[HN Gopher] Dutch rules will soon prevent schoolchildren from ha...
___________________________________________________________________
Dutch rules will soon prevent schoolchildren from having a phone in
classroom
Author : the-dude
Score : 291 points
Date : 2023-07-04 13:04 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nltimes.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (nltimes.nl)
| INTPenis wrote:
| It should be more specific, they should not be allowed a
| smartphone in school at all. But a phone, yes definitely. In
| europe it's a lot more common to send your kids alone to school,
| so I definitely think they should have a simple phone.
|
| But at the same time I want them to go to school without any
| smartphone, I want them to feel that freedom from social media at
| least during the school day. Not just that school locks them up,
| but that they eventually learn to not even bring it.
| kergonath wrote:
| > It should be more specific, they should not be allowed a
| smartphone in school at all. But a phone, yes definitely. In
| europe it's a lot more common to send your kids alone to
| school, so I definitely think they should have a simple phone.
|
| That's the usual policy here in France. Smartphones are not
| allowed at all. Dumb phones are but they can't be taken out of
| the bags in the classroom, which makes sense. I am much more
| comfortable giving my kid a dumb feature phone as well. It's
| enough to send text messages and call in an emergency, but it
| makes him less of a target for mugging.
| orwin wrote:
| *until highschool
|
| (agree with everything else, just wanted to add a precision.
| Also, the school has the parent numbers).
| kergonath wrote:
| Last time I heard (the kid's too young still), the policy
| in most high schools was that you can have one as long as
| you don't use it in the classroom.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Your use of highscool makes me think you're american,
| because you don't seem to understand the concept of kids
| going to school on their own. It doesn't matter if the
| school has the number to the parents if the kid is taking a
| 30 minute bus ride, or a 30 minute bicycle ride, to and
| from school themselves.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| What on earth does their comment have to do with kids
| going to school on their own? And...using "highschool"
| makes them American? What, you want them to say lycee?
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Kids going to school on their own was the norm for
| generations in the USA, and until recently I thought it
| still was.
|
| Now I see every child being DRIVEN to school in a
| separate vehicle by a parent, blockading entire
| neighborhoods around the school. It's pathetic and
| irritating as hell.
|
| And we're talking about L.A., where you can't blame the
| weather. These kids are going to be helpless dweebs.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > These kids are going to be helpless dweebs.
|
| Really? Why? I drove my kid to school up until the point
| that he got his driver's license this year and could
| drive himself. He's not a helpless dweeb. In fact, he
| just caught a plane to DC to attend a high school summer
| program at Georgetown University. He didn't have any
| trouble navigating himself there. I didn't hear a word
| from the time he left the house until he called me to let
| me know he'd checked into the dorm five states away.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Well, that's good to know, and reflects well on you. But
| we on this board are probably outliers these days.
| orwin wrote:
| I'm French, I think lycee map highschool 1:1, so I used
| that term to not have to explain just that. Clearly it
| was a mistake, as I had to explain it in the end.
|
| I, my parents, my cousins and my nephew and nieces all
| went/are going to school by ourselves by age 6-7. I do
| not think this change anything?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Lots of american high schoolers drive themselves, or
| walk, or bike, or take the school bus.
|
| Yes many get driven by their parents. I used to drive
| mine before they were old enough to do it themselves
| because it was only a short detour off my way to work
| anyway, and if they had to take the bus they'd have to
| wake up nearly an hour earlier, and I thought the extra
| sleep for them was worth it.
| Aerroon wrote:
| That sounds dumb. Smartphones are a part of everyday life.
| Expecting kids to not use them is either doomed to fail, or
| worse, it will make sure they learn less about how to use
| them.
| dahwolf wrote:
| Not to worry, they can continue to use them outside of
| school. I'm sure they'll still know how to scroll tiktok.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Absurd rationalization. I didn't take a computer to school,
| but I learned how to program it.
| throwaway98271 wrote:
| How many of your classmates did?
|
| At my primary school, we were encouraged to bring
| computers to the classroom. The school also had many
| classes full of computers, and laptops too - all older
| second-hand models, but that didn't matter. We used them
| during most "normal" classes - not just the IT class. My
| last year of school we also utilized smartphones since
| that became the next big thing around 2010. Today they
| hand out tablets instead of laptops.
|
| Almost every one of my classmates works in tech now, or
| at least makes heavy use of computers/programming in
| their out-of-tech careers. Practically all of them make
| many times more than the national average wage.
|
| No, this wasn't a school for gifted students - in my
| country we go to the school we're assigned based on our
| residence. Incredible luck I got where I was. I'm sure
| half of the kids would live a very shitty life had they
| lived few streets away, but luckily thanks to the
| computerized education they got, they were able to
| overcome their bad upbringing (alcoholic parents, etc).
|
| It's very sad that someone thinks a global ban is in any
| way good. Sure, if they can't handle it - let the schools
| ban it. But a global ban that would prevent innovative
| schools and teachers from teaching about/with it? That
| sucks big time.
|
| And I just don't get why the governments aren't rather
| thinking about how to integrate the tech into the class
| on national scale. This whole thing seems political to me
| - there are many conservatives that just hate modern tech
| pushing for this. The porn argument is stupid - porn is
| part of modern life, teach children about the dangers of
| it, or they will overdose on it once the leash is gone;
| and it's not like the kids don't have a phone after
| school, who the hell would masturbate in school anyways.
| Same with social media.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| I do not believe that anyone, even a young child, can't
| "learn to use" a touchscreen device during the many hours
| of the day that he or she is not in school.
|
| And I do think that children should be taught to use
| online resources wisely, almost certainly as part of a
| course on critical thinking.
|
| To answer your question, NONE of my classmates did. It
| would be weird to lug your Apple II or Atari 800 to class
| with a monitor and extension cord! And our schools (USA)
| work the same way: Their quality is highly dependent on
| the neighborhood they're in.
| throwaway98271 wrote:
| Why lug it to the school when the school could have them
| ready in classrooms, just as mine did?
| hollerith wrote:
| To my ears this sound about as sane as worrying that my kid
| will fall behind if he doesn't have the same access to
| opiates and stimulants as the other kids do.
| INTPenis wrote:
| This is hotly debated.
|
| Smartphones are very useful, but the effect that the
| constant flow of information stemming from smartphones has
| on children, and the distraction they cause in an
| educational setting, are absolutely not a natural part of
| humanity, and should be scrutinized more than it is.
|
| One can argue about this until the cows come home, for
| example I didn't even finish school and some of the
| smartest people I know learned very little in school aside
| from social skills.
|
| But schools have the difficult job of catering to at least
| a majority of children.
| kergonath wrote:
| Don't worry, kids are not stupid. They're perfectly able to
| learn once they're in high school. Besides, I never said he
| never uses one. But not his own and certainly not at
| school. Operating a smartphone is something you can learn
| without trying. He's got more important things to learn at
| school, which will be much more of a problem if he does
| not.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > Smartphones are a part of everyday life.
|
| They may well be a part of _your_ everyday life, and likely
| of the everyday lives of everyone you know, but what makes
| you think that smartphones are a part of the everyday lives
| of French schoolchildren?
|
| And even if they were, how is it in any way harmful for
| smartphones to not be a part of the time they spend in
| school?
| somsak2 wrote:
| If nobody can use it at school, then overall it makes it
| probably less likely they will be owned or used at all.
| Then your kids risk falling behind and becoming as adept
| with technology as "old people" today. Not saying that
| this trade-off means that everyone should use smart
| phones all the time, but let's not act like this isn't a
| potential downside when they _are_ a part of everyday
| life for French adults.
| unholythree wrote:
| This is that digital natives fallacy again. Being
| familiar with the latest tiktok trends is as important as
| being up to date on the latest Jersey Shore was 15 years
| ago; which is to say not important at all really. These
| kids are consumers of entertainment. They aren't
| automatically developing any skills just because the
| vehicle of consumption is the pinnacle of computing
| evolution.
|
| Most people never understand technology, but most young
| people do understand the zeitgeist of their age because
| they have a lot of free time and a strong desire to fit
| in. It's just their social world and pop culture are on a
| phone now.
| dahwolf wrote:
| Fully with you. All these kids do is play games, scroll
| tiktok and chat on snapchat. What possible "skill" are we
| talking about?
|
| If anything, they have very low tech skills. They are
| consumers of apps highly optimized for convenience.
| They're never challenged, need to fix anything, solve a
| problem.
| kergonath wrote:
| > then overall it makes it probably less likely they will
| be owned or used at all
|
| Sorry, but this is ridiculous. If it is useful, they will
| pick it up. I mean, most people alive did not have a
| smartphone before growing up, and yet most of us are
| using one without issue right now. You're setting a child
| up for failure if he does not learn things like how to
| handle frustration or behave with other people when he
| grows up. Not how to operate a trivial device.
|
| > Then your kids risk falling behind and becoming as
| adept with technology as "old people" today.
|
| By the time they're old, they will be as useless with the
| new technologies of the time as elderly are with
| computers now. Not because they did not learn it at
| school, just because you lose mental agility and
| adaptability as you age. Smartphones most likely will be
| a prehistoric anachronism by the time they get old.
|
| > but let's not act like this isn't a potential downside
| when they are a part of everyday life for French adults.
|
| Most French adults right now did not have a smartphone
| before they turned 20. They are managing just fine.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > That's the usual policy here in France. Smartphones are not
| allowed at all.
|
| Do they search the kid's bags?
| orwin wrote:
| No, they take it if they see them out, either during class
| or recess.
| kergonath wrote:
| Not without a reason, but suspecting you have a smartphone,
| or any other forbidden or dangerous item, is one. So in
| practice you're fine if you don't use it, show it, or brag
| about it.
| finikytou wrote:
| everyone has a phone in France even inmates..
| kergonath wrote:
| That's a non sequitur. Inmates have lots of things children
| do not have.
| loeg wrote:
| Dumbphones were still a significant distraction when I attended
| school, before smartphones existed.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have to imagine this is already pretty common. Here in the US,
| my kids' schools are pretty restrictive on smartphones. At least
| through middle school, they'll confiscate it if you take it out
| during class or it rings. The elementary schools of course don't
| allow them at all on campus, though they're kind of okay with the
| cellular apple watch as long as the kid doesn't use it during
| class.
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| National legislators should stay out of the classrooms. Let
| parents and the actual experts in teaching at each individual
| school organize themselves how they see fit. Politicians sadly
| love hands-on-management of issues instead of focusing on
| enabling and facilitating actual people controlling their own
| lives.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The whole idea of a school system is that the country
| government mandates a common denominator of education
| (including propaganda) to be delivered to all of its children
| (usually for free).
|
| Of course it may be more granular than the whole country, but
| schools organizing themselves as they see fit is an exception.
| eimrine wrote:
| > Let parents and the actual experts in teaching at each
| individual school organize themselves how they see fit.
|
| Parents seems to be extra in this statement. Decent parents can
| be evil and/or letting their kids too much, but a decent
| teacher can not.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| I fact-checked a lot of wrong information that my teachers were
| spewing by using the smartphone, I think this ban is bad. This
| should be a choice. These days even reading books can be more
| comfortable on a screen, and it is easier to have bigger
| catalogue (piracy cough cough). School is a horrible,
| authoritarian structure comparable to prison and mental ward
| already, there is no reason to make it more fucked up.
| binarymax wrote:
| What stops you from fact checking after you get out of the
| school?
|
| I'm trying to understand how a child having a distracting and
| addicting smartphone is a good solution to the occasional
| misinformed teacher.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _What stops you from fact checking after you get out of the
| school?_
|
| First, you will forget about all the bs they mentioned.
| Second, you can't confront the teacher over it or to ask them
| to clarify in a way that other kids will hear it too.
| esarbe wrote:
| You can always make notes, check later and then confront
| the teacher the next time you have class.
|
| Still not a reason for a kid t have a smartphone in school.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| There is one very simple reason. Fuck authoritarianism,
| especially when education is mandatory. Consider that a
| lot of people have public schooling with atrocious
| quality that is quite frankly quite useless, because it
| is mostly nationalistic, xenophobic, white-supremacists,
| elitist, classist, patriarchal etc. propaganda. It is
| actually not even useless a lot of the time, it is just
| harmful to a person to listen to these lies, so it's
| actually better if kids can drown out this propaganda by
| looking at a smartphone screen.
| caskstrength wrote:
| Username checks out.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Remember tongue map? :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map , I had this at
| school told in authoritative manner even though it is
| complete bullshit. A lot of history lessons are just
| state propaganda, for example, Martin Luther King was
| much more radical than it is usually said at school. One
| can give a lot of these type of examples.
| caskstrength wrote:
| What about algebra? Newton's laws? Evolution?
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| I have bachelors degree in math. Basic algebra is useful,
| however it is thought very badly. There is a lot of rote
| memorization, which is not useful for university level
| math. Precalculus is trash, mindless computations and
| solving a lot of quadratic equations. That's a big
| problem with school math, thought well it could be
| compressed to maybe 4 years instead of 12. I would say
| basic physics is better. Evolution in my school was maybe
| one lesson, this could be an 1 hour video. I had
| geography lessons in primary school where you had to
| memorize types of soil and where are they on the map of
| Poland. Polish literature is pro aristocracy nationalist
| propaganda mostly, Poland has a lot of messianic themes
| there which are complete bullshit. Overall for me school
| was a complete waste of time and source of stress,
| without it I would know more things that interest me and
| would be in much better health. In Poland we have schools
| in so called prussian education system - it was created
| to create factory workers, not thinking people. In Poland
| even Nobel prize winners are omitted at schools, it is
| only said that only Prize winners from Poland were Poles,
| even though most of our Nobel prize winners are Jews. We
| even have a lot of catholic propaganda with catholicism
| lessons financed from state budget.
| quattrofan wrote:
| [dead]
| Thrio499 wrote:
| Smartphone is essential tool for normal life today. One can not
| even pay or use public transport without smartphone! Owning it
| should be basic human right, like wearing clothes!
|
| Large number of students in Nederlands do not speak local
| language. Smartphone is essential for translation and
| communication with them. It also allows calling 911, and
| video/audio recording evidence, if there are any
| misunderstandings.
|
| This rule feels like teachers are solving their problems at
| expense of students!
| CalRobert wrote:
| I'm a parent. We're moving to the Netherlands next month. I
| just sent emails to the local taalschool in Hilversum (and two
| basisschools) to ensure that my daughters learn Dutch as fast
| as possible upon our arrival because learning the local
| language is critical for living a full life. Any parent who
| doesn't do this, except _perhaps_ for those who know they're on
| a short-term stint for work or similar, is being negligent.
| bollos wrote:
| Small correction that it would be "basisscholen" in the
| plural form. I hope you enjoy your stay here in NL :)
| CalRobert wrote:
| Dank u wel! Hopefully within a year my daughter is helping
| me get details like that correct :-)
| Thrio499 wrote:
| There are people who do not want to learn Dutch. I sincerely
| wish all best to you and your kid. Please stay on her side,
| and not on side of some imagininary ideology.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Owning it should be basic human right, like wearing clothes!
|
| NOT having to own an abusive manipulation tool should be a
| basic human right.
|
| And let's be very clear about this: almost all apps are
| intentionally designed to be manipulative. Try disabling
| notifications for example, and most apps will whine and whinge
| and bully you until you enable it. The design of these things
| is thoroughly and profoundly abusive.
|
| Never mind of course that "smartphone" in practicality means
| "Android and iOS", and "must give monies to this huge duopoly"
| is something I have a bone or two to pick with as well.
|
| > Large number of students in Nederlands do not speak local
| language
|
| This problem can be solved by learning Dutch.
| nerdbert wrote:
| > One can not even pay or use public transport without
| smartphone!
|
| Children are not allowed to ride the bus inside the classroom
| either. So I guess we're okay.
|
| > Large number of students in Nederlands do not speak local
| language. Smartphone is essential for translation and
| communication with them.
|
| Nobody is doing this on a regular basis, except maybe during an
| intake session. If something exceptional comes up then the
| teacher can use their phone to translate.
|
| > It also allows calling 911
|
| Not going to try, but I'm not sure 911 works here. 112 is the
| emergency number (and that's an actual worldwide standard,
| works in the USA as well).
| atahanacar wrote:
| >Not going to try, but I'm not sure 911 works here.
|
| According to Wikipedia it redirects to 112, just as I
| expected:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_numbe.
| ..
| misnome wrote:
| This feels like you didn't even read the thread title. "In
| Classroom" != "they are banned from owning".
|
| And I'm not sure that calling 911 would help them, in the
| Netherlands.
| gsich wrote:
| It will probably redirect to 112.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Using exclamation points every other sentence doesn't make a
| bad argument good.
| tomsmeding wrote:
| Bad source, no sources are cited in the article. Dutch sources
| [1] [2] (reputable newspapers, both articles published today)
| _mostly_ agree with this article, but the starting date is wrong.
|
| Schools will now start discussing _how_ to implement such
| measures; the rule starts being in force starting January 1st,
| 2024. Even then there will not be a law yet, though a law may
| come, depending on cooperation from schools and I guess political
| climate.
|
| There is no mention of anything happening on October 1st. Now if
| NLTimes would have given us their sources, we might have known
| where they got that from.
|
| [1]: https://nos.nl/artikel/2481424-kabinet-geeft-dringend-
| advies...
|
| [2]: https://www.ad.nl/politiek/mobieltje-in-de-klas-in-de-ban-
| ou...
| zdragnar wrote:
| I remember when cell phones first started becoming a thing
| parents would get for their kids, especially those who took
| school trips for sports or debate etc. Even though this was
| pre-smartphone days, our school had a strict policy of no
| phones outside of lockers during the school day. If you were
| caught with one in a classroom, it was taken away and sent to
| the principal's office, where you would have to get it at the
| end of the day (typically after a stern talking to).
|
| What changed that teachers started letting kids have phones in
| classrooms? It is utterly mind boggling to me that it was ever
| allowed in the first place.
|
| Edit: To clarify, I'm in the US and phones in classrooms seem
| to be a common complaint among teachers. Something seems to
| have changed, just not sure what.
| woodruffw wrote:
| NYC had a similar ban until 2015[1]. The problem was always
| enforcement: you can "prevent" students from having phones, but
| this means nothing unless (1) you're actively preventing them
| from bringing them onto schoolgrounds, and (2) taking phones away
| from students who _do_ bring them into school.
|
| Part of why NYC lifted their ban was because neither (1) nor (2)
| was practical: schools ended up adopting an "out of sight, out of
| mind" policy around phones, and actual confiscations led to
| larger concerns (e.g., students who were unable to contact their
| caretakers after school). It will be interesting to see if the
| Dutch can overcome either (or both) of these problems.
|
| [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/013-15/mayor-
| de...
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| That's incredibly short sighted and disappointing. There is no
| place for cellphones in school. They're incredibly disruptive
| to classes and learning.
|
| Banning cellphones in schools is very practical. You put them
| into the pouches they use at concerts. Pouches are opened at
| the end of the day.
|
| If parents need to reach their kids they can do so easily. Call
| the school and ask for the kid.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Again: the problem was enforcement. It turns out that making
| 1000+ teenagers put their phones into bags (and ensuring that
| they don't open them) is not trivial.
|
| The problem with contact is when the student leaves the
| school: the phone was typically confiscated for multiple
| days, meaning that students would be left without their
| phones when they left the grounds. Many parents give their
| children phones so they can reach them if they're lost or
| similar.
|
| Notably, the city tore up all of the payphones around the
| same time.
|
| Edit: as a piece of trivia: prior to the end of the ban,
| there was an entire thriving industry of phone escrow vans
| parked outside of schools[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/10/04/phone-
| valet/1...
| AnnikaL wrote:
| Why not confiscate the phones for only the length of the
| school day and give them back when the student leaves? If
| you need a harsher punishment as escalation, use something
| unrelated to the phone like a detention or suspension.
| technothrasher wrote:
| At my son's school they have to put their phones in the
| 'phone hotel' at the beginning of the school day and pick
| them up at the end. The kids just bring two phones and
| put a junk one in the hotel. If they were to enforce it
| with detention or suspension, 75% of the student body
| would permanently be on detention/suspension.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| They can't even keep phones out of prisons never mind
| schools.
|
| American schools are prison like enough as it is.
| markhorus wrote:
| School has breaks too. What are you doing if a teacher is
| absent or you have something like a 3h lunch break?
|
| Growing up you were simply not allowed to actively use your
| phone during class, outrightly banning phones from school
| makes no sense. We'd also use them for some class activity at
| least once a week.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > actual confiscations led to larger concerns (e.g., students
| who were unable to contact their caretakers after school).
|
| Would it have been possible to grant access to a regular old
| school phone near the principal office or secretary office for
| outside calls ?
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Even when I was in high school 20 years ago, we longer had a
| normal phone at school. I was the only odd one out, trying to
| call home using a perpetually broken phone booth while all my
| classmates had mobile phones.
| Izkata wrote:
| > schools ended up adopting an "out of sight, out of mind"
| policy around phones
|
| This was how it worked in my schools two decades ago. As long
| as you didn't use your phone there was no problem, but
| otherwise it was the teacher's discretion on how to handle it
| (within limits). Usually that meant confiscation until the end
| of that class, on rare occasion they'd allow calls/texts as
| long as it was shared with the class (to embarrass them into
| not doing it again).
| nerdbert wrote:
| > It will be interesting to see if the Dutch can overcome
| either (or both) of these problems.
|
| Having recently toured about 20 secondary schools in the
| Netherlands I can say that most of them had a system for this.
| In each classroom, near the door, was a kind of cloth rack with
| 30 pouches where the kids would leave their phones as they
| entered.
| akira2501 wrote:
| "If you have a phone in class then _you_ leave the class."
|
| Why is the school treating these children like clients? They
| aren't. If they can conform to the rules, they can come, if
| they can't, they don't. You don't have a natural right to be in
| the classroom.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| [dead]
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that, as a matter of law, school attendance
| is compulsory in most western countries. Whether or not
| students are "clients" is immaterial; the school has an
| obligation to teach them, and the students are compelled to
| attend.
| akira2501 wrote:
| That's what "in school suspension" is for.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think the one place that I used my phone _the most_ in
| high school was in suspension!
|
| (More broadly: I don't think it's remotely practical to
| remove students from classrooms like this. To a first
| approximation, _every single student_ in school has a
| smartphone.)
| markhorus wrote:
| "in school suspension" is largely a US only thing
| loeg wrote:
| I think this is probably a good thing. Even in the early 2000s,
| having phones in the classroom was mostly a distraction (texting,
| or having the ringer on and distracting others) or vehicle for
| cheating (also texting in those days). The only downside is in
| emergency situations where children should have some agency to
| contact family. If children could be trusted to turn their phones
| off at the start of class and leave them in their bags, that
| would be great, but I get the impression from teachers that that
| isn't the case.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| What a load of short-sighted nonsense. Instead of revising
| curricula to be actually attractive and modernizing teaching
| instead of a drone blathering at the front of the classroom, ban
| phones.
|
| The problem at the core is that education has _ossified_. A toxic
| combination of parents unable to accept that their children can
| have a better school experience than they had ( "we had to hike
| two hours even during storms to go to school, stop
| complaining!!!"), privileged parents wanting to keep classist
| privileges for their children (this is a huge problem here in
| Germany where we separate between useless Hauptschule, just as
| useless Realschule and Gymnasium after 4th/6th year), politicians
| intimidated by the huge influence the well-networked classist
| parents have, underpaid staff and underfunded schools, burnt-out
| teachers who long since have given up on changing anything
| because of the lack of time, funds, respect for their work and
| backing by superiors...
| duckmysick wrote:
| There's an untold number of modern, engaging, attractive
| learning resources and hobbies available to adults. They still
| lose to smartphones. Not because those activities are boring,
| but because picking a smartphone and browsing is so effortless
| and habit-forming.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| Careful with generalizations. I have a kid with unlimited
| game time on the phone and he will prefer Scratch or book
| reader nearly all of the time anyway. He has been doing
| coding games since he was 4. Most kids don't do this only
| because nobody has shown them how to use computers for
| anything other than games and social media.
|
| He deleted Socratic app soon after I have shown it to him
| though, but not because he needed space for games, but rather
| because "the teacher must not see this". You should have seen
| the panic in his eyes.
|
| Also, the only social media he is using is classroom
| Whatsapp, which is effectively _required_ by the school,
| because there is no other reliable source of information
| about missed classes and other school matters.
|
| All those kids playing games and scrolling through social
| media might be just fulfilling teachers' expectations after
| all.
| wunderland wrote:
| Alternatively, this has nothing to do with an outdated
| curriculum and is about removing a distraction that impacts
| learning of anything!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| If kids rather want their phones than to listen to school,
| maybe it's time to change how school works.
|
| 30 kids having to sit still 6 hours a day and do nothing more
| than listen and take notes? That's _boring as fuck_. Even
| worse as a lot of the stuff they learn is something they 'll
| literally never even think about once in their life and
| they'll have to forget again after the test to make room for
| more useless crap. And every attempt to innovate gets shot
| down somewhere, so the teachers aren't really willing to
| adapt either - when I went to school a decade ago we had more
| than one teacher who used the same transparent sheets on an
| overhead projector that he made (and copied) _decades_ ago,
| written on a typewriter.
|
| Smaller class sizes, more teachers, interactive _and
| engaging_ lessons... that 's all stuff that only the private
| schools (Waldorf and friends) provide and it actually works
| out even with conventional metrics, but these are expensive
| and have issues on their own (e.g. the tendency to attract
| pedos and weirdos, of which there have been a fair share of
| scandals).
|
| Yes, I'm fed up with the sorry state of our education system.
| nerdbert wrote:
| > If kids rather want their phones than to listen to
| school, maybe it's time to change how school works.
|
| Once you start to demand that schools become more
| entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's
| entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of
| lost sight of the mission of a school.
|
| > 30 kids having to sit still 6 hours a day and do nothing
| more than listen and take notes? That's boring as fuck.
|
| Also not how school works, at least not in the Netherlands.
| There are lots of group projects and multidisciplinary
| lesson arcs and so on. Maybe in China?
|
| > that's all stuff that only the private schools (Waldorf
| and friends) provide
|
| Waldorf is an available option for public education in the
| Netherlands. Likewise Montessori, at the secondary level as
| well.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Once you start to demand that schools become more
| entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's
| entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of
| lost sight of the mission of a school.
|
| Maybe it's time to put the world's best entertainment
| technologies to use for our educational systems instead
| of fucking Candy Crush.
|
| > Also not how school works, at least not in the
| Netherlands. There are lots of group projects and
| multidisciplinary lesson arcs and so on. Maybe in China?
|
| I did my Abitur in Bavaria, Germany in 2010. My 13 years
| of school life and ~60% of my 2-year stint in academia
| were precisely what I described, and the generation after
| me that profited from the infamous "G8" reforms for
| Bavarian Gymnasium schools reported just the same. New
| books, finally (one of mine still had the fucking Soviet
| Union...), but same old teaching methods. Something like
| smaller classes would have been impossible due to a lack
| of teachers.
|
| > Waldorf is an available option for public education in
| the Netherlands. Likewise Montessori, at the secondary
| level as well.
|
| Kids shouldn't have to hope their parents know that this
| is an option or have the money for that to receive good
| education. Education is a _human right_ and the only
| chance societies have for a survivable future.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| > Once you start to demand that schools become more
| entertaining than the most addictive thing the world's
| entertainment technologists can dream up, you've kind of
| lost sight of the mission of a school.
|
| People aren't idiots. Kids aren't idiots either. They
| want more than mindless entertainment. A school computer
| with Scratch can easily compete with a platformer on the
| phone. School in general is in a good position to be
| empowering, but the system prefers to be oppressive
| instead.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| You seem to be working from an incomplete model of the
| world. I can tell you for certain that small private
| schools with engaging lessons still have children who'd
| prefer to be on their phone. But I also went to school
| multiple decades ago and we weren't sitting quietly
| listening to the teacher all day, or working off
| typewritten transparencies...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'm coming from the political side: all metrics indicate
| that quality of school has gone downhill or stagnated
| among most Western countries (e.g. PISA study or the #/%
| of students leaving school without a degree), businesses
| in Germany (legitimately IMHO) claim the same, investment
| into schools has gone down as well (particularly in the
| USA, but also in Germany - the usually dilapidated state
| of toilets is a meme on its own). Education scientists
| _regularly_ come forward with appeals to improve the
| situation. On top of that, employment opportunities for
| low qualified people have been shrinking for decades as
| these jobs either went to China, to automation or need
| better qualification (half of the work of an household
| electrician these days is planning smart home stuff).
|
| Meanwhile, Asian countries continue to excel... but at
| the cost of hundreds of thousands of broken young souls,
| of families going into absurd debt, and of suicide.
|
| At the same time, Western politicians rarely seem to
| listen to the scientists and instead prefer to do nothing
| at all - this is _extremely_ dangerous for the future of
| our economies.
|
| To me, the most important thing is to give schools and
| teachers the resources (staff, funding, proper and
| maintained buildings) they need to give _every single
| child_ the best education they can _without_ falling
| victim to the horrors of Asian education culture, because
| otherwise our economy is getting fucked.
| msla wrote:
| This is very, very dangerous, especially if an emergency happens
| and the teacher is out of the room or slow to respond.
|
| Yes, emergencies happened before cell phones. People died of them
| more often back then.
| arp242 wrote:
| This is beyond hysterical. Children have managed to survive in
| classrooms for a long time without phones. They were not at
| great risk of dying in them before cell phones are not at great
| risk of dying in them today, even in the United States with all
| the school shootings and whatnot.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I would bet that the number of in-classroom emergencies with
| fatal outcome that are prevented by kids having a phone is far
| outweighed by the number of social-media induced suicides and
| general loss of quality of life from mental health effects.
| code_runner wrote:
| So interested in seeing some sources for "tragedies at schools
| causing death preventable by smartphone access during
| instruction"
| gsich wrote:
| What emergency in a classroom?
| msla wrote:
| Medical emergencies. Family emergencies.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Dumb phones are just as good as smart phones for emergencies.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Even better I'd say
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-fixes-
| nightma...
| Symbiote wrote:
| Most classrooms probably have a landline phone on the teacher's
| desk. Any child can use that in an emergency.
|
| If not, all the adjacent classrooms almost certainly have a
| teacher present, who will also be trained in first aid.
| misnome wrote:
| This reads like pure hysteria. Do you have any evidence or
| statistics about rates of "Classroom Emergencies" to base this
| panic on?
|
| Specifically those outside of the US, we know that is an
| outlier.
| msla wrote:
| Can you do this without bringing a completely unrelated
| country into it?
|
| The United States of America isn't the main character of
| history.
| michaelt wrote:
| What misnome means is: Don't criticise this Dutch school
| rule if you can only do so using American school shooting
| statistics.
| msla wrote:
| I never mentioned school shootings. Everyone else did.
| bscphil wrote:
| That the US should not be the focal point of an argument
| about phones in schools is exactly the point that the
| parent comment was making.
| msla wrote:
| I never brought up the US.
| warrenmca wrote:
| Remember this is the Netherlands, not the US. Happily,
| "emergencies" are not a regular occurrence.
| msla wrote:
| Yes, because Dutch people don't have medical emergencies.
| nerdbert wrote:
| They don't seem to have medical emergencies that can't be
| solved by one of the surviving kids running out of the
| mysteriously unattended classroom and fetching an adult to
| triage.
| msla wrote:
| "Mysteriously unattended"? You've been out of school too
| long.
| dahwolf wrote:
| We do, but we don't send tweets about it or stand around to
| record it.
| cheeseface wrote:
| Every country should have legislation in place that allows this.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > Children will soon be prevented from bringing mobile phones
| into Dutch classrooms.
|
| "Prevent"? Forbidding is easy. Actually preventing is another
| thing altogether.
|
| > Due to persistent signals from teachers that they are unable to
| keep smartphones out of the classroom on their own, ...
|
| So teachers already had the authority to forbid carrying of
| phones. Article offers no evidence that national authorities can
| do any better.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Enforcement is a challenge but by making it a law you hopefully
| also co-opt parents to help with enforcement.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Alternatively it will teach children at a younger age to
| ignore laws.
| esarbe wrote:
| Or getting their phone confiscated and not being able to
| use it for a week or so will teach them the cost of
| ignoring laws.
|
| A useful life lesson in any case.
| Rechtsstaat wrote:
| This is an older article. Today, the coalition decided on a
| measure with 'urgent advice' to not be allowed smartphones,
| tablets and smartwatches in the classroom [1]. Starting Jan 1st
| 2024, and so far only for secondary education, though they're
| deciding on primary education today.Schools are free in how they
| implement it, could be in the entire building or just classrooms.
| I don't expect any hard rules any time soon, with the coalition
| being so divided on the topic.
|
| There's been interesting debates in parlement preceding this
| measure, with several interesting position papers on the topic
| from researchers, and even student associations [2]. The
| researchers emphasize that adolescents are much more susceptible
| to the bad effects of smartphones, due to inexperience with
| dopamine and its effects on dopamine production, being easier to
| condition, FOMO. The main adverse effect they name is what they
| call a 'crumbling brain', with a short attention span unable to
| focus on one thing for a longer time. An often-repeated soundbyte
| is that students using smartphones often score in average 1-1.5
| points less on tests, on a scale of 1 to 10.
|
| I dunno what to think about it. As noted by the student
| association, it seems like children won't get the chance to learn
| how to handle the traps smartphones pose. Then again, I was free
| to use mine in high school and I'm still addicted to the thing :/
|
| [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2481424-kabinet-geeft-dringend-
| advies...
|
| [2]
| https://www.tweedekamer.nl/debat_en_vergadering/commissiever...
| ctenb wrote:
| The article says it's published at TUESDAY, 4 JULY 2023 -
| 14:26. Strange that its information is apparently outdated.
| boredpudding wrote:
| It's because 'nltimes.nl' is not a serious news outlet. It
| just translates things and reposts it.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > due to inexperience with dopamine and its effects on dopamine
| production, being easier to condition, FOMO.
|
| I don't understand the reasoning in performing this type of
| deep analysis. If the purpose of the device is to enhance
| education, it can be in the classroom. If it it's not, it's
| essentially a toy, and it has no place in the classroom. Why
| even bring dopamine in to it?
| im3w1l wrote:
| A device made with the best of intentions and with many
| helpful features for enhancing education may turn out to have
| harmful consequences in practice. Those harmful consequences
| typically include temptations to have fun instead of
| productivity and learning. And that's where all those
| concepts you quote come in.
| akira2501 wrote:
| That sounds like a concern for teachers making lesson
| plans, and not for general student expectations.
| sublinear wrote:
| > inexperience with dopamine and its effects on dopamine
| production, being easier to condition, FOMO
|
| I know this is an unpopular opinion, but this is entirely in
| the hands of the parents and far from new. You build their
| mental toughness by taking them under your wing and introducing
| them to the offline world beyond the walls of home and school.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I have a hard time believing such researchers. It's just way
| too politically convenient that they can pull such explanations
| and numbers out. It always feels as though that these policy
| advisors can support any position and if it eventually goes
| wrong then nobody will blame them anyway.
|
| I personally think phones definitely shouldn't be used in a
| classroom. I don't even see what benefit you would get from it,
| but it definitely shouldn't be legislated over. If a teacher or
| school wants to ban it then they should be able to.
| meesaltena wrote:
| > way too politically convenient
|
| why do you presuppose a political motive for the researchers?
| What's political about this?
| throwaway98271 wrote:
| It's political because the people pushing for it usually
| are conservatives who don't like the modern ways of life
| and/or education. It's questionable whether they actually
| want to help the society or just force people into their
| own ways. They might even think they're helping, but
| actually do the opposite.
|
| Researchers often do research based on their world view.
| Did these people also try to research what happens if they
| integrate the technology into education and teach children
| about the possible dangers of it, or did they focus on just
| whatever could confirm their world view?
| meesaltena wrote:
| Thanks for your explanation. I am just suspicious of
| anyone disregarding a study for perceived political
| convenience without any explanation at all. But I get it
| now.
| andrepd wrote:
| That's preposterous. I'm as left-wing as can be and I
| think that smartphones and social media are a plague.
| Anecdotally, in my experience my left-leaming
| acquaintances are the ones more likely to be aware of the
| dangers of social media.
| throwaway98271 wrote:
| Then you and your acquaintances are unusual. In my
| experience, the left-leaning people are pushing for more
| digital learning. In my country, every left-leaning
| political party has it as a part of their program. In EU,
| there's an entire left-wing party based around digital
| stuff (Pirate).
| tomsmeding wrote:
| Independent of any judgement of the particular research at
| hand: _everything_ about this is political. Lots of people,
| in particular parents but also others, dislike and fear
| that young people are losing their life on "screens", i.e.
| mostly smartphones, gaming.
|
| Note the "dislike and fear", which is fully subjective and
| fundamentally not based on evidence. This is regardless of
| whether there actually _is_ data to support this position;
| the fear exists nonetheless, and data can only back it up
| or contradict their intuition.
|
| Most politicians have children, and most of the voting body
| has children.
|
| This is very much a politically charged issue.
| meesaltena wrote:
| Thanks. I can see where the person I replied to was
| coming from now.
| xp84 wrote:
| No idea how things work in Europe, but over here if a teacher
| or school wants to ban (or heck, even allow: see "banned"
| books) something -- even if it's for good reasons, the
| loudest local parents that disagree will show up to school
| board meetings screaming at them, and challenge them at the
| next election. Perhaps the local officials would rather have
| the cover of a law than look like they're being capricious.
| detuur wrote:
| Belgian perspective, but what they use in various nations
| around Europe/the world is likely closer to our system than
| to the American one:
|
| We do not have school board meetings the way you do. We do
| have parents' councils, and parents' councils have
| delegates that represent all parents at school councils,
| and school councils additionally have delegates
| representing the local government, the school employees,
| and the students. The school council then negotiates with
| the school leadership (which is not elected, but appointed
| by national organisations). This is a lot more reflective
| of the "indirect democracy" principles that are common here
| in Europe.
|
| What this means, practically, is that unless you've got
| broad support for your initiatives you can go pound sand if
| you disagree with how your kid's school is run.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Realized 10+ years ago that the only way I could have my kids
| grow up addiction-free was if they didn't have a
| smartphone/tablet and the only credible way I could ask this from
| them was if I also didn't have one.
|
| In hindsight one of the best decisions of my life, sadly becoming
| more and more difficult to maintain as banking, public
| transportation, restaurants, and all other parts of life
| increasingly assume you carry a smartphone.
| nologic01 wrote:
| > as banking, public transportation, restaurants, and all other
| parts of life increasingly assume you carry a smartphone
|
| People have not worked through the wide ranging implications of
| this "assumption", given who builds and controls everything
| about those devices.
| namanyayg wrote:
| Great commitment. What about work tho, do you only work while
| sitting down in front of your workstation then?
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| >only work while sitting down in front of your workstation
|
| As you should no matter if you have a smart phone or not.
| eur0pa wrote:
| As it should be
| tome wrote:
| > What about work tho, do you only work while sitting down in
| front of your workstation then?
|
| This question is fascinating to me! What form of work
| requires using a smart phone?
| ghaff wrote:
| To some degree you can be contactable when traveling or
| otherwise away from your desk with a feature phone but only
| partially. You'd certainly be that quirky person with the
| odd anti-smartphone habit.
| gspencley wrote:
| As a software eng something that bothers me is that every
| single employer that I have worked for has assumed that you
| would have no problem installing work-related software on
| your phone.
|
| The most common offender is MFA related software.
|
| I run GrapheneOS on my phone and don't have the Google Play
| stuff installed. And kind of the entire point of this is
| that I don't want to run proprietary, closed-source stuff
| on my phone at all. I also like not having a ton of
| bloatware/spyware installed by the manufacturer that I
| can't remove. So anyway, I usually protest and say that I
| can't, and that if I'm required to use a mobile device for
| work purposes then I need the company to provide me with
| one.
|
| Often arrangements can be made by requesting a device that
| can double for other work related functions. For example, I
| currently have a work-issued iPad with Okta Verify
| installed on it that also let's me reach for Safari and do
| iOS specific dev & testing when needed.
|
| But it does show the creep. Companies just assume that they
| can request that you use your mobile device for things that
| you otherwise wouldn't, and that you will have no problem
| complying. IMO saying either "I don't own a smartphone" or
| "I refuse to use my personal devices for work related
| purposes" should be a no-questions-asked accepted position.
| And while I've yet to be met with hostility by saying that,
| it is unfortunately such a minority position that it is
| almost always the first time they've heard an objection.
| cesarb wrote:
| > IMO saying either "I don't own a smartphone" or "I
| refuse to use my personal devices for work related
| purposes" should be a no-questions-asked accepted
| position. And while I've yet to be met with hostility by
| saying that, it is unfortunately such a minority position
| that it is almost always the first time they've heard an
| objection.
|
| Being at a more security-conscious (or paranoid) company
| can help in that case: they also don't want you to have
| work related things (other than MFA related software) on
| your personal devices, so the incentives align.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Definitely. It's just so much easier to have a policy of
| 'no company data on personal devices' and just hand out
| the devices people need for their work. Easy to explain
| to auditors too (think ISO 27001).
|
| For devs and support this means a laptop, and for ops and
| management a smartphone is usually needed too.
|
| The only reason I have a phone on me when I'm at the
| office is for school to reach me in case my kid is taken
| ill or something like that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I would never put work stuff on my personal phone. Keep
| those lives separate. I seem to remember a story here a
| few years ago where someone's company got sued, and they
| demanded her personal phone (full of nudes and other
| personal info) for legal discovery because she used it
| for both personal and work stuff. Don't cross the
| streams, people!
|
| If [company] needs me to do work on a phone, they need to
| provide the phone. Then they are welcome to remote-wipe
| it, install whatever Spyware and LockdownWare they need
| to, and have it back whenever they want it. I don't care.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I spent a few years as an okta engineer implementing MFA.
| Sometimes they buy you an MFA device, but most companies
| just degrade their security by letting you use phone mfa
| (even using your work desk phone for mfa).
|
| This, of course, is not the fault/problem of the people
| who refuse to install mfa on their personal device. Good
| for them.
| jameshart wrote:
| Installing an MFA token in your phone is just using a
| convenient place to keep tokens, not an imposition on
| you.
|
| Objecting to being asked to keep MFA tokens on your phone
| is like saying 'where am I supposed to keep this keycard
| to get into the building? In my own personal WALLET?'
| gspencley wrote:
| 1. I wasn't talking about tokens, I was talking about
| requiring employees to install software on their personal
| devices.
|
| 2. You don't need to own a wallet to use a keycard.
| jameshart wrote:
| 2FA tokens these days broadly follow TOTP and HOTP
| standards, meaning you can use any token manager you like
| to handle them. The iOS password manager even has inbuilt
| 2FA token support now. You shouldn't have to install
| software just for managing corporate 2FA tokens any more
| than you need to buy a proprietary keyring to hold your
| desk drawer key.
| mindslight wrote:
| I agree with where you're coming from, but half the
| problem is caused by this needless bundling, putting
| everything on a single device. A cheap used tablet is
| like $100. Get one just for work junk. Use it when you
| need it, otherwise forget about it. Having to spend that
| money yourself to help corporate check some compliance
| box is certainly over the line of what _should be_ , but
| depending on how much you'd otherwise have to argue it's
| perhaps a better use of your time.
|
| In general I find segmenting things across devices a
| great way of mitigating overstimulation hell. Like most
| people I've got some trash toilet game I've become
| habituated to, but I only do so on a particular device
| that otherwise stays home. If I'm out and about and have
| to wait for a few minutes, there's zero temptation to
| pull it out and check in. Also it's simply unable to
| surveil my movements, as opposed to say trusting the OS
| permission system plus having to work around its
| shortcomings with something like an always-on VPN.
| xeromal wrote:
| This isn't the answer to your question but 2 factor auth
| often requires a phone these days especially for tools that
| require SMS.
| achenet wrote:
| I know some tattoo artists that use their smartphones a lot
| for discussing ideas with clients, sharing images of their
| work, etc, via Instagram.
|
| Could in theory be done with a camera + computer, but
| probably easier with smartphone.
| kodah wrote:
| As someone said, MFA related stuff mostly. I also requested
| a smart phone from work so I could attend meetings while
| I'm driving to places and so I have a hotspot if I'm in the
| pager rotation, which I get paid for.
| goodbyesf wrote:
| Any development work where uptime is important? Especially
| if SLA is involved. If your product has issues, the client
| bothers management and management will certainly want to
| bother you.
| cesarb wrote:
| > This question is fascinating to me! What form of work
| requires using a smart phone?
|
| A common one I've seen around is food delivery workers.
|
| Another common one, at least around here, is taxis (we used
| to call them "radio-taxi" since you called a taxi by
| dialing to a central and talking with a dispatcher, who
| talked to the drivers through radio; it's been a while
| since the bulky radios with long external whip antennas
| have been replaced with a smartphone app).
|
| Another one I've occasionally seen is power company repair
| workers, who seemed to use their smartphones both to
| communicate with their central and to fill service order
| forms. The same for communication network repair workers
| (though now I'm thinking, how do the cell phone network
| repair workers do it? I'm guessing they must have a
| traditional handheld radio as a fallback).
| mike50 wrote:
| The "two factor" that many companies use.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Duo is compatible with dumb phones
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Also passkeys, and, very crude but effective, using a
| browser plugin for TOTP or a compatible password manager
| on your laptop/workstation.
| namanyayg wrote:
| Wow, I always knew HN was mainly used by programmers and
| this thread seems to add further anecdotal evidence for it.
|
| For me, as an agency founder, most of my work is
| communicating with my team and clients. With clients:
| sharing progress updates, discussing possible new
| directions or new features, and replying to any questions
| they have. With team: exploring the solution space for new
| features, asking for updates, and managing and overseeing
| work done by developers on a day to day or week to week
| basis.
|
| My team works remotely on hours of their choosing and their
| working times span ~14h of a day. Much of the work for me
| is intermittent and is discontinuous.
|
| I do around ~50-60% of such work using my phone. I find it
| more convenient and faster than having to go to my
| workstation.
|
| Is this odd?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| No, but it would be odd if you expected your employees to
| use their own phones for this.
| namanyayg wrote:
| Of course, no where did I talk about my team. This is
| just my personal workflow.
| somsak2 wrote:
| Most FAANG-level software engineering jobs will require
| being on-call with something like PagerDuty [0]. Though I
| guess you could get by with using just text message
| notifications and not necessarily the app.
|
| [0] https://www.pagerduty.com/
| Barrin92 wrote:
| In the US that is. Over here on the old continent they
| thankfully can't pull that stuff because most countries
| have banned work calls outside of regular work hours.
| Abroszka wrote:
| No, in the EU too and it's legal. They pay extra though
| <3
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Definitely not legal in many of the large economies any
| more. France, Spain, Italy, Portual, Belgium and Ireland
| have have all adopted so called "Right to disconnect"
| laws. In Germany it's not categorically outlawed but
| employees have no obligation to respond off-hours.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/01/right-
| to-...
|
| May of course be the case that some companies skirt the
| rules because they are relatively new and awareness might
| not be there.
| Abroszka wrote:
| I think you are confusing "respond off-hours emails" and
| on-call. I work in Germany and I'm contractually
| obligated to respond when I'm on-call.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Not sure which typical workplaces require smartphone use (I'm
| sure there are many), but indeed, in my case, I work either
| at the computer or in front of people or walking up and down
| while thinking :)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I would have thought any using 2FA for anything would
| essentially require it.
| gsich wrote:
| You can use TOTP on your PC too.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I haven't yet encountered situations with mandatory 2FA,
| but indeed, this is the kind of thing I expect to become
| widespread, making it more and more difficult to those
| without a smartphone.
| ghaff wrote:
| Company TFA is less of a problem than other things as
| they'll use a token rather than SMS and you can always
| use a hardware token. I have a soft token on my phone but
| it's not required.
| vitro wrote:
| You can have TOTP as a browser extension. Not saying you
| should, just that there is a possibility. A bonus is
| easier backup of secrets so loosing your phone does not
| lock you out.
| arp242 wrote:
| Not really; very few 2FA methods are tied to a specific
| smartphone app.
| Semaphor wrote:
| You can use a YubiKey for 2FA, I think even for TOTP, but
| as I am a Smartphone user, I use my phone when only TOTP
| is available.
| derwiki wrote:
| Yubikey is a good alternative
| fossuser wrote:
| Lots of respect for this - I'd guess your kids have it too. I
| often felt frustrated as a kid that adults took power and
| control over you and didn't adhere to the same demands
| themselves.
| kelipso wrote:
| Seems like contrived logic made by a kid who really wants
| something. Adults can drive, drink, etc.
| throwawayadvsec wrote:
| You can't kill someone with a smartphone though.
|
| Unless it's a nokia 3310 and you're like really strong.
| vuln wrote:
| You can definitely kill someone with a cellphone.
| kelipso wrote:
| Plenty of other things that adults can do and kids can't
| do that doesn't kill anyone lol.
| digitalengineer wrote:
| "1996: The Israeli secret service finds that a cell phone
| can be used for things other than chatting with friends.
| It also makes a pretty nifty little bomb for disposing of
| an enemy, which is what happens to Yahya Ayyash on Jan.
| 5, 1996 when he tries talking on a booby-trapped phone "
| https://www.wired.com/2007/01/introducing-the-cell-phone-
| bom...
| anjel wrote:
| Similarly, the emergent generation in American often reject
| learning to drive a car, as renunciation of the
| anthropocentric lifestyle.
| ilyt wrote:
| I'd imagine it's more coz they can't afford it or have
| place to store it than anything else
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Nah, driving is also stressful and traffic is not fun.
|
| I've seen recently a fair amount of car enthusiasts start
| buying into the walkable cities/public transit mantra,
| because a car enthusiast does not find city/suburban stop
| and go traffic to be the thing they're enthusiastic
| about.
| ilyt wrote:
| Right but that didn't change in last 20 years. Cities
| that suck driving (and walking) in now sucked as much and
| more 20 years ago. It's not that that changed how much
| people want to have driving license.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The amount of delay has increased over the last 20 years
| with a blip when everybody was locked down. Lane miles
| have not kept up with population growth or increasing
| sprawl, and investment in alternatives to traffic is
| quite poor.
| browningstreet wrote:
| My college student still won't take a cell phone. His uni gave
| him an iPad but he leaves it home most of the time. It can
| happen. And since he doesn't have a cellphone, I don't pick
| mine up so much when we're hanging out together. Win-win.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I'm rather disturbed by the discompassion society has towards
| people without smartphones. Be it menus at restaurants, banking
| apps (as you mention), or even map availability. We just assume
| everyone is connected all the time and that phones never break
| or have issues. I feel crazy, because my phone is constantly
| misbehaving.
| wonnage wrote:
| It's even worse in Asia, lots of things require an app tied
| to local phone number. It's at the point where you literally
| can't pay for things, call a cab, etc. as a tourist
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| The worseness must not be evenly distributed. I live in
| Asia, albeit not as a tourist, and have none of those
| problems.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Industrial society is coercive towards people that want to
| live more primitive life than one deem normal, that's
| essentially main thesis of anarcho-primitivists. Still, I
| don't think Luddites should ban for other people their
| technology. Why not ban electricity and cars too?
| xethos wrote:
| I'm not asking others to give up smartphones, just like I'm
| not asking others to give up stairs or cars. I only want
| the world to remain accessible to those without. Keep paper
| menus, build a ramp, and maintain cycling or public transit
| infrastructure.
| TotalCrackpot wrote:
| Ok, I agree with that. I think there should be more
| effort put towards infrastructure for people with
| disabilities too.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think this is overstated. I can't think of anything
| essential I cannot do without a smartphone or computer. You
| have to do it like it's 1985, which is foreign to the last
| generation or two, but it's still doable.
| logifail wrote:
| > I can't think of anything essential I cannot do without a
| smartphone or computer [..] it's still doable
|
| Q: Have you never been to a restaurant which has done away
| with physical menus ("because Covid") and has a QR code
| which you're supposed to scan with your device?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah, I just ask the waiter what's good here?
| canjobear wrote:
| I've never been to one that wouldn't dig up a physical
| menu on request.
| logifail wrote:
| > I've never been to one that wouldn't dig up a physical
| menu on request.
|
| Well, we have been to one (in Switzerland, as it happens)
| despite having been seated we got up and walked out once
| it was clear they expected us to get on the Internet to
| look at their menu. Their loss.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I have an elderly relative with dementia who is unable to use
| a smartphone but the local grocery chains provide discounts
| for their weekly sales through smartphone based digital
| coupons. The open irritation and verbal abuse they get from
| cashiers who have to go through their alternate manual
| process for entering those digital coupon discounts is
| depressing.
|
| They aren't alone either, e.g.
| https://www.wcpo.com/money/consumer/dont-waste-your-
| money/se...
| xeromal wrote:
| This should go over as about as well as other abstinence-type
| programs.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Every generation has trouble dealing with the changes in the
| younger generation. Imposing luddite behavior us just dumb.
|
| I speak as a father of teenagers.
|
| Better they learn responsible use than have it imposed.
| alexawarrior wrote:
| [dead]
| cies wrote:
| > Better they learn responsible use than have it imposed.
|
| Good that schools do not have to learn responsible use, or
| unlearn irresponsible use, by just banning it whole sale.
|
| You have the rest of their waking hours to do so (or not do so)
| as a parent.
| dahwolf wrote:
| It's not dumb. The phone distracts from the goal, it's as
| simple as that.
| woudsma wrote:
| I can't imagine myself graduating high school if I had a
| smartphone back then. Those things are so addictive, they just
| keep on giving. When I was studying all you could play on your
| phone was Snake. Going out with friends and making a campfire was
| way more fun than playing Snake. Nowadays people can spend 14hrs
| a day on their phone and still not be bored, it's crazy.
|
| Deleting social media apps makes your phone _much_ less
| interesting though!
| earthling8118 wrote:
| This is a sign of you being out of touch with the times. I can
| assure you that a phone wouldn't be the source of this problem.
| I would play Kerbal Space Program or any other game on the
| school computer. There weren't many options for them to stop
| it. We had http proxies, linux live CDs, you name it. The
| schools just simply couldn't lock them down properly. Even the
| students that weren't technically inclined didn't have
| difficulty, but there were plenty of people that did know what
| they were doing too.
| detuur wrote:
| How is computer usage remotely comparable? At my high school
| we had 2 hours of computer class per week. The rest of the
| time we spent in regular, computer-less classrooms. We had
| smartphones already in my days and I promise you they were a
| major source of distraction for the students even though they
| were banned.
|
| I cannot imagine I would have bothered to pay attention at
| all if I could just be scrolling twitter or reddit all day.
| There's a reason why I block these apps on my own phone
| during work hours.
| qup wrote:
| If you were playing KSP on your school computers, then you're
| just part of the current generation. We're old, kiddo.
|
| I was playing Oregon Trail.
| kalupa wrote:
| I'd say both are educational and being played on a school
| computer is acceptable
| im3w1l wrote:
| What's a CD?
| deely3 wrote:
| How many millions of children succesfully graduated already
| while having smartphones?
|
| > Nowadays people can spend 14hrs a day on their phone and
| still not be bored, it's crazy.
|
| How this can be crazy? You have unlimited library of people,
| photos, information, videos, absolutely anything in your hand.
| It would be crazy not use it. I use my smartphone even now to
| write this comment.
|
| > Deleting social media apps makes your phone _much_ less
| interesting though!
|
| And also it will succesfully separate you from social
| information, trends. Which is good but also could become issue.
| ghusto wrote:
| It's difficult to explain how the world was before 2007. Yes,
| yes, some of this is cranky old man shouts at cloud, but some
| of it is more objective.
|
| Being bored was okay. It was part of life, and good for you.
| It not only got you to put in effort into not being bored
| (_eventually_), but just not being entertained is good for
| your mental well being. None of us realised this at the time
| of course.
| deely3 wrote:
| Being bored is okey. But not when you force to be bored by
| someone else. You are bored in a prison, you are bored
| during doing repetitive work, is it good for you too?
|
| I remember times "before internet", when there no internet,
| no mobile phones, only books, TV with 3 channels, gossips,
| newspapers and radio. And so? I remember when cranky old
| men shouts "enough books,enough TV,enough radio, enough
| music". I'm now cranky old man, so what?
|
| I still do not realize it.
| woudsma wrote:
| I think it's ok when students are forced to be bored by
| their tutors. I've taught bachelor students who spent the
| entire lecture on their phone. After the lecture they
| would seize a lot of my (unpaid) time for extra face to
| face, or they'd send me an email with questions. It's
| fine for them to be bored and forced to take notes IMHO.
|
| There's enough time for smartphone use outside school
| hours. It's a waste of time/energy for the tutor if no
| one is paying attention. Of course I'd try to make the
| lecture as interesting and 'fun' as possible, but winning
| their attention over Insta/TikTok/etc is challenging.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Also, entire new forms of bullying, endless porn, and clickbait
| media with headlines that can be terrifying to adults, let
| alone kids.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Its sort of crazy that if I said we should ban computers or
| landline telephones or the internet from schools I'd be pilloried
| as a luddite. But everyone cheers banning smartphones. Because
| they are convinced (without evidence) that they are addictive.
| And of course, the best way to teach kids about addictive things
| is to give them zero exposure to them until they turn 18 (21 etc)
| then give them full, limitless, unsupervised access...
| maccard wrote:
| Smartphones are being banned because they _are_ pocket
| computers. They're not being banned because they're phones.
| They're major distractions
| phito wrote:
| No evidence that phones are addictive? Are you kidding me?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's the same evidence that video games cause violence: no
| evidence, but the worried well really WANT to believe it, and
| somehow everyone just convinces themselves it is true.
|
| To be clear, I am not saying kids SHOULD be on their phones
| in school or that no one has a bad relationship with their
| phone. Just that no one has actually bothered measuring this,
| they jumped straight to "it suits my prejudices so I believe
| it"...
| dahwolf wrote:
| Where did you learn to dramatize like this? Smartphone?
| CalRobert wrote:
| Between this and my kids actually being able to ride a bike
| around without getting mowed down by drivers I'm ecstatic to be
| moving there next month.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| gefeliciteerd
| chrismartin wrote:
| To the extent you're willing to share, I'm curious what's
| bringing you there, and where you're moving from.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This is the gist of it: https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw
|
| But I grew up in central California and surroundings in the
| 90's and rode my bike everywhere. And it was horrible. I
| nearly died multiple times, and drivers were sometimes
| furious at someone biking on the road. I rode from Sac to
| Folsom once over a narrow bridge with no shoulder and can't
| believe I lived.
|
| I thought it might be better in cities, but Berkeley, while
| better, was still mediocre, and Santa Monica was bad. Really,
| everywhere in the US is somewhere on the spectrum from
| "merely horrible" to "dire hellscape".
|
| Ten years ago my wife and I moved to Ireland. Ireland is also
| bad, but still massively better than anywhere I've lived in
| the US. But now we have young kids, and we don't want "better
| than the US", we want "good enough your child can bike to
| school, and when people kill children with their cars the
| people are angry with the driver, not sympathetic towards
| them". Which means the Netherlands, or perhaps Denmark. So
| that's where we're going. Ireland being wildly incompetent
| bureaucratically it took 4 years just to process mine and my
| wife's naturalisation applications.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| I grew up riding bikes every damned day (including to and
| from school) in the Chicago suburbs and don't recall ever
| having an incident with a car. I also didn't tend to ride
| in busy streets.
|
| Teach your kids how to survive.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I walked to work daily for the past 9 months and
| approximately twice/week someone would blow through the
| marked crosswalk while I had a signal because they didn't
| check for pedestrians. In multiple cases I was less than
| 3 feet from their car.
|
| The problem isn't people walking or cycling- it's people
| driving and car manufacturers who make cars so big you
| can't adequately see the space around them.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Compounding that is the topmost problem endangering lives
| today; TEXTING WHILE DRIVING.
|
| Until this is made a DUI-level offense with the same
| penalties, people will keep getting killed.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I started noticing this recently as I've been making it a
| point to look around more at my surroundings while I
| walk.
|
| So, so many people touch their phones while they're
| driving. Many hold it in their hands the entire time they
| drive. I live in a hands-free state!
|
| It's absolute madness at this point.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This doesn't match my experience. I'm glad your childhood
| was nice though.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Fair enough. Thanks!
| chrismartin wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, kind stranger.
|
| I live in a relatively (for the US) bike-friendly city
| (Tucson AZ). There's a lot of cycling infrastructure, but
| sometimes you have to ride on a 7-lane stroad with
| distracted/aggressive/inebriated drivers, many of them in
| vehicle types that are especially dangerous to get hit by.
| I'm envious of places that don't have the USA's car
| culture.
|
| I'm curious how you'll find living in Netherlands as an
| American.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Thanks, I'm curious too. Incidentally it's not near
| Tucson but https://culdesac.com/ is in Tempe and looks
| really interesting for a car-free development.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| This is so wrong in so many ways.
|
| - There's supposed to be a computer in front of every kid since
| grade one. Schools are instead banning the little computers kids
| smuggle in.
|
| - Hypocrisy. Smartphone bans are pushed by people who use them
| all the time themselves.
|
| - This is the same thing as with corporations locking down
| employees' computers. It's a policy designed for the worst
| behaving kids to the detriment of the best behaving ones. Poor
| use of time and poor self-control become expected and even the
| best kids will slide towards these low expectations.
|
| - Totalitarian policies like this get passed only because teens
| and tweens are disenfranchised. Democratic government trying to
| enforce similar population-wide ban wouldn't last long.
|
| - It's not about games or social media. Those are actually
| tolerated far better than apps like Socratic, which are treated
| like criminal level of cheating. This is technophobia all the way
| through.
|
| I could go on and on about this. Contrary to people nitpicking
| details (health, parent contact, practicality of enforcement), I
| think this is fundamentally wrong.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| "Totalitarian policies" my man these are children in school. I
| am 100% confident from your reply that you are not a parent and
| have spent very little time around kids.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| I am a very caring parent and I have an exceedingly well-
| behaved kid. I am always kind and I have very few rules. My
| kid has unrestricted phone time but still prefers other stuff
| like Scratch.
|
| If you are thinking of children as prison inmates that
| deserve the totalitarian treatment, perhaps you are doing
| something wrong.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| [dead]
| vc9999 wrote:
| There's supposed to be a computer in front of every kid since
| grade one. Schools are instead banning the little computers
| kids smuggle in [A computer to use in the school as a means of
| education is not the same of letting kids use a cellphone in
| class]
|
| - Hypocrisy. Smartphone bans are pushed by people who use them
| all the time themselves. [Because they are adults not kids]
|
| - This is the same thing as with corporations locking down
| employees' computers. It's a policy designed for the worst
| behaving kids to the detriment of the best behaving ones. Poor
| use of time and poor self-control become expected and even the
| best kids will slide towards these low expectations. [employees
| are not kids, also employees are not in school they are in a
| job]
|
| - Totalitarian policies like this get passed only because teens
| and tweens are disenfranchised. Democratic government trying to
| enforce similar population-wide ban wouldn't last long.
| [Totalitarian policies? This has to be a joke]
|
| - It's not about games or social media. Those are actually
| tolerated far better than apps like Socratic, which are treated
| like criminal level of cheating. This is technophobia all the
| way through. [Of course. It's not about games and social media,
| it's a about kids not using a cell phone while in the
| classroom]
| guy98238710 wrote:
| > A computer to use in the school as a means of education is
| not the same of letting kids use a cellphone in class
|
| It is the same thing if the computers are uncensored as they
| should be. Kids are supposed to be taught responsibility
| since early age. If it can be done for computers, it can be
| surely done for smartphones.
|
| > Because they are adults not kids
|
| As someone else detailed in comments, this is aimed at
| secondary education and up, i.e. young adults (teens and
| tweens) rather than children.
|
| > Totalitarian policies? This has to be a joke
|
| Think again what would happen if your government tried to
| enforce this against adults. Wouldn't you call it
| totalitarian?
|
| > it's a about kids not using a cell phone while in the
| classroom
|
| It's about kids not using _any_ computing device in the
| classroom. 19th century education. As I have said, this is
| technophobia all the way through.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I know there's a point to be made that they're adults and not
| kids, but hear me out.
|
| I'm 37 and discovered around age 32 that I used my phone too
| much. It had crept into my waking life over around 8 years
| and became a real problem. Today I use a lot of strategies to
| prevent this, and it's still challenging to ensure I don't
| use it too much.
|
| Kids are surrounded by adults like me or even worse than I
| am. They use their phones so much, rarely to any useful
| effect, and they train kids to do the same thing. Adults
| reject advice or instruction to use their phone less, always
| certain that they don't do it for any bad reasons and that
| they're in control.
|
| Yet they aren't. It's a widespread, chronic, and tragically
| influential problem. Kids are using their phones way too
| much, but they're only mimicking what so many adults around
| them are doing.
|
| Phones also help fill agency gaps in their lives by allowing
| them to entertain themselves and socialize without relying on
| an adult to make things happen. Taking that away is hard and
| genuinely removes something positive from their lives --
| especially from their perspective.
|
| I know some adults are not hypocrites. These days I'd like to
| think I'm not, but I certainly was. I think we need to have a
| handle on that problem before we can ban phones for kids
| without reasonable pushback from them.
| dcsommer wrote:
| Correct parental examples are key to successfully training
| healthy habits, but phones are plenty addictive in their
| own right. It's not just a problem of bad parental
| examples. Why do you think the parents are addicted in the
| first place? Are children somehow immune? Hypocrisy is not
| the main thing here.
| soperj wrote:
| > I think we need to have a handle on that problem before
| we can ban phones for kids without reasonable pushback from
| them.
|
| Do you feel the same way about cigarettes?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I disagree with the premise or conclusion of every point you
| made.
|
| Computers as a tool for educational purposes is different than
| a TikTok stream.
|
| Adults using smartphones is different than children using them
| during learning periods. And for what it's worth, adults should
| use them less during work hours. In any case, this bullet point
| is no justification for letting kids use social media in
| school.
|
| Corporations locking down work terminals is legally permissible
| and morally correct. Unless you like the idea of a computer
| illiterate bank teller downloading zero days to the internal
| network because they have some fundamental freedom to browse
| the web on company resources.
|
| It isn't totalitarian, I disagree completely with the use of
| that term and with the implication that teenagers should have
| franchise at any level above local. Yes, school for children
| has different expectations than adults in an open society.
|
| It is about games and social media.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| > Computers as a tool for educational purposes is different
| than a TikTok stream.
|
| But nobody is banning TikTok. All schools that do anything
| about smartphones are always banning smartphones as such.
| Nobody is showing the kids how to use computers properly nor
| is anyone expecting them to use them for anything but games
| and social. Schools are just giving up on the subject and
| closing themselves in 19th century world. The same TikTok
| justification would be used against school computers until
| they are locked down so much they cannot be considered
| universal computers anymore.
|
| > Corporations locking down work terminals is legally
| permissible and morally correct.
|
| And a reliable way to get rid of the best employees by
| optimizing the whole organization for the worst ones. This is
| schools we are talking about. Pulling everyone down to the
| lowest standard of behavior is clearly against schools'
| mission. Schools should be instead optimized for the best
| students and push everyone to be their best selves.
|
| > It isn't totalitarian, I disagree completely with the use
| of that term and with the implication that teenagers should
| have franchise at any level above local.
|
| This is a bit OT, but aren't teenagers smarter that
| pensioners in every way you can measure except vocabulary?
| Aren't teenagers emotionally, cognitively, and physically
| clearly closer to 18+ adults than prepubescent children? If
| so, what makes you think they aren't effectively adults?
| Anyways, prepubescent children don't get to vote for
| practical reasons, specifically because they don't care and
| because they are under strong influence of their parents.
| Neither reason applies to teenagers.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| To the first point: If we assumed this is a dichotomy,
| which would you prefer? The government banning social media
| from all minors' devices? Some MDM that disabled it by
| force during certain hours, requiring intrusive software?
|
| Or, that we remove the problem by removing the tool
| entirely and without inspecting the devices contents?
|
| You talk about using computers properly, which is a noble
| goal, but the banning of phones in classrooms has multiple
| reasons behind it. One of which is the belief that social
| media and smartphone games are addictive. Should we teach
| kids how to smoke cigarettes responsibly during their lunch
| break?
| guy98238710 wrote:
| Children can be taught how to use computers in diverse
| and interesting ways since early age. I know, because I
| did it with my kid. And I did not exhaust the
| possibilities, so it can be certainly done much better if
| educational professionals invest themselves in the topic.
| As most parents aren't up to the task, schools are
| supposed to do it since kindergarten, but instead of
| offering positive and enjoyable examples, they choose to
| spread the sort of fear-inducing negative technophobic
| propaganda many people are repeating here.
|
| As for what I mean by technophobic propaganda, just
| listen to yourself: "the belief that social media and
| smartphone games are addictive". People aren't stupid.
| Psychological trickery can get games and media only so
| far. People crave a variety of experiences. It's not that
| hard to keep students' attention either by offering an
| interesting subject, by listening and being honest (for a
| change), or just by being there as a parent or teacher.
| dahwolf wrote:
| You haven't given a single reason in favor of smartphones in
| class, but there's a zillion straight forward reasons to
| disallow/constrain them.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| Why do you need reasons to allow smartphones? Isn't allowing
| any kind of behavior the default in free societies? You need
| a good reason to disallow something and especially so in case
| of a sweeping mass measure like this. I haven't heard any
| arguments against smartphones that wouldn't be shallow BS
| about "addictiveness" (seems everything is "addictive" these
| days) or "distraction" (as if there weren't other
| opportunities for distraction).
|
| PS: I did mention some reasons: computer for every pupil,
| Socratic app (and others), maintaining high expectations,
| resisting technological regress in schools that are already
| backwards. Not that this would be an exhaustive list.
| dahwolf wrote:
| "Isn't allowing any kind of behavior the default in free
| societies?"
|
| No?
|
| What exactly is so difficult to understand about a school
| being there for educational purposes, and the smartphone
| directly distracting from that?
| guy98238710 wrote:
| > What exactly is so difficult to understand about a
| school being there for educational purposes, and the
| smartphone directly distracting from that?
|
| Smartphone is a universal computer. You can use it for a
| variety of tasks, including education. Schools are
| supposed to teach that rather than throwing students back
| into the stone age.
|
| Smartphones (and computers in general) aren't just any
| tool. If used properly, they are powerful cognitive
| multipliers. Removing them from schools is like giving
| every student a lobotomy, because they aren't using their
| brain the way they are supposed to.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| > "Isn't allowing any kind of behavior the default in
| free societies?"
|
| > No?
|
| Err, are you living in a (relatively) free society? My
| country has this principle written in the constitution:
| people can do anything the law does not prohibit whereas
| the government can only do what the law expressly permits
| it to do. I would think that's the standard in
| democracies.
| [deleted]
| darkclouds wrote:
| And just how do you capture teachers breaking the law at school?
| I've seen teachers hitting kids with metre long wooden rules
| around ankles, a teacher throwing a kid into some music stands
| and reportedly out of a window, and much more. Seeing is
| believing but authority figures in all walks of life abuse their
| positions because they are only human!
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Which country was that in?
| darkclouds wrote:
| The UK.
|
| Where else did inspiration for Pink Floyds The Wall come
| from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall#Plot
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiest_Days_of_Our_Lives.
| .. ""The Happiest Days of Our Lives" concerns Pink's youth,
| attending a school run by strict and often violent teachers
| who treat the pupils with contempt."
|
| You dont run an Empire by being nice!
| finikytou wrote:
| just educate your children to have values. they will tell the
| truth. how do you think mankind did it before the phone.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| given the reduction in both actual police violence and police
| brutality reports once body cams were introduced, I suspect
| mankind did a lot of lying before smart phones.
| finikytou wrote:
| I really hope you never hold any power. I recommend you a
| nice movie you can watch called videodrome.
| chronogram wrote:
| Schools don't already ban them from the classroom?
| amelius wrote:
| In France they do.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2019/08/30/the-mobil...
| Aachen wrote:
| My Dutch school in the back-end of nowhere (insofar as the
| country has that) was very progressive with their phone ban in
| 2006, apparently. Per the article "Schools and teachers have
| been asking for rules to restrict the use of mobile phones in
| the classroom" I didn't know that they need permission to enact
| rules towards an orderly teaching environment. Sounds
| implausible but what do I know
|
| A notable omission from the article is how many schools already
| have this rule, because I can't imagine that any of them just
| lets the kids be on their phone during lessons. You're also not
| allowed to talk while the teacher is explaining something, or
| aren't allowed to work on homework for another subject or so.
| So even learning is prohibited if it's not for the right
| subject you're allocated right now: that's already in place,
| but banning phones is a problem? Curious
| criddell wrote:
| My kids' high school required kids have a smartphone. They
| wanted them using the calendar to track tests and assignments,
| they used the camera quite a bit both for assignments (make a
| short video about blah blah blah) and for quick notes (take a
| picture of the homework assignment on the white board). There
| was a twitter-like app for the teacher to broadcast information
| to the students and I believe students could message their
| teacher.
| bollos wrote:
| They have for a while now in my experience. I'm not sure if
| it's still a thing, but there used to be these like sacks at
| the door with numbered pockets in which you'd put your phone
| until the end of that specific class.
| nerdbert wrote:
| Based on visiting a lot of Dutch schools this year, that's
| still very much happening. I tried to google a photo but
| couldn't figure out what the word for that thing is.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I have no idea why this has to be a government-based rule (law?
| ... assuming they won't fix it until oct. 1st). Although I'm
| older, and phones were not as common as now, our schools had
| "school-rules" forbidding the use during classes, and if you got
| caught with a phone, the teacher would take it, and parents would
| have to come to school and pick it up. Are schools unable to
| implement simple rules and need the government to do it now?
|
| I'm bothered mostly, because school rules are school rules. Need
| to adapt? Need some "modification" of the rules? A teacher can do
| it. If it's government rules, there are pretty sure to be some
| edge cases, where someone will have to break those rules to
| achieve something positive.
| rvanlaar wrote:
| Here's Arjen Lubach, the Dutch Jon Stewart, about phones in
| classrooms.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cclEuSxFd_M
|
| Note: The autogenerated (english) subtitles are a pretty
| decent.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Is it possible to get the transcript in English without
| watching a 13 minute video?
| 9991 wrote:
| yt-dlp will give it to you.
| pbmonster wrote:
| > I have no idea why this has to be a government-based rule
|
| You clearly have not met today's parents. Enough of them revolt
| at the idea of a teacher taking - even temporarily - the $1000
| device they bought for their child and which they need to
| monitor/contact/supervise their child 24/7.
|
| A rule like that might help teachers and schools to get
| overbearing parents off their backs.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Enough of them revolt at the idea of a teacher taking -
| even temporarily - the $1000 device they bought
|
| How is that "overbearing" when horror stories like these are
| common? https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/yfskz
| 3/aita_... https://old.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/uc
| 2gwy/wibta...
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Two anecdotes are not common.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| The second story is an obvious fake, you can't add a second
| apple id to your phone and you need the first apple id
| password to log out :-)
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| I'm not even going to bother to read those "common" BS
| stories, but technically you're not quite right. You can
| have a separate Apple ID for some of the stuff on your
| Apple devices (like App Store or Apple Music purchases),
| and another for iCloud.
|
| In fact, Apple forces you to do this if your original
| Apple ID is not an E-mail address. After they instituted
| that idiotic requirement, they refused to let you use a
| non-E-mail-address ID for iCloud.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This might be true :)
|
| My parents would intentionally delay picking up the phone as
| a punishment, but back then, it was a monochrome display
| three line phone, and I was in highschool when I first got it
| :) But it had both clock and alarm, which some of my
| classmates didn't have on their older-model phones :)
| (ericsson a1018 vs ga628)
| Aachen wrote:
| To be clear, is this still about the Netherlands?
|
| I'm from NL but haven't been in school for some time so maybe
| this has changed. So far I thought helicopter parenting was
| mainly a USA phenomenon. Not that it doesn't exist here at
| all, just not the norm, at least ten years ago
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I live in slovenia, helicopter parenting is not that much
| of a thing, but parents coming to school to defend their
| kids (who did stupid stuff) sadly is becoming more common.
|
| A friend was a cop, and same thing... kid would get drunk,
| vomit in the middle of the city, the cops would pick him up
| and take him home, and the parents (instead of thanking the
| cop and punishing the kid) would blame others, say that
| someone planted alcohol in secret (since the kid is covered
| in red wine vomit, that would mean planting a liter of red
| wine in a glass of soda), etc.
|
| But i still think that such rules (cell phones) should be
| in-school rules, without the need of the governments to
| interfere.
| arp242 wrote:
| It's a thing everywhere, including Netherlands. I've seen
| it plenty of times over the years unfortunately.
|
| As for this specific issue, difficult parents has been
| mentioned a few times, e.g. in [1]: "But a smartphone ban
| leads to resistance from some parents who always want to be
| able to contact their children, including creative forms of
| sabotage and frustrating conflicts in the classroom".
|
| With hundreds or even thousands of kids and parents, you
| only need a few to be unreasonable to cause a world of
| frustration and hurt.
|
| [1]: https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/de-
| smartphone-moet-...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I've seen this solved here in slovenia in (at least) one
| school, where they have a "classroom phone" (a dumbfone,
| calls only). All the parents know the number, all the
| kids can use it in an emergency. They are usually not
| used in class, but on a field trip (especially multi-day
| one), the kids use it to call their parents and vice-
| versa.
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| Exactly. The go-to excuse for having phones in school is
| "B-b-but EMERGENCIES!"
|
| Such an easily defeated argument, as you point out.
| cies wrote:
| Choosing children's mental health and focus on school work over
| allowing big biz to unload their addictive products upon us.
| Seems to be the good thing to do.
| eimrine wrote:
| This law is so good, almost perfect. The only thing that is
| missing is a segregation between FOSS and anything else.
| Computers w/ FOSS should be not only allowed but being a primary
| source of learning but proprietary software should be banned at
| schools.
| terminalcommand wrote:
| I use my phone to check my blood glucose levels. I use a
| freestyle libre CGM. What will children do who need their phones
| as a health device?
| Huppie wrote:
| > Smartphones may still be used if they are needed for class,
| or if there is a medical need. One example of the latter is if
| a student with diabetes needs to measure sugar levels.
| polytely wrote:
| you can make exceptions, that happens all the time in laws
| dahwolf wrote:
| They could try reading the article, which addresses this exact
| scenario.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Maybe it's a symptom of where I live, but many teenagers I know
| would simply say "try and take it away from me" and wait for
| enforcement. Very few teachers would engage, and they know that.
| Teenagers crave and seek out agency. A phone not only provides
| some of that to them, but resisting having it taken away does as
| well. It's a battleground.
|
| If students can't use them, neither should adults.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Obviously physical intervention is ridiculous here, but forcing
| the student to leave the classroom if they don't comply is
| reasonable.
|
| That being said, discipline in schools is a huge can of worms
| in the US. Bu, in principle, the specific phone problem has
| solutions.
| ghusto wrote:
| It's the Netherlands. We don't roll like that ;)
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Here in Canada we roll in some ways I'm not proud of.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Faraday cage and block all internet in the classroom would make
| most devices unusable for anything except direct P2P apps like
| Briar.
| guy98238710 wrote:
| High-tech enforcement of 19th century teaching styles...
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I think this might work in a country like the Netherlands
| where school shootings aren't a constant fear and teachers
| are generally entrusted to ensure safety of children while
| they're in school. In America I think some parents would
| freak out because of the potential of the child being unable
| to reach out to a parent or vice versa during an emergency.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Newsflash: there are mechanisms of communication that
| utilize wires and can be installed in _every_ room in a
| building!
|
| I submit that any effective jamming or interference of
| wireless devices could be disabled in an emergency.
|
| Of course, if there is a rule, it should be enforceable by
| teachers. Teacher says no phone? Put the fucking phone
| away, child.
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