The nation’s second-largest teachers union said Thursday it was losing patience with social media apps that it says are contributing to mental health problems and misbehavior in classrooms nationwide, draining time and money from teachers and school systems.
I don’t get why kids are allowed to have phones in the school. Just install signal blockers. Parents can call the office if there is an emergency like it’s 1995.
In a country where kids drill for school shootings, not having cell phones so emergency calls can be made from anywhere should be a non-starter.
I’m with you on this. How is having like 300+ more options available (depending on the school) to call the police really something that will help with school shootings specifically. Like if it happens a teacher would call.
People are so paranoid about not having instant connections available at all times. It is not that needed. Especially with kids in school.
Having everything at your fingertips is great, in theory. But for kids without the ability to regulate, it’s as much a distraction than an advantage.
Not sure how that matters. Teachers and other staff could have phones true, but what if a shooting happens in the bathroom? Or in the halls where there are no teachers? Or the teacher is killed first and all the kid’s phones are locked up somewhere?
But to be clear, I don’t think that means kids should be using them during class. I can’t remember where I saw this, but putting boxes on each desk where kids can put their phones that stay there until after class or an emergency is an option. Or just tell them to keep them in their pockets and discipline them if they use them during class.
We are starting to see them banned.
I agree that they shouldn’t be allowed to have phones during class. It would actually probably be best if the students had assigned classrooms, they stuck their phones in a teacher-controlled box at the beginning of the day, then the teachers move classrooms to teach each subject.
Then the kids get their phones back during lunch and at the end of the day.
Meh… Kids need to learn self control. Who’s gonna hold their phones when they have a job, or during a funeral? Workplace don’t want to be responsible for your phone, and they’ll just fire you if you get caught using your phone during work hours. Also liability problems… what happens if the phones are damaged or missing? What if some creepy pedophile teacher injects spyware in the phones when the kids attention are focused on a test?
If you can’t leave you phone in a backpack for a few school hours, how do you deal with not being able to use your phone at a job which may have even more hours, and which your livelihood depends on?
Depends where you work, everywhere I’ve ever worked in the last two decades haven’t minded you using your phone providing you aren’t spending all day staring at it.
I agree. Just have a designated box or place for the students to leave their phones in each classroom. They can grab them in an emergency or on their way to lunch.
Signal jammers are illegal. Certainly wouldn’t be a good idea to install those in the US, where school shootings are common.
Edit: Also, unrelated to the signal jamming thing you talked about:
Phones are useful in case of a fight were to occur, which happen very often (at least in schools I went to). Video recordings are good to determine fault. School surveillance cameras are often cheap, blurry, unreliable, have many blind-spots, and also forbidden in classrooms (at least in the US). In addition, sometimes classrooms still use old textbooks that only have 1 class set, and are very heavy to carry, and they aren’t available online, so in that case, kids can just take photos of the textbook and the school saves a lot of money from having to copy-print the textbooks, so maybe they just need to make 1 or 2 copies for the kids that don’t have a phone. Phones are very useful, just needs reasonable rules. A complete ban is not necessary in my opinion.
