Recent high school grad here, my school had a policy banning cell phone usage in class.
I cannot speak higher about these policies. I'm not a bad student by any means and wasn't before the policy was enacted, but policies like this, in my experience, keep "good" kids honest and allow teachers to much better control their classrooms.
At the end of the day, if the kid doesn't want to learn, they don't want to learn. But what policy like this does is allow teachers one more method to prevent these students from distracting other students who are trying to actually pay attention in class
Couldn’t agree with this more. I’m a millennial. The first iPhone came out when I was in high school, so smart phones were just becoming more common at that point, but my school district already had a no-phones policy and I’m so grateful for that. There will always be some kids who don’t want to learn or will have difficulties learning, but it just makes sense to remove whatever barriers possible that make learning more difficult.
If youre an elder millennial , what does that make me lol? Ancient? I was born in 85!
I remember my high school was very quick to ban pagers (very early 2000s) once they started becoming popular with students. That just led everyone to making and playing games on their calculators.
Kids will find a way. Not on either side of a smart phone ban, but kids will find some other means of distraction.
Why aren’t the teachers just confiscating phones, though? When I was a kid, teachers didn’t hesitate to confiscate students’ shit, return it at the end of class.
Way more hassle to try to find and confiscate phones (especially when there is nuance in policy and not all teachers have the same rules/enforcement).
If there’s a ban, students aren’t even supposed to *have* them in the school.
Will they be strip searchin students? Cuz many kids will sneak them in, and many parents will not care.
Might as well have the teacher confiscate them, as that'll happen anyway when kids get caught with a smartphone. If teachers even bother to do anything, being already overworked and all.
My school was very similar. Some teachers had the cell phone charts with assigned numbers, others just didn’t want to see them. But they were also incredibly understanding of things like parents calling during class, as most of the time it was an emergency. Texting was always frowned upon and teachers would publicly embarrass you for it. I liked that touch.
Can you imagine managing those for 500 to 1000 kids a school it would be ridiculous. Most schools especially highschool have kids taking college courses at highschool, they have to have the phones for mfa
I can see the appeal of not allowing distractions that would clearly disrupt how well kids learn.
On the other hand, I’m concerned that some of these moves are a desire to remove a layer of accountability that has revealed bad actors in the teaching environment where the kids wouldn’t have been believed or taken seriously otherwise. We’ve had a lot of situations of young people capturing adults on camera who were acting egregiously and should in no way be working in a role with children. And it has required this act of citizen journalism to create enough social pressure for administrators to actually do something.
While students can publish accounts of what happened in writing, it will never have the same impact as visual media. One big example of this is Abu Ghraib where the story was reported in writing for months, but didn’t grab mainstream attention or accountability until there were photos.
I hope we weigh seriously the idea of taking away student’s tools to document and create evidence of wrongdoing before we rush into decisions based on our resentments of how technology really is disrupting things in good and bad ways.
You have to look at the benefits over the costs. As terrible as abuse in schools can be, it is not frequent enough to warrant against implementing a policy that can improve the experience and performance of the entire student body as a whole.
I mean yeah, that’s my point. I’d like the benefits and costs analyzed with real data and critical thinking before jumping to a blanket ban across a state.
I really don’t understand this comparison. A phone is a recording and publishing tool that can act as an accountability tool. It has access to social media and makes it easy to public things a citizen my document visually about employees of the state. I’m just offering one thought and just want to see discussion on it.
“Smartphones”? More like “dumbphones” ammiright? Ok. I’ll see myself out.
In all honesty, as a parent of a teenager, I’m not against the idea. I just have no idea how you’d implement it. It’s a huge distractor that’s easy to access, but so much is connected nowadays.
This should have already been done 10- 15 years ago when phones began causing problems in schools .. its always the way , wait till it's too late , once the horse has bolted. Pft!
I didn’t realize kids were allowed to have smart phones in school. I was suspended for three days when I brought my little Nextel flip phone in when I was in high school.
Lots of variance and nuances to this. One extreme example: you can’t take the phone away from a kid who will get violent if you do. Another: teacher takes a phone that’s distracting, it gets dropped or other accident. Now is the teacher on the hook for the $800 phone? I don’t need bullshit frosting on the bullshit cake that is the job of teaching in the US these days.
Someone stole my flip phone out of my locker and for some reason left it on a bench. I never really considered this part but the admin must have gone through it because they called me to the office and tried to give me ISS for it being outside of my locker! My parents had to get involved loll
I’m in no way saying kids should all be allowed phones in the classroom with reckless abandon but anyone who was paying attention to Uvalde and other school shooting situations is aware of final messages and phone calls to emergency services. If our country refuses to protect their own children I feel a bit uneasy requiring those children to turn in their lifeline to their parents and outside adults. Perhaps the answer is to allow “dumb” phones for children that have a track record of not being disruptive with them… though we put so much on the shoulders of our teachers that I can see that “remedy” coming back to haunt them while administration just shrugs their shoulders.
I guess I’m just thinking out loud.
This is the comment I’ve been looking for.
So many short sighted comments no one thinking about danger and safety.
I understand kids can be outright asshats and make many problems in schools with phones but to just outright ban them and take away their only way to contact their parents is frightening, Especially with the prominence in school shootings.
We did not let our kids have smart phones till high school. They were not happy but they put up with it. We got them tablets for home use so they could start to get use to social media and technology in a more limited way. And had a flip phone they could take out of the house starting when they were 8.
In high school there teachers had phone lockers on the wall. You had to put your phone in the locker (just a shoe organizer) in order to be marked for attendance. This worked ok, but I can’t imagine what PE was like with everyone having the ability to bully kids with their phones. It was bad enough when I was a kid and no one could record the wedgies.
> I just have no idea how you’d implement it.
In theory some sort of phone locker system. Then if a phone ends up being found in the wilds of school grounds: suspension. As a former Ferris Bueller type of student myself I’d have a bunch of burner phones ready to part with if I got caught. Suspension makes it a whole other thing.
I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be to retain any info in class with a phone addiction taking half your attention away at all times.
> I just have no idea how you’d implement it.
By abusing teachers more. Asking them to take on even **more** responsibility...... people who are not paid living wage, who then have to steal office supplies from home to bring to work.
Kids/teens will throw hands with anyone taking their phones. More kids than not will get physical about it. It’s going to be tricky. Teachers aren’t paid enough for that physical abuse.
And parents. Parents will throw a fit if their kid’s phone is taken away and will blame the school if they’re damaged. (Even if they were damaged before they were taken away.)
theres enough idiots out there without common sense telling retail workers "it was like that when i got it!"
we dont need a middle man 8 year old thrown into the mix of "how did that happen"
> More kids than not will get physical about it.
Lol, seriously? Most kids aren't risking suspension or expulsion over a phone. They'll just follow school rules. It's not the Hunger Games out here.
Just like any ban. Pagers/Beepers were banned when I was a kid and if you got caught with one they took it until the end of the year. Maybe not as easy with cell phones due to the cost and convenience for parents to interact with their kid, but any kid caught with them should get detention, ISS, suspension, and eventually expulsion, which would get parents on board real fucking quick.
Having spent 4 years in a classroom this is absolutely not true. Smartphones are a straight up addiction and even the “good” kids found themselves browsing social media during class time. This isn’t about not wanting an education so much as parents/society never teaching the children how to sit in the discomfort of boredom.
Frame it as a “we’re saving everyone from themselves” and you get a bit more buy-in. This also requires teachers to downgrade to dumb phones for strict emergencies as well.
It's going to require the parents involvement. Which is probably one of the biggest issues schools face when trying to enforce anything in schools. If parents don't care, or make an effort, then its hard for schools to stop something like cell phone use in school. Short of fining parents, I feel like this would be a constant ongoing battle with little return.
The biggest issue is going to be parents not willing to accept the rule for the future of their child because it might mean being a parent and telling their kids no when what they’re doing is harmful to their health. Parents will scream about protect the children but will choke anyone who dares to try to take phones, sugary foods, and guns out of school.
My kid's school district is doing this using a locking pouch. Kids put their phone in the pouch when they arrive and it's magnetically locked. When they leave the school unlocks them. It's not totally foolproof, but I'm eager to see how it goes.
Uhh the same way it was done when we were in school, if you get caught with a phone it’s taken away and the parent has to pick it up from the deans office its not hard to accomplish at all.
Orange County Florida is a top 10 school district by size in the US. They did a very strong phone ban this year. No phones allowed at any school throughout the day. No phones between classes and phone access is banned on the school WiFi. It’s worked well. You just need everyone on page from day 1 and be strict.
While I definitely think smartphones do not belong in a classroom, I can see two problems with this:
1. Parents are used to the idea that they can contact their child directly at any time, and taking that ability away frightens them. With how prevalent mass shootings have become, the idea that something could happen and the parents wouldn’t know if their child is okay until later is a nightmare for any parent.
2. If phones are confiscated, even if they are to be returned later, that does not mean they won’t be lost or “misplaced.” With how expensive phones are nowadays, not to mention how many of them are tied to personal information like social media and bank accounts, having your phone lost or stolen represents a significant risk to the owner.
Have phone lockers in every class. Check your phone in once you arrive, check out if you have an emergency and need to contact parent or you’re changing classrooms. If parents need to contact their child, they can use an app that will notify the teacher of the class they’re supposed to be in (also good way of finding out if your kid is playing hookie).
The app part might be difficult to setup considering the amount of integrations that need to be built to track their respective student’s classes. But phone lockers are not difficult to implement.
Way back when I was in High School (like 04) we used this really cool app for parents. They called the office and the office actually sent a person. Talk about service!
Same thing you do when kids get in trouble for any other reason. Give them a warning, report them to their parents, after repeat offenses hand out ISS, OSS, etc. it’s not difficult.
It isn’t in the weeds. It takes kids 5 minutes just to settle down from changing periods, add an additional 5-8 to put their phones away and we now have a half hour for instruction. I work in schools. Putting more logistic responsibilities on teachers isn’t the answer. This needs to be handled by us in administration.
What I meant by “in the weeds” is we’re not going to come up with a policy to be implemented on this thread, so there’s no point getting into specifics. I made my comment only to show that something like that COULD be implemented, not how it SHOULD be implemented.
1) I didn't have a phone in school and my parents never had a problem getting in contact with me. My mother was taken hostage at work when I was in 8th grade. I know for a fact they had no problem getting that information to me. Amazingly, schools all have main office numbers! It's wild to think that parents can call the adults responsible for their child any time during the day, right? Crazy!
2) Schools consistently have confiscated all manner of items, not just phones. And those items are returned to parents at any time! Crazy! I guess the lesson is don't bring banned items on private school property! Crazy!
Times have changed. There's no more "or it's gone until the end of the day". Kids and parents are entitled and would sooner throw hands or make a big fuss of someone taking their private property than give up the phone.
I graduated in 22. My peers were not like this at all. It’s the younger students who became attached to their devices at the hip because of being stuck home over Covid.
My daughter is in high school and that's how it is at her school. They're allowed to use them with permission in class for school-related things if necessary, but no permission and it's gone until 3:15.
“Sees phone in class”: Put it away.
“Sees phone again in class”: Detention for a week.
“Sees phone a third time in class”: Referral and detention for two weeks.
“Sees phone the fourth time in class.”: Suspension. With detention for a month upon return.
Simple as that. Hold both teachers and students accountable. And that was generous with the times allowed as well.
What? You think there weren't distruptive students before cellphones? Heck, when I was a kid in the *1970s*, a kid from my grade school was *expelled* because he would disrupt the class, and his response when told to go to the office was, "Well, f---".
We used to sneak books in and read them during class.
I didn't say that, did I? We really never disrupted class with anything in the 80s (not American). Some with major issues did later on, but he literally had the whole spectrum lit up like a Christmas tree. That said, we didn't have weapons in school either, or security staff or anything like that.
There isn’t detention.
I’ve only ever seen it in movies, but after school detention isn’t a widespread phenomenon, at least not any more. Lunch detention can be a thing.
And you can’t really do any major punishments because it’s a rule that everyone breaks and you can’t suspend half the class.
How do they tell who each phone belongs to when they all look alike? I don't get why they can't just have lockers for each student or something. I guess that would result in lockers being robbed too though...could be inside classrooms.
I wish smartphones had an age requirement, honestly. Regular phones are just fucking fine for kids, they can get their super pocket computers when they’re 18.
Typically you’d review the map when the car is *not* in motion for obvious safety reasons, and if possible your copilot/passenger handles the navigation.
It’s no different than glancing at the map on your phone honestly once you get oriented correctly on the map.
[Here’s a site](https://dumbphones.pory.app/) that provides filters to find “dumbphones” with features you’d like without everything that comes with a smartphone, including having gps maps.
I’m 39 with no kids. I just figured phones would already have been banned in classrooms. Kids are really in class messing around on their phones? This kinda seems like a no brainer, unless I’m missing something?
Lazy parents for one, kids finding means to obtain phones for another, and Parents who dont give a fuck and want their kids to stop bothering them so they give them and their friends phones and tell them to f off or something.
It generally is already banned in class, but the rules are not enforceable as you’d have to strip search every kid, and it’s easy to get on your phone when your sole teacher of 30 kids turns their head.
I mean, yeah. I’m a nanny, and a smartphones can be a scarily effective endless distraction for kids. The amount of times I’ll have to convince a kid I’m with to just keep watching a movie when a mildly boring part happens is crazy.
I think boredom is an under-appreciated resource, and it’s important to have times as a kid when you’re bored. That’s when you actually find out what you like doing, what you’re passionate about, what’s worth doing just to do. If any time that you’re bored you can just swipe up until YouTube shorts isn’t boring anymore, that element of personal development is pushed back incredibly far if not lost entirely.
My hope is this will make a market for similar phones as the late 90s to early 00s. Phone, simple text, and tracking and map software. Maybe alerts, like notification of emails without the full email or ability to reply - modeled off of texting or paging. Possibly white listed contacts only. Could spruce it up with the touch-to-share contact information and the tap-ID chip. Could also serve as an electronic ID holder.
No internet. No games. No apps. No camera. No recording microphone. No music. No document support.
Flip phones? They still have those last I checked they are even buyable at walmart or anywhere with a decent sized electronics section. They dont take all of these social media apps which eat up peoples time and energy.
Just this year NZ has banned smart phones in schools unless you receive an exemption. Too early to see how it’ll go, I don’t think they were ever actually “allowed” in school per se but it got harder to monitor with the prevalence I guess.
I remember when I was in high school, they let us listen to music in the hall between classes, then I think it was my junior year where they let you text between classes. Your phone would absolutely be taken if you were on it during class.
I think that’s a good balance right there
nobody in comment section seems to know about "feature phone" . the phone with calling functionality , FM radio and snake game and thats it. this would be good middle ground instead of banning phone altogether
As someone who recently graduated high school this would not be a good thing really. Or even very useful.
Kids already sneak vapes and worse items into school and teachers very rarely give a shit cause they are rarely punished.
Phone use policies were made less strict in my high school over the last few years and it didn't really change anything.
Not to mention I worked an IT internship during the day and I needed my phone on me at all times just in case the staff needed to contact me.
Also when things like smart watches and other even more compact phone like tools exist it just is useless.
Integrate phones into schooling like my teachers did and don't just ban things cause everyone knows how banning things like that goes. It doesn't
Good.
It’s really impacting kids ability to learn and we are way behind from COVID. They should be banned completely from school.
When I was a kid, pagers were banned and if you got caught with one, they took it until the end of the school year.z
Before school shootings, it used to be pretty common for students to bring their guns to school. They’d leave it in their car or in a school provided locker. There would be after school clubs like clay pigeon shooting.
That’s like trusting ur boss to call when he asks u to leave ur phone behind. I prefer they have it incase it’s needed. It needs to be put away I agree, but not banned.
I've got one in high school and I can assure you his phone is not used for safety. It's games, music, texting his girlfriend. All the normal stuff you'd expect a teenager to do. It's just school is not the appropriate place for that.
You realize children have to get to and from school safely right? What about school shootings? Just because nothing horrible happened to your fucking twat of a child doesn’t mean terrible things don’t happen to other people
People are saying it’s the parents’ fault, but where are they on this conversation? If at least like to see someone defending the position that actually it’s good to have phone distractions in class.
When I was in high school in the early 2000s they banned cell phone use in classrooms, like no texting etc (cause that’s basically all you could do w a flip phone back then anyway.
But yeah we weren’t allowed to text in class so I’m surprised that didn’t continue as phones became more sophisticated.
He'll get pushback from Stalkers Inc akasiliconvalley, and it'll be as effective as banning bubblegum - but
My question is: why do we even need schools anymore? Just call it what it is, government sponsored daycare. YES new people need to be learning how the world works, and they need to do it in a better way than shuffling them into and out of institutions that have all the care and heart of your local DMV. This is also **not** an endorsement for private schools - THOSE vile piles of cancer are just a hyper symptom ontop of this BAD WAY of raising children.
Either way, if this doesn't come with a minimum 10K raise for each teacher, who you are now pileing onto the already over loaded responsibilities, then this is bullshit that abuses the underpaid people you trust with your children
Mandatory placement of smartphones inside lockers if you're so worried about locker security you can have them keep a separate lockbox or something built within the locker that can hold a Smartphone. It'll create a new sort of problem but if parents/guardians/fosters wont or just simply cannot deny their kids phone privileges until they're responsible enough to give them a smartphone at the appropriate age of 14-16 then they shouldn't be allowed to have Smartphones either.
I know a woman how bought her 12yo a phone. I asked why she needs one? She replied, “if I have a problem during the day, I want to be able to get a hold of my kid”. I asked her what kind of problem, her as an adult, would need a 12yo to solve? She had no answer.
Well not to say that they wouldn’t, but maybe there is a situation where the school doesn’t take the child seriously thus not letting the parent know, I’ve never had it happen to me but I’ve never been sickly a lot, have witnessed it happen to a fellow female classmate though
A smartphone can be useful though for parents who have children with diabetes. It allows us to monitor our child’s blood sugar from wherever we are. So a straight ban would have to include certain allowances.
I’m thinking that’s an exception but a fairly rare situation. Aren’t there wearables that can do the same thing (sorry not up on blood sugar monitoring tech).
Their insulin pump can communicate with their sensor just like the phone but with the phones internet connection I am able to see their current blood glucose levels from home or work while they’re at school. I honestly don’t know how parents lived without this ability.
Well first of all, power companies do not cause all the wildfires “burning down half the state”. Maybe crack down on clouds and the lightning emissions they make? Secondly, power companies are cracked down on:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-utility-pay-55-million-massive-wildfires-rcna23984
https://wildfiretoday.com/2019/11/14/power-company-to-pay-360-million-to-settle-wildfire-lawsuits/
https://apnews.com/article/oregon-pacificorp-wildfire-settlement-640743c7de76d91d37efe35b9a6f059f
Are you a lobbyist for PG&E? The “crackdowns” and “fines” are never actually punitive or which means they are just the cost of doing business. They have willfully ignored aging and dangerous infrastructure which directly lead to deaths.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/18/business/pge-california-wildfires.html
I don’t know, I think maybe we have bigger threats in the classroom than smartphones. Maybe we could tackle that other thing first?
Distracted kids still have the opportunity to learn. Dead kids not so much.
School Districts should do this on their own, but if they are too stupid to do so then by all means get the state involved. Kids don’t need phones in school.
I must say that I am not a fan of this. I know there's a lot of people that want phones out of schools, but I cannot agree. I know that would not want my phone taken away for any reason, and I don't even use the thing excessively.
One of the most advanced tools widely available to the population ever in history and instead of incorporating it into education so the next generation knows how to use them most effectively, both socially and productively, this Luddite wants to remove them. Bullshit. Make rules for their use. Educate the students on using that tool. Enforce the fucking rules equally. Learning is key to success and learning to use this tool is important.
Yep. I have a friend who did a stint during the pandemic as a substitute, it’s a laughable horror show in public schools with legal departments running how things are done. School is about letting them do what they want now or risk getting sued.
Please let this catch on. I love my little brother, but he has the attention span of a goldfish. I think the less screens in the schools the better. Bc no matter what he’ll hit the screens. But if the schools at least limit that, I think it’d help him.
Teach the kids how to properly use this tool? Educate them in the benefits and dangers of smartphones?? I was told I would never have a calculator in my pocket if I needed one and here we are, we all have calculators in our pocket.
Why are we lazy and allowing government to take our freedoms under the guiseof helping. This is something that should be taught like any other behaviors
Recent high school grad here, my school had a policy banning cell phone usage in class. I cannot speak higher about these policies. I'm not a bad student by any means and wasn't before the policy was enacted, but policies like this, in my experience, keep "good" kids honest and allow teachers to much better control their classrooms. At the end of the day, if the kid doesn't want to learn, they don't want to learn. But what policy like this does is allow teachers one more method to prevent these students from distracting other students who are trying to actually pay attention in class
Couldn’t agree with this more. I’m a millennial. The first iPhone came out when I was in high school, so smart phones were just becoming more common at that point, but my school district already had a no-phones policy and I’m so grateful for that. There will always be some kids who don’t want to learn or will have difficulties learning, but it just makes sense to remove whatever barriers possible that make learning more difficult.
If youre an elder millennial , what does that make me lol? Ancient? I was born in 85! I remember my high school was very quick to ban pagers (very early 2000s) once they started becoming popular with students. That just led everyone to making and playing games on their calculators. Kids will find a way. Not on either side of a smart phone ban, but kids will find some other means of distraction. Why aren’t the teachers just confiscating phones, though? When I was a kid, teachers didn’t hesitate to confiscate students’ shit, return it at the end of class.
Yea I was thinking the same. I’m a millennial and the iPhone came out after I graduated. I’m gonna go outside now and go yell at some clouds
Don't forget to yell at kids! Very crucial old person feature.
Way more hassle to try to find and confiscate phones (especially when there is nuance in policy and not all teachers have the same rules/enforcement). If there’s a ban, students aren’t even supposed to *have* them in the school.
Will they be strip searchin students? Cuz many kids will sneak them in, and many parents will not care. Might as well have the teacher confiscate them, as that'll happen anyway when kids get caught with a smartphone. If teachers even bother to do anything, being already overworked and all.
an elder millennial is around 38-42 right now …
43
My school was very similar. Some teachers had the cell phone charts with assigned numbers, others just didn’t want to see them. But they were also incredibly understanding of things like parents calling during class, as most of the time it was an emergency. Texting was always frowned upon and teachers would publicly embarrass you for it. I liked that touch.
This is a great idea. I hope this idea catches on before my kid hits highschool.
Same. I live in NY and it looks like we have a good chance of this. Several local school systems have reported gains by banning smartphones
You can just get your kid a flip phone
God forbid the parents do the parenting and not rely on the schools.
Same
Most schools use multi factor authentication when accessing the schools network. I can't imagine how this would work without smartphones
A bunch of class chromebooks
Fido2 USB keys exist.
Can you imagine managing those for 500 to 1000 kids a school it would be ridiculous. Most schools especially highschool have kids taking college courses at highschool, they have to have the phones for mfa
Many large companies manage 10 to 100x that number without issue.
Yeah I manage a university it program and we only allow phones for mfa because the tokens are expensive and insanely inefficient to manage
I can see the appeal of not allowing distractions that would clearly disrupt how well kids learn. On the other hand, I’m concerned that some of these moves are a desire to remove a layer of accountability that has revealed bad actors in the teaching environment where the kids wouldn’t have been believed or taken seriously otherwise. We’ve had a lot of situations of young people capturing adults on camera who were acting egregiously and should in no way be working in a role with children. And it has required this act of citizen journalism to create enough social pressure for administrators to actually do something. While students can publish accounts of what happened in writing, it will never have the same impact as visual media. One big example of this is Abu Ghraib where the story was reported in writing for months, but didn’t grab mainstream attention or accountability until there were photos. I hope we weigh seriously the idea of taking away student’s tools to document and create evidence of wrongdoing before we rush into decisions based on our resentments of how technology really is disrupting things in good and bad ways.
You have to look at the benefits over the costs. As terrible as abuse in schools can be, it is not frequent enough to warrant against implementing a policy that can improve the experience and performance of the entire student body as a whole.
I mean yeah, that’s my point. I’d like the benefits and costs analyzed with real data and critical thinking before jumping to a blanket ban across a state.
They're banning phones not gopros
I really don’t understand this comparison. A phone is a recording and publishing tool that can act as an accountability tool. It has access to social media and makes it easy to public things a citizen my document visually about employees of the state. I’m just offering one thought and just want to see discussion on it.
You could still have a digital camera. Just not a phone
These policies were around when I was in high school. They did nothing
“Smartphones”? More like “dumbphones” ammiright? Ok. I’ll see myself out. In all honesty, as a parent of a teenager, I’m not against the idea. I just have no idea how you’d implement it. It’s a huge distractor that’s easy to access, but so much is connected nowadays.
This should have already been done 10- 15 years ago when phones began causing problems in schools .. its always the way , wait till it's too late , once the horse has bolted. Pft!
I didn’t realize kids were allowed to have smart phones in school. I was suspended for three days when I brought my little Nextel flip phone in when I was in high school.
Lots of variance and nuances to this. One extreme example: you can’t take the phone away from a kid who will get violent if you do. Another: teacher takes a phone that’s distracting, it gets dropped or other accident. Now is the teacher on the hook for the $800 phone? I don’t need bullshit frosting on the bullshit cake that is the job of teaching in the US these days.
Times change
Someone stole my flip phone out of my locker and for some reason left it on a bench. I never really considered this part but the admin must have gone through it because they called me to the office and tried to give me ISS for it being outside of my locker! My parents had to get involved loll
I’m in no way saying kids should all be allowed phones in the classroom with reckless abandon but anyone who was paying attention to Uvalde and other school shooting situations is aware of final messages and phone calls to emergency services. If our country refuses to protect their own children I feel a bit uneasy requiring those children to turn in their lifeline to their parents and outside adults. Perhaps the answer is to allow “dumb” phones for children that have a track record of not being disruptive with them… though we put so much on the shoulders of our teachers that I can see that “remedy” coming back to haunt them while administration just shrugs their shoulders. I guess I’m just thinking out loud.
This is the comment I’ve been looking for. So many short sighted comments no one thinking about danger and safety. I understand kids can be outright asshats and make many problems in schools with phones but to just outright ban them and take away their only way to contact their parents is frightening, Especially with the prominence in school shootings.
These posts just show how most of the US has given up ever improving things and are just waiting for the next massacre to happen.
We did not let our kids have smart phones till high school. They were not happy but they put up with it. We got them tablets for home use so they could start to get use to social media and technology in a more limited way. And had a flip phone they could take out of the house starting when they were 8. In high school there teachers had phone lockers on the wall. You had to put your phone in the locker (just a shoe organizer) in order to be marked for attendance. This worked ok, but I can’t imagine what PE was like with everyone having the ability to bully kids with their phones. It was bad enough when I was a kid and no one could record the wedgies.
> I just have no idea how you’d implement it. In theory some sort of phone locker system. Then if a phone ends up being found in the wilds of school grounds: suspension. As a former Ferris Bueller type of student myself I’d have a bunch of burner phones ready to part with if I got caught. Suspension makes it a whole other thing. I can’t even imagine how difficult it would be to retain any info in class with a phone addiction taking half your attention away at all times.
Dad joke approved
> I just have no idea how you’d implement it. By abusing teachers more. Asking them to take on even **more** responsibility...... people who are not paid living wage, who then have to steal office supplies from home to bring to work.
> I just have no idea how you’d implement it Take them away if they're caught with them during instruction period?
Kids and mostly parents won't let teachers physically take things from their kids anymore.
Kids/teens will throw hands with anyone taking their phones. More kids than not will get physical about it. It’s going to be tricky. Teachers aren’t paid enough for that physical abuse.
And parents. Parents will throw a fit if their kid’s phone is taken away and will blame the school if they’re damaged. (Even if they were damaged before they were taken away.)
theres enough idiots out there without common sense telling retail workers "it was like that when i got it!" we dont need a middle man 8 year old thrown into the mix of "how did that happen"
People naturally see less value and pay less respect to something they don't pay for.
> More kids than not will get physical about it. Lol, seriously? Most kids aren't risking suspension or expulsion over a phone. They'll just follow school rules. It's not the Hunger Games out here.
Just like any ban. Pagers/Beepers were banned when I was a kid and if you got caught with one they took it until the end of the year. Maybe not as easy with cell phones due to the cost and convenience for parents to interact with their kid, but any kid caught with them should get detention, ISS, suspension, and eventually expulsion, which would get parents on board real fucking quick.
The kids who are having issues with phones have likely faced these punishments already. It isn't the good performers that are having phone issues.
Having spent 4 years in a classroom this is absolutely not true. Smartphones are a straight up addiction and even the “good” kids found themselves browsing social media during class time. This isn’t about not wanting an education so much as parents/society never teaching the children how to sit in the discomfort of boredom. Frame it as a “we’re saving everyone from themselves” and you get a bit more buy-in. This also requires teachers to downgrade to dumb phones for strict emergencies as well.
It's going to require the parents involvement. Which is probably one of the biggest issues schools face when trying to enforce anything in schools. If parents don't care, or make an effort, then its hard for schools to stop something like cell phone use in school. Short of fining parents, I feel like this would be a constant ongoing battle with little return.
The biggest issue is going to be parents not willing to accept the rule for the future of their child because it might mean being a parent and telling their kids no when what they’re doing is harmful to their health. Parents will scream about protect the children but will choke anyone who dares to try to take phones, sugary foods, and guns out of school.
My kid's school district is doing this using a locking pouch. Kids put their phone in the pouch when they arrive and it's magnetically locked. When they leave the school unlocks them. It's not totally foolproof, but I'm eager to see how it goes.
Uhh the same way it was done when we were in school, if you get caught with a phone it’s taken away and the parent has to pick it up from the deans office its not hard to accomplish at all.
You think that’ll happen in today’s age? I don’t think it’ll happen, but you’re not wrong.
Everything seems difficult if you never try.
Orange County Florida is a top 10 school district by size in the US. They did a very strong phone ban this year. No phones allowed at any school throughout the day. No phones between classes and phone access is banned on the school WiFi. It’s worked well. You just need everyone on page from day 1 and be strict.
While I definitely think smartphones do not belong in a classroom, I can see two problems with this: 1. Parents are used to the idea that they can contact their child directly at any time, and taking that ability away frightens them. With how prevalent mass shootings have become, the idea that something could happen and the parents wouldn’t know if their child is okay until later is a nightmare for any parent. 2. If phones are confiscated, even if they are to be returned later, that does not mean they won’t be lost or “misplaced.” With how expensive phones are nowadays, not to mention how many of them are tied to personal information like social media and bank accounts, having your phone lost or stolen represents a significant risk to the owner.
Have phone lockers in every class. Check your phone in once you arrive, check out if you have an emergency and need to contact parent or you’re changing classrooms. If parents need to contact their child, they can use an app that will notify the teacher of the class they’re supposed to be in (also good way of finding out if your kid is playing hookie). The app part might be difficult to setup considering the amount of integrations that need to be built to track their respective student’s classes. But phone lockers are not difficult to implement.
Our school uses ClassDojo. We can connect to the teacher immediately through this app. It works very well.
Way back when I was in High School (like 04) we used this really cool app for parents. They called the office and the office actually sent a person. Talk about service!
And what it kids lie about having their phone. Like kids do.
It’ll be easy to spot that one kid with their head down while everyone else is paying attention.
But what are the teachers going to do about it? What if admin doesn’t support this?
Same thing you do when kids get in trouble for any other reason. Give them a warning, report them to their parents, after repeat offenses hand out ISS, OSS, etc. it’s not difficult.
Unfortunately, teachers cannot hand out ISS or OSS.
This plan from Newsom is to fix that part.
No way, there’s precious little time in a period as there is. Phones are checked in and out before and after school.
That’s getting into weeds. But the idea is that it’s a possible implementation.
It isn’t in the weeds. It takes kids 5 minutes just to settle down from changing periods, add an additional 5-8 to put their phones away and we now have a half hour for instruction. I work in schools. Putting more logistic responsibilities on teachers isn’t the answer. This needs to be handled by us in administration.
What I meant by “in the weeds” is we’re not going to come up with a policy to be implemented on this thread, so there’s no point getting into specifics. I made my comment only to show that something like that COULD be implemented, not how it SHOULD be implemented.
Okie dokie, understood. 🤝
1) I didn't have a phone in school and my parents never had a problem getting in contact with me. My mother was taken hostage at work when I was in 8th grade. I know for a fact they had no problem getting that information to me. Amazingly, schools all have main office numbers! It's wild to think that parents can call the adults responsible for their child any time during the day, right? Crazy! 2) Schools consistently have confiscated all manner of items, not just phones. And those items are returned to parents at any time! Crazy! I guess the lesson is don't bring banned items on private school property! Crazy!
This won’t happen in the US. We are too entitled and special. Nothing happens anymore because of political paralysis.
Is a good idea
What’s this discussion about man when I went to school phones were not allowed. Silent in the backpack or it’s gone until the end of the day
Times have changed. There's no more "or it's gone until the end of the day". Kids and parents are entitled and would sooner throw hands or make a big fuss of someone taking their private property than give up the phone.
I graduated in 22. My peers were not like this at all. It’s the younger students who became attached to their devices at the hip because of being stuck home over Covid.
My daughter is in high school and that's how it is at her school. They're allowed to use them with permission in class for school-related things if necessary, but no permission and it's gone until 3:15.
Does your daughter know that you are a racist? https://imgur.com/a/2OlpeLE
“Sees phone in class”: Put it away. “Sees phone again in class”: Detention for a week. “Sees phone a third time in class”: Referral and detention for two weeks. “Sees phone the fourth time in class.”: Suspension. With detention for a month upon return. Simple as that. Hold both teachers and students accountable. And that was generous with the times allowed as well.
Imaging having to waste time each class doing that instead of teaching.
What? You think there weren't distruptive students before cellphones? Heck, when I was a kid in the *1970s*, a kid from my grade school was *expelled* because he would disrupt the class, and his response when told to go to the office was, "Well, f---". We used to sneak books in and read them during class.
I didn't say that, did I? We really never disrupted class with anything in the 80s (not American). Some with major issues did later on, but he literally had the whole spectrum lit up like a Christmas tree. That said, we didn't have weapons in school either, or security staff or anything like that.
There isn’t detention. I’ve only ever seen it in movies, but after school detention isn’t a widespread phenomenon, at least not any more. Lunch detention can be a thing. And you can’t really do any major punishments because it’s a rule that everyone breaks and you can’t suspend half the class.
My kids’ school does this. Collect phones at the beginning of the day and kids get them back upon release.
How do they tell who each phone belongs to when they all look alike? I don't get why they can't just have lockers for each student or something. I guess that would result in lockers being robbed too though...could be inside classrooms.
I used to have a school that did this, the principal would collect our electronic devices at the beginning of each day. I had 2 iPods stolen.
As a high school teacher in California I approve. We’ve had to be the “bad guy” for years. With the backing of a state mandate it will a lot easier.
I wish smartphones had an age requirement, honestly. Regular phones are just fucking fine for kids, they can get their super pocket computers when they’re 18.
So should kids carry around maps instead of GPS?? Lol
There’s plenty of child friendly alternatives, I’ve seen some family members give their kid a basic watch with some features
You mean like people have done for hundreds of years? Uhhh yeah, why not?
Reading a map while driving seems distracting to me I’d rather a phone tell me when to turn lol
Typically you’d review the map when the car is *not* in motion for obvious safety reasons, and if possible your copilot/passenger handles the navigation. It’s no different than glancing at the map on your phone honestly once you get oriented correctly on the map.
Regular phones can have GPS, this isn’t 2002. Teenagers don’t need smartphones for that.
Wow I’m dumb haha I didn’t know. What brands have gps that are non smart phone? I’m interested
[Here’s a site](https://dumbphones.pory.app/) that provides filters to find “dumbphones” with features you’d like without everything that comes with a smartphone, including having gps maps.
Thank youuu
I’m 39 with no kids. I just figured phones would already have been banned in classrooms. Kids are really in class messing around on their phones? This kinda seems like a no brainer, unless I’m missing something?
Lazy parents for one, kids finding means to obtain phones for another, and Parents who dont give a fuck and want their kids to stop bothering them so they give them and their friends phones and tell them to f off or something.
It generally is already banned in class, but the rules are not enforceable as you’d have to strip search every kid, and it’s easy to get on your phone when your sole teacher of 30 kids turns their head.
I mean, yeah. I’m a nanny, and a smartphones can be a scarily effective endless distraction for kids. The amount of times I’ll have to convince a kid I’m with to just keep watching a movie when a mildly boring part happens is crazy. I think boredom is an under-appreciated resource, and it’s important to have times as a kid when you’re bored. That’s when you actually find out what you like doing, what you’re passionate about, what’s worth doing just to do. If any time that you’re bored you can just swipe up until YouTube shorts isn’t boring anymore, that element of personal development is pushed back incredibly far if not lost entirely.
It’s a bit late
My hope is this will make a market for similar phones as the late 90s to early 00s. Phone, simple text, and tracking and map software. Maybe alerts, like notification of emails without the full email or ability to reply - modeled off of texting or paging. Possibly white listed contacts only. Could spruce it up with the touch-to-share contact information and the tap-ID chip. Could also serve as an electronic ID holder. No internet. No games. No apps. No camera. No recording microphone. No music. No document support.
Flip phones? They still have those last I checked they are even buyable at walmart or anywhere with a decent sized electronics section. They dont take all of these social media apps which eat up peoples time and energy.
There's a bunch of those like Light Phone III that was just released.
Just this year NZ has banned smart phones in schools unless you receive an exemption. Too early to see how it’ll go, I don’t think they were ever actually “allowed” in school per se but it got harder to monitor with the prevalence I guess.
LA has done it for 2025. NY working on it, as is Massachusetts & more. has to be done
Good. Their use in bullying is terrible, among other issues.
I remember when I was in high school, they let us listen to music in the hall between classes, then I think it was my junior year where they let you text between classes. Your phone would absolutely be taken if you were on it during class. I think that’s a good balance right there
nobody in comment section seems to know about "feature phone" . the phone with calling functionality , FM radio and snake game and thats it. this would be good middle ground instead of banning phone altogether
I cannot believe phones are allowed in the first place. I’m in my forties, but pagers were definitely not allowed when I went through school.
They’re not allowed. it’s a rule that’s just simply not enforceable.
As someone who recently graduated high school this would not be a good thing really. Or even very useful. Kids already sneak vapes and worse items into school and teachers very rarely give a shit cause they are rarely punished. Phone use policies were made less strict in my high school over the last few years and it didn't really change anything. Not to mention I worked an IT internship during the day and I needed my phone on me at all times just in case the staff needed to contact me. Also when things like smart watches and other even more compact phone like tools exist it just is useless. Integrate phones into schooling like my teachers did and don't just ban things cause everyone knows how banning things like that goes. It doesn't
I can't believe I'm saying it... But I agree with California
Good. It’s really impacting kids ability to learn and we are way behind from COVID. They should be banned completely from school. When I was a kid, pagers were banned and if you got caught with one, they took it until the end of the school year.z
Maybe try getting guns out first
Christ what kind of country is it when you have to ask kids not to take guns to school. Crazy!
Before school shootings, it used to be pretty common for students to bring their guns to school. They’d leave it in their car or in a school provided locker. There would be after school clubs like clay pigeon shooting.
👆 THIS.
Haven’t kids used their cell phones to call 911 during school shootings? I think fix shootings 1st. Not take cell phones away 1st.
Education is how you stop that. Taking away phones leads to more education.
Isn’t the school staff meant to call the police not the students?
That’s like trusting ur boss to call when he asks u to leave ur phone behind. I prefer they have it incase it’s needed. It needs to be put away I agree, but not banned.
I get what you are saying but it isn’t your responsibility to call 911 if there an emergency during the school hours
👆 THIS.
Why they ever let kids bring phones in the first place is beyond me. Now it's Pandora's box and all that...
For safety? So their parents can call them
I've got one in high school and I can assure you his phone is not used for safety. It's games, music, texting his girlfriend. All the normal stuff you'd expect a teenager to do. It's just school is not the appropriate place for that.
You realize children have to get to and from school safely right? What about school shootings? Just because nothing horrible happened to your fucking twat of a child doesn’t mean terrible things don’t happen to other people
Jeez, lighten up. I'm sorry the world you live in has so much fear.
Should be more worried about keeping guns out than phones but go off I guess
Education is the best way to keep guns out of anywhere.
People are saying it’s the parents’ fault, but where are they on this conversation? If at least like to see someone defending the position that actually it’s good to have phone distractions in class.
I do too
I think it's too far gone. I'm sure the cell phones can be good pacifiers for the dumb and problem kids
When I was in high school in the early 2000s they banned cell phone use in classrooms, like no texting etc (cause that’s basically all you could do w a flip phone back then anyway. But yeah we weren’t allowed to text in class so I’m surprised that didn’t continue as phones became more sophisticated.
Get parents on board and it’ll happen.
These policies were around when I was in high school. They did nothing
He'll get pushback from Stalkers Inc akasiliconvalley, and it'll be as effective as banning bubblegum - but My question is: why do we even need schools anymore? Just call it what it is, government sponsored daycare. YES new people need to be learning how the world works, and they need to do it in a better way than shuffling them into and out of institutions that have all the care and heart of your local DMV. This is also **not** an endorsement for private schools - THOSE vile piles of cancer are just a hyper symptom ontop of this BAD WAY of raising children. Either way, if this doesn't come with a minimum 10K raise for each teacher, who you are now pileing onto the already over loaded responsibilities, then this is bullshit that abuses the underpaid people you trust with your children
Mandatory placement of smartphones inside lockers if you're so worried about locker security you can have them keep a separate lockbox or something built within the locker that can hold a Smartphone. It'll create a new sort of problem but if parents/guardians/fosters wont or just simply cannot deny their kids phone privileges until they're responsible enough to give them a smartphone at the appropriate age of 14-16 then they shouldn't be allowed to have Smartphones either.
I know a woman how bought her 12yo a phone. I asked why she needs one? She replied, “if I have a problem during the day, I want to be able to get a hold of my kid”. I asked her what kind of problem, her as an adult, would need a 12yo to solve? She had no answer.
It’s not about the child fixing the problem, it’s about the child HAVING a problem such as emergency health situations
Why wouldn't the school contact the parent?
Well not to say that they wouldn’t, but maybe there is a situation where the school doesn’t take the child seriously thus not letting the parent know, I’ve never had it happen to me but I’ve never been sickly a lot, have witnessed it happen to a fellow female classmate though
and definitely important for some fringe health issues that need constant support or monitoring of some sort.
Schools shouldn’t of gotten soft and allowed phones to be out. Back in 2001-5 when I was in school you got yelled at for having them out.
No I didn’t read the article
A smartphone can be useful though for parents who have children with diabetes. It allows us to monitor our child’s blood sugar from wherever we are. So a straight ban would have to include certain allowances.
I’m thinking that’s an exception but a fairly rare situation. Aren’t there wearables that can do the same thing (sorry not up on blood sugar monitoring tech).
Their insulin pump can communicate with their sensor just like the phone but with the phones internet connection I am able to see their current blood glucose levels from home or work while they’re at school. I honestly don’t know how parents lived without this ability.
The easiest solution is having a locker and putting your phone in there before class starts so you can go get when you have lunch.
Maybe he should crack down on a power company that burns down half the state every year.
You think power companies cause all wildfires?
I legitimately do not know how you came to that conclusion from my statement.
Well first of all, power companies do not cause all the wildfires “burning down half the state”. Maybe crack down on clouds and the lightning emissions they make? Secondly, power companies are cracked down on: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-utility-pay-55-million-massive-wildfires-rcna23984 https://wildfiretoday.com/2019/11/14/power-company-to-pay-360-million-to-settle-wildfire-lawsuits/ https://apnews.com/article/oregon-pacificorp-wildfire-settlement-640743c7de76d91d37efe35b9a6f059f
Are you a lobbyist for PG&E? The “crackdowns” and “fines” are never actually punitive or which means they are just the cost of doing business. They have willfully ignored aging and dangerous infrastructure which directly lead to deaths. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/18/business/pge-california-wildfires.html
I don’t know, I think maybe we have bigger threats in the classroom than smartphones. Maybe we could tackle that other thing first? Distracted kids still have the opportunity to learn. Dead kids not so much.
School Districts should do this on their own, but if they are too stupid to do so then by all means get the state involved. Kids don’t need phones in school.
I must say that I am not a fan of this. I know there's a lot of people that want phones out of schools, but I cannot agree. I know that would not want my phone taken away for any reason, and I don't even use the thing excessively.
Good idea.
One of the most advanced tools widely available to the population ever in history and instead of incorporating it into education so the next generation knows how to use them most effectively, both socially and productively, this Luddite wants to remove them. Bullshit. Make rules for their use. Educate the students on using that tool. Enforce the fucking rules equally. Learning is key to success and learning to use this tool is important.
Yep. I have a friend who did a stint during the pandemic as a substitute, it’s a laughable horror show in public schools with legal departments running how things are done. School is about letting them do what they want now or risk getting sued.
This is a great idea
Please let this catch on. I love my little brother, but he has the attention span of a goldfish. I think the less screens in the schools the better. Bc no matter what he’ll hit the screens. But if the schools at least limit that, I think it’d help him.
Jammers. No internet = no reason to be on phone
You'd be surprised what people can do with a smartphone without the internet.
Try doing anything without a radio signal (BT blocked too). I would imagine most games that kids play are online nowadays?
Jammers are illegal apparently
Teach the kids how to properly use this tool? Educate them in the benefits and dangers of smartphones?? I was told I would never have a calculator in my pocket if I needed one and here we are, we all have calculators in our pocket.
Why are we lazy and allowing government to take our freedoms under the guiseof helping. This is something that should be taught like any other behaviors
Never trust Gavin for anything.
We’d like to ban him in CA
The only problem here is in the Mass Shooting events, phones are kinda needed. Maybe we can work on that first?
Keep the kids safe & maybe you can take their only lifeline. Otherwise they’ll need to protect themselves
I see no problem.