
I don’t think throwing any amount of links at each other is a particularly productive way of answering the question. I can just as easily find an equal number of reports from teachers saying how keeping kids off their phones is nearly impossible and makes it much harder to actually teach. Plenty of teachers would strongly disagree that social media is merely a ‘potential’ harm.
Reports from teachers vs. actual video evidence are not really comparable, are they?
Because the former goes back to the old problem of their words against the child’s, which is exactly why cameras are helpful.
If there is actually data backing up what those teachers claim, fine. But otherwise we’re talking about subjective claims vs. objective video, the latter exposing activity that should be a firing offense at least if not necessitating criminal charges.
Sure thing, here’s some random studies.
About two-thirds of U.S. students reported that they get distracted by using digital devices, and about 54 percent said they get distracted by other students who are using those resources, the PISA results found.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5648953/
The main findings of the study were that 67% of students were distracted by use of cell phones and 21% of them were extremely disturbed and it affected their learning.
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1350.pdf
We find that following a ban on phone use, student test scores improve by 6.41% of a standard deviation. Our results indicate that there are no significant gains in student performance if a ban is not widely complied with. Furthermore, this effect is driven by the most disadvantaged and underachieving pupils. Students in the lowest quartile of prior achievement gain 14.23% of a standard deviation, whilst, students in the top quartile are neither positively nor negatively affected by a phone ban. The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the mobile phone policy. This also implies that any negative externalities from phone use do not impact on the high achieving students. Schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools.
Students themselves report phones being significantly distracting, including to other people that aren’t using them, and there’s even evidence that banning phones directly increases student performance, especially amongst low-performing students.
How does this compare against the benefits of exposing teacher bigotry? I won’t pretend to know how to quantify that, but I’m not making the positive claim that banning phones is necessarily worth the loss of ability to expose teachers. My only point is that it is plausible that this is the case, and I think I’ve supplied decent evidence for that. Policy questions very rarely are between “good option” and “bad option”, but rather “bad option” vs “worse option”.
This is a result of the US teaching for arbitrary ass tests, pushing bullshit curriculums, and using 40 hour school weeks + homework as a prepping ground for their shitty 9-5 future job, while underpaying + under supporting teachers. This isn’t a “moody kids with phone” problem. Are phones an issue in classrooms everywhere? Yes. Could kids use less screentime? Yes. Is the US schooling system a well studied topic of how not to construct teaching curriculums for children? Also yes.
I’m leaning the other way on this. Give them tasks to do with their phones. Put the phones to work.
Anything that has a student’s attention is a potential route of engagement. Employing that route is infinitely better than banning it.
“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”
-Marshall McLuhan
Smartphones are not purely entertainment machines. They are super connected, extremely portable computers.
You could connect a Bluetooth keyboard to a phone and use it to take notes.
You could ask the class to search the internet for examples or interesting facts.
There are a lot of ways a teacher can utilize students smartphones in a classroom. Ways that might help students understand technology better in a modern world.
Your comment has nothing to do with the quote I’ve provided. Other than you possibly misunderstanding it.
Heh, you’re right. I misunderstood the meaning of why you posted that quote. Maybe you could add your intentions next time as quotes are often misunderstood and misrepresented. I have a similar issue.
What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.
-Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
Maybe reread it?
Idk dude. Google it.
Edit: gotta love the angry downvote. 😂
Have you tried earning people’s attention instead of demanding it?
Also any kind of emergency can happen while a kid is at school, the obvious one for the americans is an active shooter but it could be anything even an earth quake or other disaster where it all of a sudden becomes very important for each student to have their own line of communication available.
People always say this, but somehow society and schools did manage to function before 2008.
We know that access to phones causes significantly worse student performance. Is it really worth harming all students’ ability to learn just so that, in the event of a rare emergency, a family can get an “all good” message a little bit faster? Schools were perfectly able to locate and track their students during emergencies and notify families before smartphones existed, speaking as someone who was in an extreme weather emergency during school myself during that time.
Yeah, I feel like the only way it would be useful is in the very unlikely event you somehow get cut off from everyone else. Parents likely can’t do anything useful until the emergency is over anyway and I don’t know who else you would call that the school wouldn’t already have called.
Why 2008? Why arbitrary year?
Phone safe on the wall. If there’s a good reason you can always access your phone, but you don’t have it in your hands while in class.
You don’t have to lock it up right away. In Germany, at least the school I went to, we’re allowed to have them on us, they have to stay in the pocket or bag and should at least be in do not disturb or silent mode. Otherwise, only then teachers take it away and you have to retrieve it from the admin office when you leave. (It’s more relaxed too in the last two years when you’re around 18, I’m pretty sure in a lot of classes I just had it on the desk when teachers didn’t mind. It still had to not cause distractions though.)
Generally this worked well (though, I left our equivalent of high school in 2019, no idea how it is now), except in some classes with oblivious teachers. But I feel like in those cases, you can make all the laws you want and it won’t fix shit.
In Germany, at least the school I went to, we’re allowed to have them on us, they have to stay in the pocket or bag and should at least be in do not disturb or silent mode.
It’s a perfectly reasonable policy that many, if not most, US Schools either had or still have. The problem is that Students are increasingly refusing to comply with Social Order rules like this and Teachers increasingly don’t have the authority or ability to enforce them when they’re broken. The policy only works when the majority of people willingly comply, just like nearly all of the other rules / policies / laws that society creates.
So what does a Teacher do when 15 of their 20 students have their phones out and are using them in class?
Teachers increasingly don’t have the authority or ability to enforce them when they’re broken.
Well, I feel like this is the main problem then. If teachers aren’t allowed to enforce any rules, what are we even talking about here. Especially kids will do anything they can get away with. (I certainly did my fair share of shenanigans too.)
The policy only works when the majority of people willingly comply, just like nearly all of the other rules / policies / laws that society creates.
So what does a Teacher do when 15 of their 20 students have their phones out and are using them in class?
Really? I think this is very different since it’s in a controlled environment with a relatively small group of people. Or at least, it should be. The teacher should very reasonably be able to take all of those away. And if not, here they certainly had the ability to escalate.
The teacher should very reasonably be able to take all of those away.
I agree that they should be, but increasingly they can’t. It’s being prevented by a bunch of entitled students and the dumb-ass parents that support them. Even in this Post here on Lemmy you can find people arguing that students should have on demand access to their smartphones.
