I’m still very confused why this has become such a thing recently. I was in senior year a decade ago and we had iPhones back then too. iPods and tamagotchis too. If the teacher needed to deal with a student on their phone rather than working, they’d confiscate it. Most of us left them in our pockets, and seem to have graduated just fine.
Why have kids seemingly become unable to leave their phones silently in their pockets, and why have teachers seemingly become unable to confiscate them when needed? Is social media these days that addicting? Are teachers exposed to consequences for managing their classrooms?
Anyway, as a student I would have been reluctant to leave my phone at home when I’d demonstrated my ability to not fiddle with it in class, so for many ‘normal’ students I can see why they’d push back.
Read this as a general feeling of someone in 40s without kids and consume news from multiple countries.
This things happened gradually. At your days the smart phone is still at its infancy where social media are probably text based and at most image based. Nowadays, the social media are a mix of text and videos and probably the quantity of short video the youth consume are far more than the text consume. The phone itself also becoming the extension of our brain (not only youth). And this brings two consequences.
- Many feels that there's no need to learn the basic. The wisdom they had, together with the reasoning given by the tools are enough.
- The youth also prefer shorter content than long form content. They don't even have the patience to sit through a 30 minute youtube video and prefer a whole story unfolded in a few minutes that fit in tiktok, youtube short or similar.
Combining these two means that a lot of the students in this generation will not have the patience to go through a 40 min - 1 hr classroom section/lecture.
Also as other have commented in a different thread, the parents of this generation simply does not side with the teacher, and this happens in many countries as well.
Teachers are no longer respected in their decisions by parents. Before, a teacher could take away a phone and the criticism came at the student for not paying attention. Now the teacher comes under criticism in protection of the student.
The whole culture around teaching needs a hard reset.
I'm in school and all my classmates complain that they have to study in their free time. Despite apparently studying even at night, most have worse grades than me.
I don't study outside school time, instead I actually pay attention in class and have my phone in my bag.
I don't understand my generation.
I imagine they don't study at all however devote very large blocks of time to studying which they spend mostly distracting themselves and never working. I go to cafes every day. It has been a long time since I've seen a study group of youth doing work. They are mostly talking or distracting themselves. Even when they stop talking and appear to work, eventually they pick up talking again and you can tell they've been looming over the conversation topics in their heads the entire time.
They simply don't think studying or learning is cool and are more interested in gossip.
Ignoring all the psychologists and engineers being paid 6 figure salary to siphon your peers attention to sell ads, I wouldn't be surprised if your peers had several undiagnosed and easily accommodated attention disorders their parents don't believe in.
I am so surprised that many parents are supportive of their kids having phones in school with the sole reason being communication in case of an emergency.
How do we expect kids to pay attention or be productive with a smartphone in their pocket? We are setting them up for failure - and by us I mean parents and school administrators who support kids having phones in class. Teachers are not in a position to change this.
I don't understand the problem. Of course kids should have their phones at school! But that doesn't mean that they should be allowed to use them during class.
If kids are using their phone during class then you either confiscate the phone or kick the student out of the class. If they do it during a test you mark them down as cheating and fail them.
>How do we expect kids to pay attention or be productive with a smartphone in their pocket?
I think this is setting them up for the future, because in the future they are going to have a smartphone in their pocket at all times. They're going to have to learn to handle that eventually.
But in the pocket doesn't mean in hand.
Outside of class time though? It's nobody else's business what they do.
>surprised that many parents are supportive of their kids having phones in school
I had a former roommate who laughed explaining how she prevented the public school from taking her son's phone away by making it be the interface for his glucose monitor (thus requiring that he be allowed to carry all day in school).
More sickly, she encouraged this so her son could coordinate her pot deals at a moment's notice (Mother of the Year™).
Ban smart phones for everyone under the age of atleast 16, but ideally under 18. I would be in support of using tax payer money to provide each public school kid with a dumb phone that can only be used to make basic calls and text messaging. That’s all you’re allowed to have in the classroom.
inb4 “it’s going to be used for mass surveillance” - it doesn’t matter.
I genuinely believe that if we want kids to have some normalcy here we need to flat out ban smartphone for kids up to say 16-18 years old and instead dumb phones should be the norm instead.
Because it's not just social media, it's the entire 24/7 jumping around different apps all the time that is screwing them up.
Before kids would get bored playing video games and then instead wanting to go out and play.
Now it's going from one app to another once they are bored.
I think most people would agree, but problem is enforcement. I worked 20 years in a low SES school where education was less valued. What do you do when you try to take the phone and they refuse? Suspend them? Sure. Then they come back and do it again. Then the state does an analysis and you have to explain that there is a significant number of students missing school because of a phone? They talk to you like it's ridiculous. Kids need to be in school. If you can solve the "what to do if they don't put it away" problem you'd be a hero in education.
Do these kids just not have parents? Are teachers unable to get parents to require their kids leave their phones at home? When I was in high school we had Nokia phones that did basically nothing but calls and snake.
(Search “parents” in r/teachers on Reddit for more, being a teacher in the US is a shit show; I have helped more than one teacher switch careers to save them from public education)
[+] [-] PebblesHD|1 year ago|reply
Why have kids seemingly become unable to leave their phones silently in their pockets, and why have teachers seemingly become unable to confiscate them when needed? Is social media these days that addicting? Are teachers exposed to consequences for managing their classrooms?
Anyway, as a student I would have been reluctant to leave my phone at home when I’d demonstrated my ability to not fiddle with it in class, so for many ‘normal’ students I can see why they’d push back.
[+] [-] phantomathkg|1 year ago|reply
This things happened gradually. At your days the smart phone is still at its infancy where social media are probably text based and at most image based. Nowadays, the social media are a mix of text and videos and probably the quantity of short video the youth consume are far more than the text consume. The phone itself also becoming the extension of our brain (not only youth). And this brings two consequences.
- Many feels that there's no need to learn the basic. The wisdom they had, together with the reasoning given by the tools are enough. - The youth also prefer shorter content than long form content. They don't even have the patience to sit through a 30 minute youtube video and prefer a whole story unfolded in a few minutes that fit in tiktok, youtube short or similar.
Combining these two means that a lot of the students in this generation will not have the patience to go through a 40 min - 1 hr classroom section/lecture.
Also as other have commented in a different thread, the parents of this generation simply does not side with the teacher, and this happens in many countries as well.
[+] [-] Zenzero|1 year ago|reply
The whole culture around teaching needs a hard reset.
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|1 year ago|reply
The kids never had a chance.
[+] [-] brnt|1 year ago|reply
Parents threatened, possibly assaulted, teachers over this just yesterday in my area: https://www.l1nieuws.nl/nieuws/2661710/grescollege-in-reuver...
[+] [-] brnt|1 year ago|reply
Social media.
[+] [-] aaron695|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Elfener|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] flyingspaceship|1 year ago|reply
They simply don't think studying or learning is cool and are more interested in gossip.
[+] [-] antifa|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jmathai|1 year ago|reply
How do we expect kids to pay attention or be productive with a smartphone in their pocket? We are setting them up for failure - and by us I mean parents and school administrators who support kids having phones in class. Teachers are not in a position to change this.
[+] [-] Aerroon|1 year ago|reply
If kids are using their phone during class then you either confiscate the phone or kick the student out of the class. If they do it during a test you mark them down as cheating and fail them.
>How do we expect kids to pay attention or be productive with a smartphone in their pocket?
I think this is setting them up for the future, because in the future they are going to have a smartphone in their pocket at all times. They're going to have to learn to handle that eventually.
But in the pocket doesn't mean in hand.
Outside of class time though? It's nobody else's business what they do.
[+] [-] ProllyInfamous|1 year ago|reply
I had a former roommate who laughed explaining how she prevented the public school from taking her son's phone away by making it be the interface for his glucose monitor (thus requiring that he be allowed to carry all day in school).
More sickly, she encouraged this so her son could coordinate her pot deals at a moment's notice (Mother of the Year™).
[+] [-] prepend|1 year ago|reply
It seems an impossible task for teachers to stop 30 kids from using their phones.
But they give assignments that require their phone (eg, watch a video, make a recording).
I think we need to go back to pen and paper only.
The school provided equipment is horrible too- slow, buggy, full of spyware.
[+] [-] throwaway5959|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rascul|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dyauspitr|1 year ago|reply
inb4 “it’s going to be used for mass surveillance” - it doesn’t matter.
[+] [-] adastra22|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] RedStarComrade|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] more_corn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 0dayz|1 year ago|reply
Because it's not just social media, it's the entire 24/7 jumping around different apps all the time that is screwing them up.
Before kids would get bored playing video games and then instead wanting to go out and play.
Now it's going from one app to another once they are bored.
[+] [-] tuumi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway5959|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|1 year ago|reply
I recommend no one be a teacher in the US. It’s mostly daycare for those who can’t homeschool or private school, for whatever reason.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774
(Search “parents” in r/teachers on Reddit for more, being a teacher in the US is a shit show; I have helped more than one teacher switch careers to save them from public education)