Wrong. Get off the phone.
School will never be as interesting as a phone. Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer. Your textbooks will never be as entertaining as your feed. What families and teenagers have to understand is that education is a choice. If you want to learn, you’ll probably have to put your phone down for long periods of time to actively listen and learn. It’s difficult. It tires you out. It’ll frustrate you. But you will eventually learn.
Then again - when I look at home prices and inflation, I understand young people’s feelings of futility.
Good luck young people. I’m really rooting for you to figure this out.
As a former young person that came from poverty and is finally buying a house in a high cost of living area, go read “so good they can’t ignore you” it might help with the figuring out!
people learn things all the time despite phones existing. the issue is not solely being more entertaining. people need to find their learning meaningful and aligned with their own interests and goals. students don’t, and so they go on their phones. go to a college classroom and you’ll see people more engaged on average. still far from perfect, and that system is broken in many ways too, but people are at least studying something they chose and are presumably interested in.
“I’m really rooting for you to figure this out” rings hollow. we all need to be part of the solution. gen Z feels like it’s carrying the expectation of fixing literally every societal problem right now and it sucks.
Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer.
Those influencers are entertaining?
I don’t think it’s just a feeling of futility - it’s true phones can be distracting and offer more potential entertainment, and it’s true learning can sometimes be a slog. At the same time, learning can be fun and engaging, and phones can offer access to a wealth of information (of highly varying quality, admittedly).
Concentrating too hard on mere academic success as gauged by metrics like school grades is undoubtedly discouraging for a student who only goes to school if they are told they must.
When I look at home prices I know that school never has been good. People don’t understand what they have to do to drive down prices.
Why can’t Tiktok be used to find the best courses? There is no need for teachers to teach when Tiktok can do it better. Let teachers become mentors.
Tiktok cannot do it better. Tiktok is an app designed to hold attention. If you are more engaged by cat videos than geometry tiktok will not try and show you geometry
The Tiktok algorithm can be limited to educational videos. Of course this requires cooperation from Tiktok or the introduction of a new app.
that would just be a new app and why would tiktok cooperate with that. There isn’t as much money in that area and even if there was an educational app kids would go on tiktok instead of it
The amount of times I told my students they can use their phone for certain exercises, then 90% of them just went on Tiktok or played Clash Of Clans, is why is started not allowing phones.
I get that to the 10% it was super helpful but it’s just easier to not allow everyone.
Well, at least you gave them a chance. Thank you.
I’m all for giving them a chance to prove they’re able to be responsible. Especially the kids that always try hard and deserve to be trusted.
I found that a lot of kids struggled to accept any consequences of their actions, though taking their phones off them for playing games was pretty clear to them.
It would be funny if people were forced to do something akin to mandatory military service but for working at a school as a paraprofessional or other aide for a little while. I feel like most people really have no idea how much teachers have to juggle and deal with on a daily basis. Come see how my kids behave when left to their own devices and then judge me.
Everyone should have to work a retail/customer service/care/teaching job, its eye opening the way people treat those they see as in their service.
For sure! A lot of parents don’t really understand the amount of stuff teachers have to go through either, and we don’t get paid for the hundreds of hours we do outside of teaching hours.
It’s why I had to quit in the end. Felt like I couldn’t give it my all because I was mentally and physically exhausted.
Like flight mode there should be school mode where students can only use a provided wlan that comes with content filters.
Block cellular with thick walls, then only allow them through wifi. Things like youtube can only be acces with a cabled connection. Something like this seems like a good start.
Offline games entered the chat. ProtonVPN entered the chat (specifically Proton with their bypass methods). Tor entered the chat.
They don’t even need to know what VPN or Tor is, it’s just “Download this app to access internet, bro”.
If there was a sort of national system for it, maybe some kinks could be worked out. And if some people still succeed, sure let them have it.
Also, limiting it to offline only already makes a huge difference
100%, if the schools were funded well enough, issuing school phones would be amazing!
School computers work well because they block most of the distractions but ofc students have 1001 distractions in their own!
I can try to make the material interesting and be engaging but if you’re watching Overwatch on your phone all of that is a moot point.
but if you’re watching Overwatch
You can just take away their phone in that case, no?
Not sure about OP, but my point is that phones can be useful. But if they’re clearly not…having to look at what the kid is doing and judge things on a case by case basis would eat into lesson time which is already stretched thin with class management as it is
You can just disallow phones during classes.
I mean it kind of needs to be both. But it’s hard to find a compelling reason why kids need their smartphones fully accessible during class.
Well, you can quickly search up some information. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember that once in middle school teacher said something I wasn’t quite sure about, but also I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t more sure. So I looked it up, seeing that I was right, I asked if it rather wasn’t meant to be that other thing, he checked too and indeed he was wrong.
Also, my mind often wanders off. And it may happen that I suddenly can’t remember something. Could just be some word I could look up on my phone in less than a minute. Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.
Next, spine. I am currently in high school. Phones are allowed here. Any time. So, I utilized my scanner and digitized one 500 or so page book I couldn’t find on the internet, and then used it as PDF instead of a physical book. It is less likely that I would forget my phone. I wish schools would have options for e-ink tablets instead of having to carry many heavy physical books. That used to be problem mostly in elementary school and middle school. Same goes for note taking.
Obviously, the last example can be easily solved by modernization.
Fast talking teachers. I can’t write that fast. I mean, I can, but then I can’t decipher my handwriting, which is already hard anyway. Voice recorder is a quick solution. Obviously, it is easier to look through notes than audio, but IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE A REPLACEMENT FOR NOTES, just a help.
But do take that with a pinch of salt. Especially in elementary school, I used to be one of those weird kids who greatly preferred being liked by the teacher over having friends. So even though I had a phone at the time, I never used it during classes because teachers disliked it.
But at least during breaks it should be allowed. Otherwise kids will find much more dangerous ways to entertain themselves.
If you want to teach kids how to look up information, you can create spaces for that. They don’t need unrestricted access to their smart phones to accomplish that throughout the day. Hell you can relax your policies as they grow up and show the maturity to handle having a smart phone in the classroom. If schools want to do that, I am all in favor of it. But they would have to start early and build a system, which is a lot to ask of already overworked educators.
I am not talking about unrestricted access either. It depends on age, but they could always just ask the teacher if they’re allowed to look up something. And also I don’t see how disallowing phones during breaks helps education. It’s meant to be a break.
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Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.
Option C: Write it down.
It’s not like I am thinking about it to not forget what I wanted to remember. It’s that it will keep bugging me until I remember.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say.
Bugging you until you remember? You write it so that you can’t forget and so it stops bugging you.
Bugging you because you need that info itch scratched right now? Aka instant gratification. Then you have to learn to not need instant gratification. Seriously, it’s another skill.
All this is spoken like an entitled bratty immature kid. (No offense, it’s just your age and you’ll grow out of it)
There’s a reason why you can get a ticket or be charged with distracted driving while you’re on your phone and behind the wheel of a car. IT IS A DISTRACTION. FULL STOP.
Stop lying to yourself and to us in the process.
- Using phone while driving is much bigger issue.
- This phone issue has never affected me personally. I am defending OP and others.
- I am not talking about using the phone all the time for some stupid thing. It gives you access to a lot of information when needed.
Also if you trust kids with making life changing decisions, this is unfair.
Also sorry if I sounded as you described. I only started carrying the phone with me since I was 15. I was too worried about breaking it (it’s not cheap thing). That makes finding positive points (that would apply to younger kids) a bit harder.
Edit: Also, don’t be worried, I would almost never voice my opinions in real life.
Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.
The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?
Maybe you use your phone only for the most strictly academic things, but most people don’t.
Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.
Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.
Can’t disagree with this. I got a tablet when I was 8. With unrestricted access. On the positive note, it did help me learn quite a lot of stuff. Like English.
The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?
No problem, really. If someone wanted to search up something during class, teachers could just allow it, and generally they did. Except when I was in grade 9 and the school decided to prohibit even just having them at school, as if it were grenades. Some teacher would always just collect all into a bucket and return at the end of the day.
When we had free substituted classes, sometimes they would tell us something like “Sorry, I’d allow you phones now, but if I did I could have problems from it.” So clearly they would punish teachers for that. That’s just crazy.
And computers aren’t in every class. Even if they are, they might not always work. Now we use our phones even to do exams sometimes. But, yeah, school isn’t even mandatory for me anymore, so it’s already different.Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.
I wasn’t even talking about such late decisions. For example, when I was 10 I was given the decision between going into class A or class B since I had good enough results for A. A was class for a little more talented kids. They even had some additional subjects. Well, my dad discouraged me from going to class A. He told me “There won’t be any normal kids. I’d choose B if I were you.” So I did. I regret. I could have gotten to a better school later on.
Some explanation of those classes:
A - Talented
C and D - sport classes (basketball and hockey respectively)
B - everything elseNext, when I was 14, I told my psychologist about my living conditions. Including photos of how our home looks like. She told me that she could call social services. Then asked me if I agreed. I was scared, so I said no. I regret, once again.
And something that’s there always, choosing high school when you’re 15.
I am not sure how it works across different school systems. In Slovakia, they are focused just on 1 particular field of study determining where you’ll be for the rest of your life. 3 year fields are without graduation (e.g.: various mechanics and plumbers). 4 year and 5 year fields are with graduation, meaning you can go to college/university.
I’ve had a few classmates who only chose particular field because their friends were going there too, even though they weren’t interested in it.------------------------------
Oof, sorry. I got too much off topic.
Well, by their teenage years, why not all the reasons adults need smartphones fully accessible? Looking up information from authoritative sources? Emergency contact? Coordinating schedules for office hours?
Schools often simultaneously demand more from children than workplaces do adults, and give them less opportunity to excel.
I’m not saying work-inappropriate phone use should be accepted, but taking them away entirely is downright irresponsible. Just like schools who still demand students write on a notebook instead of using a laptop. Raise your hand if you had RSI-related issues for a decade or more after high school? We old people tend to forget how bad school used to be (and can be) for physical and mental health AND for learning.
“oh no i cannot play on my phone, how could school be so cruel”
OP take a look back at this in about 5-10 years and realize how monumentally ignorant it is.
I don’t think OP is thinking that far into their future. I don’t think OP has any plans for higher education either. It’s been a few decades for me, but when I was an undergrad, if your pager went off in class --cell phones weren’t really a thing yet-- most professors would ask you to leave, which was not a good thing in the small upper division classes as they were very difficult and you had to pass with a B or better to move on in my major.
Multiple studies have shown that smartphone decrease concentration, and have negative impact on emotional well being in adolescents.
The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462
Attention or Distraction? The Impact of Mobile Phone on Users’ Psychological Well-Being https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8093572/
Mobile phone use, behavioural problems and concentration capacity in adolescents: A prospective study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1438463916300645
I don’t think it’s particularly unreasonable to conclude that any decent approach to the first will also include the second. That shit is literally designed to be addictive, even the best teachers are gonna struggle to compete.
What would you prefer the school do?
How could they motivate you to actually pay attention in class instead of playing with your phone? Honestly ask yourself if this “addressing motivation” would make geometry more interesting than tiktok.
Well said. Social media is designed specifically to hold attention and encourage addictive behavior. There’s no way to compete.
Maybe if they used blender(the software) to explain it.
If they try to use a blender (the kitchen appliance), I’m sure it will also become interesting.
The blending will continue until morale improves
“Today in class we will be finding out whether or not triangles will blend. Please put on these safety goggles before sitting at your desks.”
I agree that the school environment should be more motivating, but there’s no way to compete with apps and games designed to be addictive, even adults have trouble avoiding their phones at work.
it’s called having discipline
Even before phones schools were like this. But they’d just put you in mandatory extra classes to fix your grades. Instead of, you know, talking to you. To get to know how you are doing and how you’re feeling.
I’ve hated my school time and all it taught me is teachers are obsessed with having power over others. Maybe not all teachers, but a lot are like this. They won’t listen to you, they just force their opinion on you. And if you don’t do well in their pre-made lecturing framework then it’s on you because you don’t pay attention and you are lazy. It’s never on them.
How do you address low motivation levels though? The response to covid, the endless school shootings, their parent’s jobs, and even a small amount of reading about climate apocalypse should make it obvious to children that society despises them and that they have no future. How do you motivate someone to do well in school under those conditions if they’re not already motivated?
education is a benefit in and of itself. Maths helps develop your brain to solve problems, english makes you more able to appreciate culture which in turn will make you more interesting and better able to socialise, history helps you understand how the world is and that it used to and can be different.
These things are worth learning even if you don’t do them for work
Yeah, the second one will directly affect the first one positively. Essentially, school work needs to be the most interesting thing you can do in school, otherwise you will have low motivation. It’s not the job of the the school staff to make the material extremely interesting, it’s their job to remove every more interesting thing from the reach of students.
Read up on dopamine if you didn’t understand that.
(And yes, this affects adults too)
It’s not the job of the the school staff to make the material extremely interesting, it’s their job to remove every more interesting thing from the reach of students.
And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else. They should make the material interesting enough that people won’t have to resort to other stuff
Read up on dopamine if you didn’t understand that.
I know what dopamine (the joy hormone which the body uses as a “reward”) is. Since the body uses it as a “reward” if school gives students that, then students will like school
They should make the material interesting enough that people won’t have to resort to other stuff
Nope. It’s all relative. Compared to what’s available via the phone and internet, 90% of school material is fundamentally more boring, because important things are often boring – and there’s almost nothing you can do about it. I mean sure, an incompetent/unmotivated teacher can make the material even less interesting, but that’s also why we need competent teachers. That’s a separate problem.
So the quest to make school material more interesting than the Internet is a dead end – it’s just impossible. So they need to make everything else less interesting. Which means that phones and computers can fuck right off. If there are kids for whom this is a difficult situation and they’re unable to cope, such kids will need intervention. I.e. restrictions in free time as well.
Did you hear what I said about dopamine being the “joy hormone” and used as a “reward”. Your body gives out happy hormones like this after an exercise and other good stuff for you (including school work if it is interesting)
And don’t you tell me that knowledge isn’t interesting. For something to be interesting (by my definition) it must give you knowledge.
Girls twerking on TikTok is not interesting - the way Hitler died is
Memes are not interesting (unless they contain important info)
These may produce dopamine in other ways but they are not interesting
Which means that phones and computers can fuck right off.
I could be considered “tech savvy”, I know a bit of C/PHP and a lot of shell script. Explain ro me how I could learn that without a computer (I’m also self-taught)
So they need to make everything else less interesting.
As I said, sleep is something that pupils prefer to schoolwork. Get schoolwork above a bar that low and then we can talk. Amyway, it just needs to be interesting enough that students won’t feel a need to check social media
I could be considered “tech savvy”, I know a bit of C/PHP and a lot of shell script. Explain ro me how I could learn that without a computer (I’m also self-taught)
By using the computer or phone at home. Roughly half of the programmer workforce currently alive went through childhood without a mobile phone, because they didn’t exist for regular consumers. And personal laptops for children would’ve been perhaps an option for the top 1%, but probably not even them. Since you just didn’t have electronics in school.
Way more than half. Let’s separate dumb phones from smart phones. Even smart phones weren’t all that capable for a long time.
Please don’t learn about how Hitler died through Tiktok. Befriend your librarian and read it in a book.
I dont use tiktok, I hate the app
You used Tiktok as an example for something that is more interesting than learning. (Of course it’s more interesting than learning, it’s digital crack cocaine.)
Make the material more interesting? Buddy, it’s school not Qanon.
And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else.
I think this has more to do with sleep deprivation. I can probably count the number of days I got a full night’s rest while in high school and college on one hand. Rather than making classes more interesting (though they could do this as well I guess), they should focus on not completely overwhelming the students with homework, although I’ll admit that was more of a college thing.
staring at a wall is more interesting then (badly done) school
Hey at least they give you some books to read if you’re bored. They’re heavy as hell, but you might learn something and get a well needed break from the phone.
The motivation problem isn’t the school’s fault, it’s yours. You choose to not want to learn.
Why does anyone buy this bullshit?
Oh yeah I totally needed to learn about what a writer might have thought 200 years ago while writing EVERY SINGLE PAGE of his book, when I already knew that I wanted to do something with technology.
But we didnt have enough teachers for biology and physics and chemistry, so instead we got more literature.
I wonder where I (and our whole society) would be now if schools werent meant for preparing kids to transition into work, but instead about getting the full potential out of every kid.
Im German and I did learn English in school, but not really, because it was taught in a way that made me lose interest immediately.
I actually learned English when I started to watch Minecraft Youtubers in English because they had some interesting contraptions in their videos or something like that (Its been a while, I dont know exactly why I started watching them)
If you think studying literature is to teach you literature, you’re sorely mistaken. Similar to if you think you study mathematics to learn mathematics.
You are taught literature so you can better communicate with other people. What is the author’s intention with this passage? What are they trying to say? What might their motivations be? Now apply this to a letter from a potential business partner or a politician’s tweet and you might begin to see how what you were taught becomes relevant.
Why are you taught grammar? Who cares whether you use the Oxford comma or not? Who has the need to know what mood, theme, and figurative language are? Apply this in the context of trying to write a professional email to your boss or trying to tell a story to engage other people, and maybe you’ll start to see that it wasn’t worthless.
Why do we need to know the way to prove that the angles of a triangle add up to 180? Who needs to know the Quadratic formula and how to apply it? It’s so you know how to think rationally and apply logic rigourously, so you don’t fall into familiar logical traps that we see on the evening news and the Internet every day.
Why do you need to know how cells reproduce? Why do we need to know how the pH scale works? It’s so when people on Facebook claim that vaccines erase your DNA or that alkaline water prevents cancer, you’ll know better.
Not taking enough literature and humanities is how we end up with Elon. Every little wannabe engineer who thinks they shouldn’t have to take a humanities course should be smacked in the face by a physics demonstration.
