[HN Gopher] Greece announces new rules banning mobile phones in ...
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Greece announces new rules banning mobile phones in schools from
September
Author : ulrischa
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-08-31 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| We gave our son in middle school a smartwatch as a compromise,
| figured a full smartphone would be too distracting.
| rossjudson wrote:
| The middle school our kids go to bans smartwatches as well as
| phones. If either is discovered, it is confiscated and must be
| picked up _by the parents_ at the office.
|
| It's a private school. All the parents _agree_ with this
| policy. It 's fantastic for the kids, and for teaching.
| bmulholland wrote:
| I worked briefly in a team teating the BlackBerry thermals.
| I'd be surprised if this was the case -- phones have
| temperature monitoring, and are designed to manage their
| functions to avoid overheating. There are set maximums for
| each external material (glass, plastic, metal), and exceeding
| those can result in lawsuits. (Which happen regardless...)
| The phones should have detected the temperature conditions
| and decreased power to the radios.
|
| I've got interesting comparisons of BlackBerry vs Apple on
| this metric. Different story though.
| teeray wrote:
| It's news to me that phones were ever allowed. They were to be
| locked in a locker until after school hours for my entire
| schooling (punishable by detention and seizure of phone).
| stavros wrote:
| Where in Greece did you go to school?
| II2II wrote:
| The article notes that phones usually weren't permitted in
| schools, but it was difficult to enforce. Granted, the article
| doesn't give much reason to believe that it will be any easier
| to enforce. It suggests that they don't expect full compliance
| at the outset. Given the penalty is removal of the student from
| school, I doubt there will be much enforcement unless the phone
| is used to harass other students or staff. The more sensible
| solution is likely the one that you were exposed to: seizure of
| the phone.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The blanket policy used to be "I see it, I take it" by the
| teachers. That seemed reasonably effective since it allowed
| them to pretend they didn't see it at times when it was
| genuinely an accident.
| swayvil wrote:
| Why don't they just jam them?
| stavros wrote:
| Presumably the teachers still need their phones.
| swayvil wrote:
| I'd jam the cell signal and force them to go through the
| school wifi. Then they could control permissions.
| stavros wrote:
| The article says the problem is them recording video of
| kids bullying other kids, which won't be fixed by signal
| jamming, plus then you're screwed in an emergency.
| swayvil wrote:
| That'll teach me to consume 3rdhand news. :)
|
| But ya, if we were a little more totalitarian we could
| just flip a few settings in their phone via the school
| admin backdoor. Do we trust each other or don't we? So
| schizo.
| askvictor wrote:
| Really hard to contain that to a specific area, and you end up
| interfering with outside the school, possibly preventing people
| from calling emergency services.
| Spivak wrote:
| Because cell jamming is illegal?
| Novosell wrote:
| We're in a thread about passing laws though.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Aside from the hundred and one obvious reasons that's a
| pointlessly complex solution that would cause it's own
| problems, if you think about it for even a moment I bet you can
| come up with some ways for a pocket camera and video game to be
| disruptive in school even without signal.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| I would argue that it'd defeat the purpose in terms of teaching
| children delayed gratification.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Because phones can operate without signal?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That gets you serious Federal felonies in the US.
|
| Prisons can't even jam cell phones.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Greece
| ibash wrote:
| Loving this trend of banning phones.
|
| I overheard a conversation last week from a group of teachers
| talking about the phone ban:
|
| They had students put their phone in signal blocking bags. But
| some phones kept searching for signal until they overheated...
| literally warping the phone screen.
|
| Now they advise students to put it in airplane mode before
| sticking it in the bag...
| morkalork wrote:
| I swear the LG G6 I had did this. When I visit family, it's a
| long drive through some pretty spotty areas and the phone would
| be hot to the touch and the battery drained faster than usual.
| As if it's just constantly screaming out into the RF void.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| If the closest tower is on the fringe of connectivity, and
| you've got an app that's acknowledging push notifications
| constantly or similar, then wouldn't it make sense that it
| has to scream constantly? Keep in mind that not every push on
| a data level results in something displaying in your
| notification tray; these are quite distinct despite the
| phrase "push notification" commonly being used for the
| combination of a push coming in and a notification being
| presented as a result.
|
| Maybe the faraday cage bag in GP's anecdote wasn't quite good
| enough, so the same thing (fringe connectivity combined with
| lots of Rx packets needing to be ACK'd) was occuring for both
| of you.
|
| When you are 100% out of range such that no Rx is occuring at
| all, then at that point yes the phone should not be screaming
| into the void often enough to heat up and drain the battery.
| altinagr wrote:
| Mobile phones are already banned from Greek schools since 2006.
|
| The government issued a new set of cost-cutting changes for this
| academic year. The most fundamental change is that they merge
| classes together (at least 25 students) to save money. The
| teachers are unable to work with such big classes.
| zamadatix wrote:
| "Merging" as in ~25 is the new class size after merge or two
| classes of ~25 will merge to a new class size of ~50? I never
| really considered it before but on looking it up it seems some
| places have average class sizes <20 whereas where I went to
| school 25-30 was typical so I genuinely don't know which
| applies in this case.
|
| Even 30 I think worked out towards the later years but, looking
| back, I have no idea how grade school classes of 25+ held
| together. 50 would have to be just nuts for all but maybe the
| final year or two.
| Iulioh wrote:
| I don't think 50 student classes are possible because they
| wouldn't fit in the already present rooms
|
| Probably will set a minimum of 25 when possible with 30ish as
| a maximum
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Problem: bullying.
|
| Cheap solution that won't work, but they need to do something:
| take children's phones away.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Cyberbullying is mentioned a lot in this article but it's as
| the driver for previous set of rule changes around what happens
| to students who use cell phones in those situations. This new
| ban largely focuses on the general distraction phones cause,
| cyberbullying is at most just one small component in that.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| You're right in that it's both a modern challenge and one 30
| years in need of addressing.
|
| The first girl I "dated" I met in an AOL chat in the 90s where
| I did what was later called negging. Five years later, my
| friends were on AIM and torturing each other and everyone they
| could get the handles of.
|
| A coworker recently told me her tween son had done the same to
| a classmate via Discord and whatever other socials kids use
| today, and unlike, or because of, how we grew up, his teachers
| were aware of it and called his parents. He spent the summer
| without Internet doing volunteer work until everyone was
| satisfied, and he's improved because of it.
|
| I don't believe in ubiquitous surveillance, but with the
| connectivity available today, parents need more options to
| parent. I think there need to be more options for phones
| without cameras, more accessible management, and ways to limit
| that so that there's local privacy for developing people to
| explore their personhood. Taking phones away isn't a bad way to
| start until we have that option.
| dt3ft wrote:
| Glad to see policy makers coming to their senses.
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(page generated 2024-08-31 23:00 UTC)