[HN Gopher] Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
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Finland Bans Smartphones in Schools
Author : freetonik
Score : 708 points
Date : 2025-04-30 09:17 UTC (13 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (yle.fi)
| lupusreal wrote:
| Where they not already?
|
| In America they started off banned as soon as kids started
| getting them in the early 00s, but then some years later the bans
| became unenforced or even undone because, apparently, parents
| said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which
| is a dumb argument.)
|
| But that shouldn't apply in Finland at all.
| Hamuko wrote:
| At least in my time they were pretty much banned. You could
| have your phone on you but if you got caught using it during
| class, they'd just confiscate it. Of course, some exceptions
| apply like if a teacher informed of some upcoming event, you
| could pull up your phone and set it in your calendar without
| getting chewed out. Not sure what's happened since.
| technothrasher wrote:
| At my son's school, they have to put the cell phones into the
| "phone hotel" at the beginning of the day, and they pick them
| back up at the end. But it is performance only, really. If
| the kid really wants a cell phone, they'll just put an old
| one in the phone hotel and keep their real one hidden in
| their bag. But even that isn't really done all that much, as
| they're required to have laptops for class and they can do
| anything social and/or distracting they'd want to do on the
| phone on the laptop instead.
| cudder wrote:
| I went to primary school in 1999-2008 and it was the same for
| me. After that I started my secondary education in business
| school in 2008 and there were basically zero restrictions on
| smartphone use. Smartphones probably became ubiquitous in
| primary school after that too, but this law seems to also
| target secondary schools which sounds stricter than it used
| to be.
| n4r9 wrote:
| School shootings do happen in Finland, although they're rarer:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertola_school_shooting
| jajko wrote:
| And thats no reason to let kids do empty highly addictive
| activity unhinged instead of getting prepared for later life.
| Emotional reactions != smart ones.
| n4r9 wrote:
| No, I agree. Just give the kids brick phones if you're that
| worried.
| nopakos wrote:
| It's Finland. The school should give a Nokia 3310 to each
| kid.
| CivBase wrote:
| > parents said that their kids needed phones because school
| shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
|
| It really is a dumb argument. Your primary concern in a school
| shooting should be _getting out safely_ not messing around with
| your phone. One more 911 call won 't make police any more
| effective. The phone isn't making you any safer. If anything,
| it's a distraction putting you in danger. Once you've made it
| to safety, you won't have any trouble contacting your parents
| whether or not you have a smartphone.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb
| argument.)
|
| Considering the US is a country where two dozen cops stay out
| of a school with an active school shooter until they have run
| out of bullets ... yeah, it is. No-one wants to hear the local
| TV station run the dying screams of their children. Better not
| give them phones so they can call for help (or give the cops
| information, which would be pointless to begin with).
| PeterStuer wrote:
| If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults
| with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome
| world and social model and some practical skills and basic
| physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a
| lot from those aims.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Is that the aim of schools?
|
| It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany.
| There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning",
| yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you
| described I do not think they were ever considered.
|
| All around school was a giant waste of time.
| bnegreve wrote:
| Surely reading/writing are useful skills that most people did
| not have before school was mandatory.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I did not take me _twelve years_ to learn to read and
| write. What an awful excuse. What made me good at reading
| was _reading books outside of school_.
|
| In a single semester of university I learned more than in
| 12 years of school.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > In a single semester of university I learned more than
| in 12 years of school.
|
| I learned more in a single year on the job than I did in
| 3 years of university. That doesn't make university
| useless
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| No, I don't think that's true. The 12 years of the pre-
| uni education set you up for being a member of society.
| You don't see it because it became a part of you. You
| also learned to read, write, all basic math, geography,
| ...
|
| The uni taught you more real-world expected skills but
| I'm certain you learned more before uni.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Why couldn't I have learned university courses and these
| other skills at the same time?
| kube-system wrote:
| > Why couldn't I have learned university courses and
| these other skills at the same time?
|
| Was that not offered at your school? It was at mine.
|
| University level courses do presume you have some basic
| skills. But in many places, schools do offer university
| level courses for those who are prepared.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Was that not offered at your school?
|
| I think it would have been theoretically possible, but
| obviously logistically difficult as I would have had to
| skip multiple classes in other fields to attend.
|
| It's also not like I was particularly interested in
| mathematics at that point in my life. I essentially chose
| my field of study based on what I had the best grades in.
| Only _during_ my studies, when the material actually
| became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged
| in the subject.
| kube-system wrote:
| For the schools that offer students the ability to take
| university-level courses, students aren't "skipping"
| other classes.
|
| > Only during my studies, when the material actually
| became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged
| in the subject.
|
| Many schools solve this by having different difficulty-
| levels of courses. My school, in the US, had three.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Germany has different levels of schools. I was in the one
| for highest education, targeting a university degree.
| kube-system wrote:
| Schools in the US often offer different tracks within the
| same school but still offer different difficulty levels
| within them, including university level courses.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I don't know. Why couldn't you?
| andrepd wrote:
| > In a single semester of university I learned more than
| in 12 years of school.
|
| You keep saying this but I have a hard time believing
| this is true; in fact I'm not even sure what "more" means
| (objectively) in this context.
|
| Let's see, in the 12 years of schooling you've learned at
| the very least: how to read and write, how to interpret
| texts, how to read literature, how to compose an essay,
| how to speak, read, and write a second language, a ton of
| mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something
| like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some
| discrete maths, several topics of physics and chemistry,
| biology, geology, and other natural sciences (in more or
| less detail), several years of history, and mandatory
| physical exercise to top it off. What magical university
| did you go to that in a single semester you learned more
| than that :D Unless I'm missing something.
| constantcrying wrote:
| In school I spend 8 hours listening to some teacher or
| playing silly learning games and did some busywork as
| homework. I never learned for any test or found any of
| the material particularly interesting.
|
| In university I actually had to study, take notes,
| research the subject, study for many hours, etc.
|
| >a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess
| something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and
| some discrete maths
|
| Hilarious to say this. As it turned out, my first
| semester of university mathematics was spent on learning
| everything I did not learn in school. And it made it
| extremely clear to me how badly school had prepared me.
|
| You would think that school would put me in a position
| where university mathematics were just a continuation.
| Nothing further could be from the truth, nearly
| everything taught in school was taught in a way which
| made it useless for actual mathematics.
|
| In school we learned nothing about: Sets, logic,
| deductions, Axioms or Proofs (which turn out to be really
| important!), we did however spend years solving
| integrals, which turned out extremely unhelpful for
| actual mathematics.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Seems experiences vary: For me, the first year of
| university mathematics was to a large extent a
| continuation or even what was covered in school (sets,
| axioms, proofs etc were covered in school). That said,
| that wasn't the case for everyone as far as I could tell.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| You're either not arguing in good faith, have an unusual
| definition of "more", or hate school so much that it
| clouds your judgement.
|
| Do you honestly believe that is you were sent to
| University (or some other educational institution) with
| absolutely zero school knowledge, not even literacy and
| grade school math, you would be able to learn everything
| you learned at school in less than one semester?
| andrepd wrote:
| > Hilarious to say this
|
| Really unnecessary snark, I'm trying to understand your
| position (unless you're just doing justice to your
| username!).
|
| Two things:
|
| 1. You're not the only person in school. I sympathise
| that you understood the material quickly and wish you had
| been presented more advanced stuff (I do so too, it's a
| valid criticism!). But at least around me I noticed that
| most people were just barely catching it or even actively
| struggling. So yes, perhaps more "adept" students should
| be given more challenging material and students that
| struggle should be given more support so they're not left
| behind (interesting discussion to have; this has been
| touched on elsewhere in this thread), but it's important
| to realise that unless education is based around a 1:1
| teacher-student ratio (unrealistic), this will always be
| a problem that is hard to work around.
|
| 2. You conveniently left out the parts where I mentioned
| subjects other than maths (I assume you studied maths in
| uni or an adjacent discipline). School is not just there
| to teach you whatever you end up needing in your academic
| or professional life when you're 18 years old. I'm _glad_
| I was forced to study history, and read literature, and
| learn a 2nd and 3rd language, and do physical exercise at
| least 2x a week, because while I might be curious and
| study science on my own I sure as shit wouldn 't do any
| of these of my own volition as a kid.
| kube-system wrote:
| > I did not take me twelve years to learn to read and
| write.
|
| It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write
| at a 12th grade level.
|
| You could study it for another 4 or more years at
| university if you wanted to develop your skills further.
|
| > What made me good at reading was reading books outside
| of school.
|
| This is your personal experience. I learned to read and
| write quite well at school and was well-prepared for
| university.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write
| at a 12th grade level.
|
| Nah. You are mixing up the skill 'writing glyphs on a
| piece of paper and retrieving that information via
| optical means' with 'being well-grounded in a wide array
| of subjects so you can express an idea in a way that is
| mentally stimulating to a potential reader'.
|
| Neither takes 12 years to learn. The first, we teach
| within a year, at most. The second we do not teach at
| all, and the best 'writers' often are those who were
| challenged outside of school, by parents who gave them a
| rich, intellectually interesting environment, not within
| it.
| const_cast wrote:
| We most definitely teach number 2. That's what English
| class is - you read books, plays, maybe documents, and
| then you write essays on them. You need to be concise,
| persuasive, have a unique voice.
|
| Just because you, and other's, did not pay attention or
| were not good writers, does not mean we don't teach that.
| We do, for years.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is no such thing as a 12th grade level. 6th grade
| is all the farther English is taught. There are sometimes
| things called levels above that, but they are not levels
| in English they are levels in some specific
| specialization and have more to do with that
| specialization than reading. (doctors would not be
| expected to understand deep computer science writing even
| though doctors have very advanced reading skills in a
| medical domain).
|
| I understand Spanish only goes up to a 5th grade level
| while Japanese to 9th. This is a reflection on how
| complex the writing systems are, and not the kids,
| intelligence, or school systems.
|
| The years after you have your basic reading down are used
| to learn other skills that are of general use in life for
| everyone.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't mean "12th grade level" as in reference to a
| formal proficiency level.
|
| I am saying that language arts can be, and often are,
| taught beyond basic proficiency.
| tremon wrote:
| You should have taken that semester when you were 4 years
| old then, you could have skipped fifteen years of
| education!
| Ekaros wrote:
| They did. Well at least officially. Being able to read was
| needed if you wanted to get married.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Surely reading/writing are useful skills that most people
| did not have before school was mandatory.
|
| Citation needed. I've heard it repeated a lot, but never by
| someone with actual historical credentials. It varied from
| society to society (and many societies were sexist so boys
| and girls would have different results). Likely most is
| correct, but also misleading as it appears many societies
| were very literate even among poor people.
|
| From what I understand (recognize I'm not a historian!),
| Jewish boys have long had a right of passage of reading the
| bible in the local synagogue. Most languages are not that
| hard to learn the basic phonics of and thus read and write.
| You wouldn't be good, but you could do it.
|
| Historians have told me that most of their references for
| is literate were from time/places where literate meant
| Latin. The common person know much Latin (despite going to
| mass in Latin), and couldn't read/write it. However they
| would have had more education in their local language which
| was never counted.
| sofixa wrote:
| > There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and
| "learning", yet I basically learned nothing
|
| Do you think that was because their methods were bad, you
| didn't bother and they couldn't force you, or that their
| methods were not adapted to the way you learn?
|
| Also, I'd find it surprising if you really learned nothing.
| From what I know of German schooling from people who went
| through it, you certainly learned at least a bit about the
| depths to which humans can go to and how to prevent them
| (Holocaust and wider Nazi atrocities). Also, you probably
| learned social skills, basic project management and
| collaboration, and some knowledge which is probably useless
| other than _maybe_ as a basis of understanding the world and
| various things you might encounter. I don 't recall much from
| my biology or chemistry classes, but I recall vague outlines,
| which is enough.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Do you think that was because their methods were bad, you
| didn't bother and they couldn't force you, or that their
| methods were not adapted to the way you learn?
|
| It was because they had nothing to teach. I still remember
| trying to learn fractions from a teacher who clearly did
| not understand fractions either.
|
| Just to be clear, I did very well in school. Given their
| standards I would be considered a "successful student" and
| I went on to get a university degree.
|
| >Also, you probably learned social skills, basic project
| management and collaboration, and some knowledge which is
| probably useless other than maybe as a basis of
| understanding the world
|
| None of that I learned while sitting in class. I learned it
| _despite_ the school activities I had to do.
| sofixa wrote:
| > None of that I learned while sitting in class
|
| School is about more than the part where you sit in
| class. The social skills, time and project management
| navigation etc. is all stuff you learn and do because of
| school but outside of class.
| constantcrying wrote:
| But if that is the goal of schools then we would
| drastically reduce the time students sit in class.
| immibis wrote:
| From what I know about Germany, they don't teach anything
| about the depths humans can go or how to prevent them
| recurring. They seem to just learn the Nazis were evil
| people and as long as you're not one of those, similarly
| evil things can never happen again. Also because only evil
| people can do evil things, calling out an evil thing is
| illegal because it implies someone involved is evil and
| that's an attack on their honour.
|
| See Germany-Palestine relations. One third of weapons used
| in the Gaza war are paid for by Germany, and the remaining
| two thirds by the USA. Other countries contribute
| negligibly.
| roenxi wrote:
| You have put your finger on something - the _actual_ purpose
| of school is to socialise children (it isn 't very efficient
| as a teaching system - tutoring is better and what the people
| who really care about educational attainment use). But a side
| effect is teaching them a lot of useful things.
|
| And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually
| quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows
| something it often fades into the background and nobody
| notices. But it still makes a difference.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >the actual purpose of school is to socialise children
|
| I agree that this is probably the most important thing for
| children to learn. My point is that sitting in a room for 8
| hours does very little to accomplish that.
|
| >And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually
| quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows
| something it often fades into the background and nobody
| notices. But it still makes a difference.
|
| I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It
| became very clear that I was learning much more and faster.
|
| To talk about schooling we first have to make clear what
| the goal is. Sure everybody needs to learn how to read,
| write and do basic arithmetic, but that is not a 12 year
| endeavor. Even including basic general knowledge is not a
| 12 year endeavor. And we should not be wasting children's
| time on things, just because we can't be bothered to have
| them do something actually meaningful.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > I had the direct comparison when I went to university.
| It became very clear that I was learning much more and
| faster.
|
| Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out
| all children with low interest/performance/support in
| preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning
| rate could also be much faster in school for the rest.
|
| But if you want a solid baseline of
| reading/writing/math/general education for _everyone_ in
| society, those twelve years are already _barely_ enough.
|
| I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation
| ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative
| for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top.
|
| Optional programs for faster/more targetted learning are
| much better and can be very positive IMO, but even there
| you need to be careful with how you set things up to
| avoid problems.
| andrepd wrote:
| > I'm very confident that early
| discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks
| in school) is a net negative for society and encourages
| unethical outcomes on top.
|
| I'm curious about this, can you elaborate more? My
| feeling is that in a class of 25 kids grouped by age
| being taught by 1 single teacher, it's basically
| impossible that the teaching pace and style is adequate
| for more than a handful of them. You're going to have
| kids bored out of their minds learning nothing and being
| unengaged, and you're going to have kids that can't keep
| up and would need extra support / a different kind of
| support. You're not doing _either_ of those any favours.
| myrmidon wrote:
| My view is that schools purpose is teaching _everyone_
| not only a common baseline in language /math, but also
| how to deal with expectations/responsibilities and other
| people (teachers and classmates).
|
| By doing "early segregation" you make this more difficult
| because that "common baseline" no longer exists; you'd
| expect to get _significantly_ more people that struggle
| with language and basic math as a result (in exchange for
| better outcomes in your "gifted" track).
|
| Furthermore, you are sorting people into social buckets
| in a way that is _really_ bad for social cohesion
| (inevitable, all the white kids with rich parents are
| gonna end up in the "gifted" schools). Everyone is gonna
| grow up in a echochamber, basically.
|
| Finally, this is going to lead to restrictions on a young
| adults _options_ , that I find really unpalatable to
| blame on the affected children: Can you honestly argue
| that people don't _deserve_ the chance to study medicine
| at university just because their parents did not tutor,
| push and mentor them sufficiently? Equality of
| opportunity as a principle is gonna be nigh impossible to
| preserve in such a system.
|
| I do _not_ dispute that you could teach children faster
| and better with individual tutoring and customized
| programs, but that would be cost-prohibitive, and I see
| currently no realistic way to get there without above
| consequences.
|
| Maybe AI will solve it :P
| bluGill wrote:
| Don't forget that kid that was 1 point off from making
| the gifted track that now gets stuck with much worse
| options for the rest of their life even though they could
| probably pass the gifted track as well (at the bottom of
| the class, but still a pass).
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I would expect everyone at all levels to do better under
| a more highly segregated model. In the desegregated
| model, faster students are artificially held back and
| slower students are left behind (unless the class
| operates at the level of the absolute slowest student).
| In a segregated model, you are better able to approximate
| a mastery learning approach, which is known to create
| vastly better outcomes for everyone.
|
| The mechanism AI would use to solve the problem is to
| give everyone individualized education, which would
| effectively be maximal segregation.
|
| For socialization, another commenter here wrote a few
| months back about their experience at a school where they
| had more academic classes segregated by ability and more
| social classes segregated by age[0], which sounds to me
| like an excellent solution.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42117313
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out
| all children with low interest/performance/support in
| preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning
| rate could also be much faster in school for the rest.
|
| In Germany you have schools for students targeting
| university. I was in such a school. Every student there
| was there to get into university.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > In Germany you have schools for students targeting
| university. I was in such a school. Every student there
| was there to get into university.
|
| Yes, but if half the class was not smarter than you (by
| whatever standard), then that segregation was too low to
| really hit the spot anyway.
|
| My personal experience was the completely opposite: I
| learned _more_ useful knowledge in school than in
| university, despite wasting like a year of math on
| trigonometric sum formulas and similar nonsense; but the
| baseline for physics /electronics, programming and math
| was much more applicable and _necessary_ than anything I
| learned in university (frequently overspecialized and
| barely useful).
|
| Sure, I also learned a lot _during_ university on my own,
| but mostly thanks to sufficient free time and personal
| interest; university itself did not contribute too much
| there, and this was somewhat similar during school
| already anyway (most specifically with programming).
|
| To me, it sounds like you suffered from mediocre teachers
| in school and learn better on your own-- but neither is
| universal enough to draw system-wide conclusions IMO.
| roenxi wrote:
| > To talk about schooling we first have to make clear
| what the goal is.
|
| What can I say; I like arguing. We don't actually have to
| choose a single goal - everyone can have different goals.
| If schooling isn't compulsory then you could have a mass
| of different people doing different things for different
| reasons and it all gets called 'schooling'.
|
| If schooling is state managed ... the same interest
| groups exist, they just have to fight over the curriculum
| in parliament or the Department of Schooling. The end
| result will be a weird hodge-podge of compromises that
| nobody can confidently say satisfies them completely and
| doesn't have a clear goal.
|
| It happens that we _cannot_ say that there is a goal of
| schooling. Some people may have one goal, but other
| people may have alternative goals. There are some really
| tricky edge cases, like History - should Mongolian
| schoolchildren be taught that Ghengis Khan was a hero, a
| scumbag, a disaster, a triumph, a fact, a national symbol
| or someone best forgotten? That is not a question where a
| reliable and enduring consensus can be reached because
| real life is too complicated to take a final universal
| stand on something that happened 1,000 years ago.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >We don't actually have to choose a single goal -
| everyone can have different goals. If schooling isn't
| compulsory then you could have a mass of different people
| doing different things for different reasons and it all
| gets called 'schooling'.
|
| I completely agree. If I wanted anything from current
| schooling it would be giving students more abilities to
| develop themselves. Obviously that doesn't mean a 16 year
| old playing videogames for 12 hours a day, but students
| who like doing sports should be doing much more of it and
| those who like learning should be doing much more of that
| and so on.
| bluGill wrote:
| I disagree. Most kids need to be forced a bit to learn
| something hard. Sure the kid who likes sports should
| play. However only exceptional kids will ever be good
| enough to make a good future playing sports. Most kids
| will grow up to realize that much as they love the game
| they will never make a living at it. Thus we need to
| ensure those kids don't spend all their time getting
| better, but instead spend time getting useful life skills
| that they will need as an adult. Much as "post scarcity"
| people like to think otherwise, we are still not in a
| world where many people can "slack off".
|
| Kids learning how to develop themselves is a good thing
| ONLY if they choose the "right thing" to develop. You can
| get really good at video games, but as you already said
| probably not a good only investment (a fine hobby, but
| keep it a limited time hobby). There are some sports that
| because of injuries should really be banned (but I won't
| list them because as soon as I do there will be a lot
| screaming from people who live that sport). What we need
| is kids who develop themselves into something that makes
| them good productive adults - for some jobs we need
| adults to do this is boring and so kids won't do it
| unless forced.
| bluGill wrote:
| We do need and have a goal. As a taxpayer I'm paying for
| school for kids other than my own. If there is no goal of
| that, then I am wasting my money: give me that back so I
| can go on vacation. Let those kids play in a park or
| whatever instead of spending time in school.
|
| The goal is wide and open ended, but there is a goal.
| Likely others can word it better than me, but it goes
| something like this: "to produce kids that grow up to be
| productive adults that contribute to society and make the
| world a better place."
|
| We all are not the same, and even if we were there are
| many different needs. I need someone to haul my trash to
| the wherever it is handled, but my city only needs a few
| hundred such people (thousand?). A few other people need
| to ensure I have clean water. A lot of people need to
| ensure I have food. Some of them need to provide medical
| care. Thus we need to have multiple different outcomes
| (if you are just hauling trash you need less education
| than the medical doctors, while the person designing the
| dump needs more education than a basic nurse).
|
| Because of the different needs in society there will and
| must be debate over what the curriculum should be. There
| is no way to teach everything. Time spend teaching one
| subject is time that cannot be used for a different one.
| There are many different ideas how to teach, and we need
| better science to figure out what really works.
| eitally wrote:
| I would argue that, no matter what your perception is,
| school is much more than "sitting in a room for 8 hours".
| Sure, academic advancement can be accelerated massively
| through home schooling, self-study or tutoring -- and
| many families take advantage of this fact -- but most
| school districts offer all sorts of non-academic
| enrichment programming (even including things like
| elementary school recesses here) that you don't get
| otherwise and which result in more well-rounded
| socialization than you'd get without an intentional
| effort to augment homeschooling with the same.
|
| Also, the sometimes dramatic gulf between private and
| public school academic rigor means that some private
| school students are essentially receiving an early
| college level education during their tween/teen years.
| This isn't necessarily bad, but it absolutely is more
| time consuming for most kids who aim for straight As and
| high test scores, and this in turn impacts their ability
| to pursue extracurricular activities with seriousness,
| and without impacting their health/wellbeing _. The fact
| that many public school students are learning slowly
| means those same students can work outside of school, can
| pursue sports /arts/etc interests almost full-time, can
| be caretakers for family members in need, and have
| flexibility in their social lives.
|
| _ Yes, it's unfair to paint with a broad brush but this
| is largely true if we're looking at the high achieving
| population (say, kids who might be expected to apply to
| Ivy League universities). No matter how suboptimal the
| pace of academic instruction is at public schools, it's
| important to recognize that kids are still developing
| into adults and it's not normal or fair to treat them as
| adults (from a brain development, psychological and
| relationship management POV).
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I know several teachers. So these sorts of comments are
| always funny. I know math teachers who lack support but
| continuously attempt to present topics from different POV
| because some students don't get it.
|
| So some self proclaimed smart person "learned nothing", and
| therefore school is a waste of time. At the same time,
| ignoring that maybe a school or system is indeed not prepared
| to handle some individuals (which is not good), or that maybe
| some teachers are bad, or maybe the system does not support
| their staff enough. But that can't be the case because they
| learned nothing. Whole school system must be a scam.
| constantcrying wrote:
| As I wrote below. My most memorable math class was a
| teacher failing to explain fractions to me, what later
| became obvious to me was that the teacher did not
| understand fractions either.
|
| I am sure you want to blame me for this, but somehow I went
| to university and got a degree in (applied) mathematics. So
| I doubt it was some fundamental problem with me.
|
| Everybody is upset when someone tells them they fail at
| their jobs and teachers are an entire industry of total
| failure. In a single semester of university I learned _so
| much more_ than in 12 years of school. If teachers aren 't
| at fault, who is? By any metric I was a successful student.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I'm not blaming you. But as intelligent as you may be,
| you have discounted all the possibilities for the failure
| of you school or your particular teachers. Because _you_
| had a bad time, then the whole system is malicious right?
|
| I know a high school teacher with a PhD and has tutored
| and lectured at the university level. But they are a
| teacher now. Guess I'll paint them with the same brush as
| all teachers.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >then the whole system is malicious right?
|
| Where did I say that the intentions were bad?
|
| >Because you had a bad time, then the whole system is
| malicious right?
|
| No. In university the expectations were drastically
| higher. If the goal of the school was to prepare me for
| university, then it failed at that _for everyone_. The
| mismatch can not be attributed to me.
|
| >But they are a teacher now. Guess I'll paint them with
| the same brush as all teachers.
|
| We had one of these as well. Average teacher, learned
| basically nothing in her class.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| All students at university were unprepared from school or
| only some, i.e., performance of different schools,
| classes, etc. would be heterogeneous?
| constantcrying wrote:
| Curricula are standardized. All students experienced
| almost the exact same disconnect. This is also not some
| secret, all Professors know this and some try their
| hardest to bridge the gap.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Maybe aligned/frameworked/pooled but no full uniform
| testing or single curriculum across all the states in
| Germany, for example - so variations exist and some
| schools might prepare better than others.
| eitally wrote:
| Then this is a failure of the system in Germany, and does
| not reflect the experience of many American kids. Some,
| yes, but not all. Primarily, it's the "smart" kids who
| didn't have to work for good high school grades who have
| a bad time in university, not the kids in the fat part of
| the curve who more likely matriculated having already
| developed strong study skills. In my experience, at
| least, the biggest difference between high school and
| college is that high school teachers _teach_ and homework
| is for reinforcement, whereas college professors expect
| self-learning to be the core method of pedagogy and their
| role is to reinforce and contextualize the topics.
| Switching from one mode to the other can be rough, no
| matter how innately intelligent a student is.
| andrepd wrote:
| > In university the expectations were drastically higher.
|
| Well duh. I don't know where/what you studied, but I did
| physics and yeah, it was balls-fucking hard some times. I
| think the vast majority of freshman
| physics/maths/engineering students experience a similar
| feeling where there's a huge jump in challenge going from
| school-level to uni-level.
|
| Whether this means there is a case for narrower, more
| focused "elite" schools in maths, or in say music, for
| high-performing students in those areas, is of course an
| interesting discussion :)
|
| If the goal of the school was to prepare me for
| university
|
| Well it's not. You studied a narrow subject at
| university, but during the ~12 years of schooling you
| studied many other subjects. The goal of schooling is to
| make you a complete citizen (in an ideal sense, I'm
| talking :)). Not sure how the system is where you live
| but where I come from the first 9 years have a fixed
| curriculum, and it's only during the last 3 years (high
| school) that you pick subjects in the areas relevant to
| your university aspirations (or you pick a vocational
| course).
| zx90 wrote:
| To add another case: When I was 14 or so, a science
| teacher taught the whole classroom that the reason stars
| twinkle is because of light being waves. I considered
| interrupting and mentioning pockets of air with different
| densities, refraction, etc... I decided not to. I didn't
| want to be branded (again) a troublemaker. I hope nobody
| else in that classroom remembers that lesson.
|
| Some teachers start with high spirits but most turn into
| regular slobs trying to get to the end of the month once
| they realise that their job is to mind the children while
| the parents work.
|
| I was lucky enough to meet just a handful of teachers
| that tought me some values, the rest were just ...
| forgetable people.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Incompetence is rampant in government jobs. Schools
| aren't technically government jobs, but there are many
| similarities in terms of incentives, hiring practice,
| dismissal difficulty, talent pool, etc.
|
| In any normal (private sector) job, if you can't perform
| the basic job requirements you get fired or retrained.
| Maybe you're moved to a different area that better suits
| your skill set. But you don't just sit in a position for
| 20 years screwing it up day after day as you see in
| government / lower education.
| lores wrote:
| "Incompetence is rampant" is enough. No, incompetent
| people do not get fired from the private sector either.
| The dumbest tech question I have ever heard from a tech
| manager ("why don't we do datamining in Flash?") was from
| an established guy at an established corporation that
| controls a lot of the things the world does and really,
| really shouldn't.
| const_cast wrote:
| Most teachers are actually quite good and they're
| actively being held back by curriculum and being stripped
| of their autonomy.
|
| I really, truly don't know how people form this opinion.
| Teachers are trained professionals with certifications
| and a degree. They know what they're doing. It's
| extremely likely they're far more educated in the subject
| matter they teach than you are.
|
| Now, they're not miracle workers. Some parents expect
| little Timmy reading at a second grade level in Middle
| School to magically get great scores on his end of year
| exams. It doesn't work that way.
| tremon wrote:
| Why do you choose to remember that class and not the ones
| where you learned to write proper English?
| nisegami wrote:
| Those teachers are admirable, but their actions are more of
| a 'nice to have' than the primary objective of the system.
| closewith wrote:
| And yet consistently the happiest, healthiest, and most
| developed societies are those with the highest levels of
| primary and secondary education attainment.
|
| Not necessarily causative, but we'd want to be very sure the
| educational fence isn't contributory before we tear it down.
| watwut wrote:
| Quite a lot of Germans learn quite a lot. German schools
| expect quite a lot from students that do actually want to go
| to better schools. But yes, it is possible to slack through
| it all if you want to slack.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >German schools expect quite a lot from students that do
| actually want to go to better schools.
|
| Not my experience.
|
| >But yes, it is possible to slack through it all if you
| want to slack.
|
| I was a good student though and did really well. I never
| learned for anything though and was bored in basically
| every subject.
|
| There never were any expectations on me which I didn't
| trivially meet.
| watwut wrote:
| Hey, you are the genius who knew it all before learning
| and got highest possible grades with no effort. Congrats.
|
| Overwhelming majority of people is not like that, they do
| not get highest grades, they do not get into gymnasium
| without effort, don't pass tests without effort.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Haha, are you serious?
| bmn__ wrote:
| He is. Today is the day you realise that thanks to your
| innate intelligence you had a time of privilege in
| school.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I felt much more privileged when I was at university and
| there were students far more intelligent than me, who
| helped me with the material.
| bmacho wrote:
| I think so. And he is presumably right. You either
| - learned something -- aced the tests - had the
| opportunity to learn something -- didn't ace the tests
| but somewhy you still claim that you were bored
|
| It is possible that neither happened, you _just somehow_
| knew everything. But that 's highly improbable.
| constantcrying wrote:
| My point is that the actual content of school material
| was very low, especially compared to university.
|
| Of course I did actually learn the material of the tests,
| but the actual learning outcome of my schooling is far
| worse then it could have been, given the 12 years
| invested.
| andrepd wrote:
| What is this supposed to mean? "Most people need to work
| to get good grades in school" is a very self-evident
| statement, is it not?
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Most people need to work to get good grades in school"
| is a very self-evident statement, is it not?
|
| No? I obviously had to put in a lot of work in
| university, but during school I never did, which was
| quite common, at least among my friends.
|
| Even for the semi-standardized test at the end of school
| I tried learning, but I didn't know what to do, so I gave
| up.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Heavily depends on where you went to school.
|
| Bavaria, Saxony, Baden-Wurttemberg? Preferrably Gymnasium?
| Preferrably a _state_ school, not a _city_ school? Hell,
| you have good chances!
|
| Any other Land? Something on a lower tier? Nah, easy going.
| There _are_ schools in Germany which are famous for
| breeding 16-year-olds who can barely read.
|
| Disclaimer: Writer is German, Wurttemberger, visited a
| state gymnasium
| barbazoo wrote:
| "I basically learned nothing at school" is such a silly
| obviously wrong thing to say.
|
| Really doesn't help you make a point.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I spent 12 years there. Give the time investment the
| education results were extremely underwhelming.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Same here, full 12 years in the German school system and
| I can't say I would complain given where I'm at right
| now.
| brainzap wrote:
| the goal of school and what it is used for are different thing.
| School is childcare
| markvdb wrote:
| This is about Finland. They have a rather well-reputed school
| system that delivers in both areas.
| cudder wrote:
| At least used to. Last few years Finland's PISA scores as
| measured by the OECD have plummeted and now they are just a
| bit above average but nowhere near what they used to be.
| js8 wrote:
| What do you think are the factors that caused this fall?
| thaanpaa wrote:
| Voting for right-wing politicians repeatedly. You know,
| tax cuts for the wealthy, education cuts in fear of
| national debt, and all that jazz.
| veeti wrote:
| Some common themes in the conversation are neoliberal
| cost cutting, failed attempts at inclusion and
| immigration.
|
| * Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have
| made significant cuts to education and the general
| wellbeing of younger generations.
|
| * Modern schools are increasingly built like open plan
| offices with dozens of students crammed into "learning
| spaces" instead of traditional classrooms. This reduces
| building costs and is also sold as a trendy new
| innovation in pedagogy.
|
| * Special needs and gifted students are no longer put
| into special classrooms where they can receive the extra
| attention and care they need. Instead, they are put in
| with the other kids to the benefit of no one except the
| state budget, but at least it feels more "inclusive" to
| some research professor in their ivory tower.
|
| * The amount of immigration and share of children
| speaking Finnish as a second language is rising and they
| are statistically more likely to perform worse
| (https://yle.fi/a/74-20018233,
| https://yle.fi/a/74-20016772).
| alvah wrote:
| In summary, Finland has brought the policies that have
| caused much destruction in other Western countries into
| their own education system, where those policies have
| also caused destruction, much to everyone's amazement.
| hjgjhyuhy wrote:
| Yep, this country is no longer that special by European
| standards. Childcare is still good, but later education
| and healthcare are very mediocre.
|
| In EU only greeks are less satisfied with the
| availability of healthcare. Our unemployment rate is
| pretty similar to Greece and Spain as well. This is what
| right wing governments want I guess.
| akikoo wrote:
| This is a really tragic thing that happened in Finland on
| April 1st:
|
| https://yle-
| fi.translate.goog/a/74-20158685?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x...
|
| It's usual in Finland to let babies sleep outside in the
| strollers (even when it's cold) but in this case no one
| checked how the child was doing for 3 hours.
|
| In the news he/she was called a baby.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > * Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have
| made significant cuts to education and the general
| wellbeing of younger generations.
|
| Politically, isn't this the ultimate fate of most
| developed nations? I haven't yet see an answer to this.
| How do you deal financially with this? The obvious answer
| is for people to be in charge of their own late stage
| health but is that possible for the average minimum wage
| worker?
| cudder wrote:
| I always felt like the teaching method in primary school
| was very much like "no pupil left behind". Teachers
| really tried their best to keep everyone up to speed on
| what they taught. If you were a huge troublemaker or just
| couldn't keep up with the (slowish) pace you would get
| moved to a special class where you would get more
| attention (even smaller class sizes) and wouldn't slow
| the rest of the group down.
|
| As a "smart kid" it sometimes felt like waiting for
| everyone in class to grok something before moving on was
| a waste of time and that personally I'd learn very
| little, but ultimately I think it worked very well to
| ensure that everyone was on common ground.
|
| At some point it was deemed that the current system
| wasn't inclusive enough so the special education for the
| troublemakers was gutted and they were put back into
| regular classrooms. At the same time, due to lack of
| funding and lack of teachers, class sizes ballooned from
| <15 to up to 30 or even 40 students per class in larger
| cities. I think there's some critical point where that
| system breaks down and now we're past it. The teacher has
| too many students to make sure everyone is up to speed,
| and giving too much individual attention in such a large
| class wastes everyone else's time.
|
| Immigration has also played a role I think. Finland used
| to be quite monocultural, but that has changed. There are
| now more and more students who speak Finnish as their
| second or third language and as such have trouble keeping
| up. I don't think the solution is to stuff them into
| their own schools either as that promotes segregation and
| makes integrating into the society as an immigrant
| harder, and I don't pretend to know the perfect solution
| (if one even exists), but one thing's for sure: the
| Finnish school system was 100% unprepared for it.
| bombcar wrote:
| The solution is almost always more teachers (though at
| some point you have two teachers per kid and that's
| likely to be excessive).
|
| A class of five can handle darn near anything; a class of
| fifty needs everyone to be as nearly identical as
| possible.
|
| You can artificially increase the number of "teachers" by
| combining classes of different grades sometimes. 12 year
| olds can do great assisting 6 year olds.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Also interesting to note the gender divide in scores in
| Finland:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/986939/student-
| performan...
| meowface wrote:
| Wow, that's a huge reading gap.
| Cloudef wrote:
| At least used to
| os2warpman wrote:
| The first several years of school is indeed childcare.
| Childcare mixed with education.
|
| I am confused by people who use this as a derogative.
|
| I learned drafting, how to type, welding, library science,
| color theory, woodworking, BASIC programming, the internal
| anatomy of a piglet, resume writing, how to play the cello,
| calculus, and how to sing the names of all 50 US states in
| alphabetical order in middle school and high school.
|
| That is not childcare.
|
| edit: forgot darkroom photography, yearbook editing,
| extemporaneous speaking, and Robert's Rules of Order.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > The first several years of school is indeed childcare.
| Childcare mixed with education.
|
| Yes. Former teacher here to tell you I cared about the
| children. :)
|
| But seriously, in the United States teachers are considered
| "In loco parentis" which "refers to the legal
| responsibility of a person or organization to take on some
| of the functions and responsibilities of a parent. "
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The thing is: smartphones exist. The young adults these
| children will become will live in a world where smartphones are
| an essential part of their life. Using a smartphone _is_ a
| practical skill.
|
| That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea.
| It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that
| school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit
| like with calculators, there are classes with calculators,
| classes without, and classes that teach how to work with them,
| their strengths and shortcomings.
|
| I don't know how to do it in practice though. Airplane mode and
| offline educative apps may be a start.
| cheschire wrote:
| Cars exist and are foundational to modern living yet we do
| not push kids to learn to drive until their later teenage
| years. Some countries wait until they are 18 and others
| choosing a couple years sooner.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Kids still get to walk with cars around, ride bikes, drive
| motorcycles usually a few years before majority, they also
| ride cars and are usually familiar with how they work way
| before driving.
|
| I'm actually of the option we should have a smartphone
| category/setup at the same positioning as bikes are to
| cars, it would even benefit adults the same way not
| everyone wants a car.
| lolinder wrote:
| We do, they're called regular cellphones. They can be
| used to make phone calls and even to send text messages,
| but they can't be used to access social media hellscapes.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Phone calls are for emergencies at this point. If it's
| not it's spam. Then Apple ruined SMS ( except for the US
| apparently?), nobody wants to gamble whether a message
| will reach a phone or the iPad sitting in a drawer still
| associated with the phone number.
|
| So social things, like communicating with people, happens
| on social apps.
|
| Kids also would be better with map apps, GPS, electronic
| payments and auto-charging bus/train pass if you expect
| them to have any independence.
|
| All in all, kids should be the last ones IMHO to get real
| dumb phones. We might as well give them pagers if that's
| what we're going for.
| Cloudef wrote:
| Honestly if driving was teached at school and you get
| license once you graduate, that would be amazing
| tremon wrote:
| In NL, cycling proficiency is tested at school (around
| 10yo). You don't get a license though, and it's not
| really taught as many children already bike to school at
| a younger age.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I don't know how it is done in the US, but I definitely
| learned about cars at school. Including:
|
| - Lessons about road safety (causes of accidents, number of
| deaths, etc...)
|
| - In elementary school, navigating the roads as a
| pedestrian or cyclist. Including going outside and crossing
| roads.
|
| - In secondary school, basic information about traffic law,
| road signs, and information related to light motor vehicles
| (mopeds, ...)
|
| - Though I didn't do it personally, some school had a class
| at a practice track, using pedal cars to learn about things
| like right of way
|
| So while we didn't do actual driving, probably for economic
| and liability reasons, it is definitely part of the
| curriculum.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| On the other hand, we don't teach kids in school the
| mechanical basics of automated locomotion, how to distill
| oil into usable fuel and how to mill an engine block before
| we allow them to get a driver's license.
|
| Unlike modern education, which puts a massive emphasis on
| teaching how to do menial, useless things before going the
| sensible route [e.g. I remember vividly how we were
| tortured by doing table of values calculations in maths for
| what felt like weeks before we were allowed to use
| derivatives. I loved maths. Until that point. Then I hated
| the course (not the subject) with a passion.
|
| Lo and behold, I enter university, and the first thing we
| do in Mathematics 101 is 'let's forget everything we have
| learned, we're going to start from the beginning'. Joy.]
|
| I want to stress the point: Smartphones exist (and have
| existed for 15 years - a more modern 'scary new tech' would
| probably be LLMs). Banning these things from school will
| only keep teachers happy because they can keep their
| teaching methods from the 1890s alive for some more time,
| instead of using what is available to get kids educated
| better.
| Jolter wrote:
| No, it keeps teachers happy because the kids are able to
| focus on the teaching instead of sneaking looks in their
| phones every chance they get. (Not all kids, etc, but
| certainly a lot of kids do this.) No matter what method
| of teaching you can imagine, a cell phone will be a
| distraction to a teenager.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The problem is they do damage, at home and as a teacher, you
| get to compete against the dopamine kick for attention - the
| whole day, even if the device is not around
| donatj wrote:
| Many real world distractions exist. Drugs and alcohol exist,
| and will be part of many of these children's lives. Just
| because something exists in the real world doesn't mean it
| belongs in schools.
|
| Frankly, smartphones should be discussed in health class,
| much like drugs and alcohol, and in a similar tone.
| jorvi wrote:
| It's not really smartphones by themselves that need to be
| discussed, but rather (simplified) the dopamine loop reward
| system.
|
| Explain it to young kids as the smartphone giving you a
| 'treat' for doing nothing. Eventually you get lazy and
| won't do any work because you get a 'treat' from the
| smartphone for free whereas if you play sports or hang out
| with your friends you only get the 'treat' for doing
| something.
|
| Then explain that very smart people have taught the
| smartphone how to make the 'treat' tastier and tastier
| until you spend most of your time chasing treats instead of
| doing and enjoying things.
| T-zex wrote:
| Smartphone should not be compared to a calculator. The closer
| analogy would be kids bringing in their friends, cousins,
| music, games, photo albums, films etc into a class and
| interacting with them.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Glossy magazines, handy-dandy mobbing tools, porn, a kiddie
| slot machine, a big stack of totally random niche zines
| that include yes the icky ones, a kiddie panopticon, their
| anxious parents, a gaggle of marketers and influencers
| grooming their income streams (this is a fun game) and
| interacting with them.
| torpfactory wrote:
| What's the skill though? Most everything you do on a
| smartphone is trivially easy thanks to all those hard working
| app developers. We all know from experience that the vast
| majority of actual phone time is spent consuming some kind of
| media. I'm not at all worried about kids not learning to use
| a smartphone well enough- that part will sort itself out.
| It's all the other (boring) skills that get pushed aside in
| the mindless scramble for dopamine that concerns me.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I think there might be something to be said for the idea of
| teaching computer literacy on smartphones. There's often a
| real gap in comprehension of conceptual computer use in
| those who grew up in the age of ambient
| smartphones/socialmedia/etc.
|
| That smartphone one only uses for TikTok is still 100x more
| powerful than any computer we had access to at that age,
| and it can do real work (just so long as you look beyond
| the consumption apps).
| criddell wrote:
| Where my kids went to high school, a smart phone was
| required. The teacher would encourage kids to put
| assignments and tests on their calendar. They would use the
| camera to take a picture of a home work assignment written
| on a whiteboard. They used the camera for photo and movie
| projects. They had some twitter-like app for the teacher to
| broadcast to all students.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Here too, kids are enslaved to google, microsoft, AND
| apple as well.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Using the smartphone a a useful tool while avoiding the
| mindless scramble for dopamine is the skill.
| udev4096 wrote:
| There are quite a lot of things you can mess around with.
| Install a custom ROM, a custom recovery or build a custom
| ROM from scratch. Use emulated players such as winlator for
| gaming. Use GrapheneOS for maximum privacy and security.
| Use termux for learning CLI. There are tons and tons of
| things you could do with that little rectangle screen
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The time our kid spent doing that, even when shown the
| possibilities: zero.
| Jolter wrote:
| I guarantee you 100% that this is NOT what a teenager is
| up to on their phone during the school day.
|
| I mean, they COULD, but then they first have to develop
| an interest in science and technology.
|
| The likelyhood of developing such an interest when hooked
| on tiktok videos of makeup influencers? 0%.
| ioseph wrote:
| I think a PC is a more apt comparison. Yes we learnt them in
| computer class but they weren't in the Math classroom. Hell
| learning software engineering I didn't use my laptop at all
| during lectures.
| a3w wrote:
| For some reason, we learn math as if we were farmers in the
| early 1900s. We do not learn (Bayesian) statistics early
| enough to tell fact from fraud, what city dwellers and
| voters could probably use instead.
|
| And applied math on a PC would be great, but we barely have
| applied math on a calculator.
|
| And kids love calculators: only digital numbers are
| numbers. 2/3 is _cleary_ not a number to anyone below 20
| years of age, that is two numbers, we have to write
| .6666666\dash_over{6} down as a solution instead.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| At least when I was a kid 20 years ago in the US, the
| math curriculum worked toward physical science and
| engineering applications (i.e. algebra, geometry,
| calculus), which also sets you up to understand
| probability/statistics. My impression was that's more or
| less standard all over. Has that changed?
|
| I'm not sure how to interpret your last statement, but
| that seems like a problem worth correcting if true?
| They're going to need to understand fractions to do any
| math more advanced than elementary school level.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| You know I used to think this but my cousins were raised
| extremely strict on phones and media consumption and today
| they're successful and well-adjusted. They didn't binge and
| lack self control when they became adults.
| eitally wrote:
| Fwiw, my local public school district (I have three kids at
| three different public neighborhood schools) _does_ provide
| kids instruction like this, as well as lots of other
| programming around empathy, acceptance, drug /alcohol use,
| common health/physiology topics, driver training, etc. This
| is my tax dollars being spent on things that aren't core
| academic topics but imho absolutely help develop youth into
| better decision makers with a more holistic view of society
| than many of them might otherwise given their home
| situations.
|
| The middle and high schools here ban phone use during class,
| and the high school confiscates phones (and grants
| detentions) for students who flaunt the ban. In practice, it
| usually works with teachers using those door mounted phone
| holders as a way to take attendance. Put your phone in the
| pouch when you get to class, and grab it when you leave.
| Occasionally, a teacher will also ban smartwatches if they
| become too distracting, but this is not common.
|
| That said, many teachers take advantage of their students
| having phones to augment their methods & curriculum, and
| afaik this is the teachers' prerogative.
| const_cast wrote:
| The thing is that using a smartphone is a _very easy_ skill.
| I mean, who are we kidding. These devices are set up such
| that the stupidest person can use them.
|
| It's not 1995 anymore and we aren't walking in a line to the
| computer lab. These things are idiot-proof. You really don't
| need hours of practice everyday to learn how to use them.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| It's probably still appropriate in 2025 for kids to go to
| the computer lab and learn to use an actual computer
| (ideally running some flavor of Linux so that they can
| learn to expect that the computer is a tool that obeys the
| user). Phones are both idiot-proof and expert-proof, and
| while you _can_ use something like Termux as another
| commented noted (and I use it on my phone), it 's
| sufficiently horrible that you'll never see the potential
| productivity boost, and will think that anything outside of
| "apps" is unreasonably difficult (because _phones_ make it
| so).
|
| So it's not that phones are easy enough to use that you
| don't need to teach them; it's that the thing you want to
| teach is the power of a general purpose computer, and
| phones try very hard to hide the fact that they are
| extremely powerful general purpose computers. You need to
| learn on a real computer to know what you even want the
| phone to be able to do.
| const_cast wrote:
| I agree 100%. From what I've personally seen, I think
| younger people are actually becoming less versed in
| computers. There was a brief moment in time in which:
|
| 1. Most people had access to computers.
|
| 2. Computers were difficult to use and required building
| skills.
|
| 2 is no longer true anymore, so those skills are getting
| lost. Try asking a 15 year old what a filesystem is.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| My daughter brings her phone to school with her
|
| - If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to come
| drive her to school
|
| - If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call us
| and let us know she won't be home at her normal time
|
| - If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to
| bring it
|
| - etc, etc, etc
|
| There's a ton of reasons for her to have her phone on her.
| Enough so that, when she gets punished with phone removal, we
| generally still let her bring it to school.
|
| The fact that the phone doesn't contribute to the schooling
| itself (although it does when she forgets something she needs
| for school) doesn't mean that it doesn't contribute to QOL
| overall by being with her at school.
| ecshafer wrote:
| All of those reasons can be solved with her using a public
| phone. My school growing up had a phone in the hallway by the
| main office for those reasons.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| As part of the last generation to grow up without phones in
| (early) school, this.
|
| The endless rationalizing of why kids need to have phones
| at every moment rings hollow...
|
| Because grade school kids actually did just fine without
| them.
|
| Things functioned, people got where they needed to get,
| emergencies were handled, etc.
|
| Especially with pre- and post-school access, we're
| balancing a minimum of in-school utility against a massive
| danger to learning and development.
|
| We should just accept we built addiction boxes and
| therefore restrict them appropriately.
| meowface wrote:
| I also grew up without phones in schools but in my
| opinion the problem is phones (and laptops, frankly) in
| class. If a student isn't in class, I don't see why they
| can't use their phone to talk to people or browse
| websites or whatever.
|
| If they're in class, then 99% chance it's distracting
| them from learning. If they're not, I think personal
| autonomy is a good rule.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| My argument against any phones from school start to end
| is that socialization and interpersonal skills are also
| learned in school.
|
| Having a distraction box at hand slows that process.
|
| Grade school kids aren't tiny adults: they're actively
| building the pieces that make them into adults (self
| control, emotional regulation, empathy, cooperation,
| etc).
|
| I don't trust Google or Apple to sacrifice profits, at
| scale, to support those goals.
| neom wrote:
| I agree with you. Also grew up through the full 90. To
| me, school is school, all of it. Not school, not school,
| but all time at school is: school. and imo personal
| devices in school is really bad news: period.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > The endless rationalizing of why kids need to have
| phones
|
| Once again, for the people not paying attention. It's not
| about _need_. It's about quality of life. It's about
| easier, faster, better, safer.
|
| Are there negatives to having cell phones? Sure. That's
| true for adults, too. And the benefits of having a cell
| phone need to be weighed against those negatives.
|
| But saying "you don't _need_ a cell phone" is a straw man
| argument. Because nobody (that I see) says it's needed;
| they said it's worth it.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Because nobody (that I see) says it 's needed; they
| said it's worth it._
|
| Oh, "need" is definitely the first-reach in these
| discussions. You should see Florida school parents go
| apeshit at the prospect of not being tethered to their
| little angels 24x7.
|
| Granted, on HN, it does trend towards worth.
|
| But imho that's looking at smartphones with rose-colored
| glasses. As people in the industry, you think we'd have
| more realpolitik perspectives about what modern
| smartphones are designed to do -- grab, hold, and
| monetize attention.
| jajko wrote:
| Its basically shitty parenting disguised with 'we care'
| and similar arguments as mentioned. Lets not forget about
| pedophile scare, that should convert the last remaining
| parents and make sure opposition is silent.
|
| We raise kids mostly without screens (just some short old
| school cartoons on TV before bed if they behave well).
| Its harder, but kids behave much better compared to most
| peers (which can have 1000s of reasons and some out of
| our control, I know). We also limit sweet stuff, eat tons
| of veggies (so they do too and ie love broccoli, not sure
| where the proverbial hate comes from... maybe lack of
| basic cooking skills?). But the key is we eat same stuff,
| healthy food can be very tasty easily. We lay them down
| to sleep pretty early too.
|
| Simply restrict highly addictive stuff, be it in food or
| behavioral like screens. It has no place when growing up,
| no matter how folks wrap it as a need. It forms neural
| pathways that are extremely hard to shed for rest of
| their lives, no need to fuck them up properly for life
| before they have a chance to forge their own path and
| make their own choices.
| ale42 wrote:
| Here around public phones are gone since long, even inside
| schools. However, mobile phones that just do calls and SMS
| are still a thing. And anyway, the Finnish law is not
| preventing any of the use cases you mentioned as far as I
| understand it.
| bluGill wrote:
| No they cannot. My school had multiple doors that could not
| see each other - more than once my parents were waiting for
| me at a different door from the one I was standing at
| waiting for them. We did find each other, but only after a
| lot of searching - sometimes we even passed each other as
| we both switched doors to wait at.
|
| Okay, it did work out, but not nearly as well as a simple
| cell phone. Smart phones add additional functionality. (I
| can see on google maps where each kid's phone is)
| spicyusername wrote:
| So you had to wait a little extra for the benefit of a
| society where children aren't always on a screen?
|
| Seems like a good trade to me.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| To me it seems such a dystopian thing to inflict upon
| ones kids. All day long being monitored by a spyware
| spreading company, just for some small convenience and
| probable impacting their ability to clearly communicate
| where they are or will be waiting. Maybe this kind of
| thing is the reason why so many people are unable to make
| an appointment and stick to the terms agreed upon when
| making the appointment.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| You are describing a minor inconvenience right?
| bluGill wrote:
| The world is still better with smart phones and not
| having that inconvenience.
|
| Now there are other downsides of smartphones. We do need
| to mitigate them. However lets not throw out the good
| just because of the bad.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It can stay in her locker when she is in class, no?
| jairuhme wrote:
| These are good examples of why a non-smartphone is valuable
| and a smartphone is not necessary. Also the linked article
| states that they will be allowed to use their phone when
| given circumstances require, which I think covers the cases
| you outlined
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Also the linked article states that they will be allowed
| to use their phone when given circumstances require, which
| I think covers the cases you outlined
|
| Yes. I was discussing things from the thread's title and
| the arguments in the thread that phones aren't useful at
| school. The actual action that Finland is taking (Children
| aren't allowed to use cellphones at school without
| permission, effectively) is reasonable. But it's also not
| what the title of this thread says.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| All of those problems can be solved without smartphones, as
| evidenced by literally every previous generation dealing with
| them. If anything, my grumpy self would argue that not having
| means to contact my parents if I forgot something ensured
| that I paid more attention the night before to what I had to
| pack.
|
| But I'm open to compromise: let's give children bring dumb
| phones that can only call and text.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure. I remember standing in line at the phone for 10
| minutes as a kid waiting for my turn to call my parents
| when my activity was done. Cell phones are better. Smart
| phones would mean I could use the time waiting for
| something.
|
| Smart phones when class is in session is a distraction and
| should be banned. However outside of class they are
| helpful.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| 10 minutes, that you could use socializing with other
| students/pupils. Well, I can see the problem, we cannot
| possibly inflict this upon our children.
| bluGill wrote:
| We didn't though. A few did, but most of us were standing
| in line while our friends where elsewhere.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| > 10 minutes
|
| We have forgotten that boredom is okay.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Of course we need our kids to use their time more
| efficiently, can't have any idle time, no no /s
| stetrain wrote:
| I did all of those same things while in school with a Nokia
| candy bar phone. I did waste some time playing Snake though.
|
| Per the article this is a ban on using smartphones during
| class time, not a ban on bringing them to school at all.
|
| That seems pretty reasonable to me. When I was in school if a
| teacher saw you using phone during class you might get one
| warning and then it was being confiscated.
| sandos wrote:
| Uh, yes, same exact reasons our kids have their phones with
| them to school. BUT, the phones are handed in, and when they
| are handed in during the day, the kids can ask a teacher
| either for their phone or for getting help using another
| phone. At the end of the school day, they get their phones
| back.
|
| I see no problem here.
| lossolo wrote:
| She can have a basic phone just for calls--like the ones
| designed for older people.Or depending on the school, they
| might have a system where all phones are stored when children
| arrive and returned after school.
| stefs wrote:
| > The law does not entirely ban the use of mobile phones at
| school, and their use will be permitted in certain
| situations. But generally, the use of phones *during class
| time* will be prohibited.
|
| so, the finnish don't prohibit that at all.
| stefs wrote:
| PS: emphasis mine PPS: and i meant "the finns", not "the
| finnish"
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to
| bring it
|
| Curious what this will lead to.
|
| When she'll get a job, if she'll forget her laptop at home,
| will she call you and ask you to bring it to the workplace?
| bombcar wrote:
| Depending on where people are relative to each other,
| absolutely yes.
|
| I've done similar for friends and family.
|
| For most kids, the embarrassment of a parent appearing
| during the school day is enough to really negatively
| enforce forgetting things, at least after middle school
| starts.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I expect she'd probably drive home and get it. She doesn't
| have a car at 13 yrs old though. Nor would I want her
| walking home from her school at the moment to get it to the
| tune of 40+ minutes; so calling me is a reasonable option.
|
| Could she get by at school without her computer? Yes. Is
| her school day more productive with it? Also yes.
| dweekly wrote:
| Those are good reasons to have a smart watch with cellular
| capabilities.
|
| They are not good reasons to have a phone at school.
|
| In terms of QOL: there is a meaningful body of research about
| the impact of giving a teenage girl access to a phone on
| their quality of life.
|
| https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/7/576 https://www.sciencedire
| ct.com/science/article/pii/S245195882...
| meowface wrote:
| I assume those effects are similar even if they're only
| using the phone before and after school.
| rapind wrote:
| Probably, but it would be much less reasonable for the
| state to enforce outside of school (both for practical
| and ideological reasons).
| bmacho wrote:
| Probably not, and replacing checking it every 45 mins
| with a continuous 8 hours of no screen time matters a
| lot, and a ban is a solution alone.
| raron wrote:
| Those studies speak about social media addiction,
| smartphone addiction, and excessive phone use and not about
| having a phone.
|
| If you want to prevent the negative effects of social media
| and (designed to be) addictive apps, then you should ban
| social media and addictive apps, and not phones (because
| that would just mask the symptoms).
| jvvw wrote:
| The schools here I have experience with are stricter about
| smart watches than phones - you can get everybody to turn
| their phone off all day or keep it in a locker, but it's
| much harder with watches.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The first two aren't _in_ school. The last doesn 't actually
| require a cell phone.
|
| It's worth noting, according to the article, the law gives
| school officials leeway to allow kids to use their phones in
| some circumstances. So, the law doesn't stop any of the use
| cases you've listed.
| _joel wrote:
| All don't need a smartphone.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| The first two require she bring her phone to school with
| her. Could they collect every phone before school and hand
| them out after? Sure.. but that's a nightmare.
|
| The last one doesn't require a cell phone, since the school
| has phone lines. But it's certainly more convenient to let
| her use her own phone than have 20 kids in line at the
| office every morning calling their parents.
|
| > It's worth noting, according to the article, the law
| gives school officials leeway to allow kids to use their
| phones in some circumstances. So, the law doesn't stop any
| of the use cases you've listed.
|
| Somewhat my bad.. but I was responding to thread's content
| and title.
|
| - The article says "[Finland approved] a law that restricts
| the use of mobile devices by pupils at primary and
| secondary schools"
|
| - The title of the thread says "bans smartphones in
| schools".. which is not at ALL what they did; they banned
| _use_ of smartphones in schools _without permission_.
|
| And what I said was that my daughter brings her phone to
| school; she doesn't use it there unless there's a good
| reason (like I noted).
| bonzini wrote:
| > Could they collect every phone before school and hand
| them out after? Sure.. but that's a nightmare.
|
| I am pretty sure that no one would know if she just puts
| it on silent or airplane mode? But in any case my son's
| class did that for several months in 7th grade, due to an
| incident (minor but on the worrisome side) and with the
| agreement of the parents, and it was just fine.
|
| > have 20 kids in line at the office every morning
| calling their parents.
|
| Maybe next time they will put more attention and in the
| meanwhile they'll share or borrow what's needed?
| lotu wrote:
| > > Could they collect every phone before school and hand
| them out after? Sure.. but that's a nightmare.
|
| Yes they could for years NYC schools banned cellphones in
| schools which ment kids could not bring them in the
| building at all. Kids left their phones with nearby
| bodegas or in a van parked outside the school for a small
| fee. Basically a coat check for phones. This worked
| perfectly well and required zero effort on the part of
| the administration.
| dagss wrote:
| 1) Point 1 and 3 can in many families be an impediment to the
| development of the child rather than a good thing. If you can
| always call on helicopter parents to solve your issues you do
| not get the experience that even if you mess up / get into a
| bad situation, in the end, you can solve the situation
| yourself -- or if it is not solved, that you at least survive
| it and life goes on. Important life skills.
|
| 2) The entire list can be equally well solved by dumbphones
| without TikTok and Snapchat. Which is what such bans as this
| is about.
|
| 3) It is always about pros/cons. In Scandinavia phones have
| (in my view as a parent and married to a teacher) essentially
| destroyed education wherever they are allowed in the
| pocket/backpack of the student during class.
|
| Not to speak about downsides to social life. E.g., people not
| attempting dancing in high school proms because there are
| videos taken everywhere. People not showering in gyms due to
| phones. Just two examples. SO MANY things are killed by the
| phones.
|
| The benefits have to be weighed against the quite massive
| downsides.
|
| --
|
| They banned phones on the high school where my wife teaches
| last year and she is basically a changed person. Instead of
| spending 50% of class time policing phone use, she can, you
| know, actually teach.
|
| (She still has to deal with a generation addicted to
| dopamine, but a habit of phone confiscation during class is
| at least a massive improvement.)
| thomastraum wrote:
| THIS is it.
|
| even all the above reasons are not actual reasons. None of
| these are a problem. you job is NOT to bring something to
| school because she forgot it nor to drive her to school if
| the bus doesnt show up.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > you job is NOT to bring something to school because she
| forgot it nor to drive her to school if the bus doesnt show
| up.
|
| No, it's not my job. But it is my job as a parent to make
| her life easier where it makes sense (when it's not to
| impactful to my other responsibilities). And dropping off
| her computer so that she can participate in class does that
| (and makes her day in school more productive). And picking
| her up at the bus stop so she doesn't need to walk 5-10
| minutes home, or 15-20 minutes to school... is a nice thing
| to do.
|
| It seems like everyone in this thread against cell phones
| is arguing from the point of "well, you don't NEED this".
| It's not about need, it's about better.
| thomastraum wrote:
| I respect your opinion, I have children and I dont want
| to tell other parents what to do. please take it as an
| exploration of a what real necessity is and what the
| notion of better is in which context.
|
| I fundamentally disagree that making life easy is the
| right thing.
|
| what I am trying to say is, the feedback loop from a)
| forgetting something or b) the experience of missing out
| on something because of aspects of life that are out of
| ones control is so much better IMO and the phone is just
| 'convenient'
|
| Of course that doesnt mean I prefer my child to be run
| over or die instead of protecting her/him or helping
| her/him
| smoe wrote:
| While I see the utility of a phone in places where children
| can't move around independently for one reason or another, I
| reckon that in Finland, most children walk or cycle to and
| from school on their own starting in like first grade. So
| there's no need for this kind of coordination.
| beej71 wrote:
| Dumb phone does all that, too...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| 1. I don't have a problem with my daughter owning a
| smartphone and using it reasonably.
|
| 2. I'm not buying my daughter a 2nd dumb phone to bring to
| school with her.
|
| "Bring it but don't use it (or leave it in your locker)" is
| a reasonable answer to me (and is actually what Finland is
| doing).
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| All problems you listed were solved differently before the
| age of smartphones.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| ALL problems were solved differently before the age of
| smartphones. Breaking down on the side of the road in the
| middle of nowhere and having to walk miles to find some way
| to ask for help was a damned nightmare; especially for a
| single female.
|
| Lots of problems are solved in MUCH better ways now that we
| have smartphones. It's not about "can we do it", it's about
| "can we do it better / easier".
| wildzzz wrote:
| The school has phones in every classroom as well as the
| admin offices. Before I had a cellphone and needed to let
| my parents know I was staying after school or going home
| with a friend, I just used a landline.
|
| Breaking down on the side of the road is completely
| different than being without a cellphone in a building
| full of landlines. It's disingenuous to compare the two
| situations. Breaking down on the side of the road is
| pretty much the impetus for portable communication
| systems. A kid being able to just text mom that they need
| a ride after school is convenient but not really critical
| enough to justify letting kids have their phones on them
| all day long.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > - If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to
| come drive her to school
|
| When I went to school the bus turned up every single day
| without fail. We've learnt to accept less because you can
| just call a taxi.
|
| > - If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call
| us and let us know she won't be home at her normal time
|
| We had public payphones that we could use. We've learnt to
| accept less because everyone has a mobile phone.
|
| > - If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us
| to bring it
|
| I remembered to bring what I needed every day or I suffered
| the consequences. I soon learnt. We've become complacent
| because you can just get it delivered using your phone.
|
| All in all I don't really see how it's a positive, but it
| certainly seems to have considerable negatives.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Those can all be done with a fixed computer with a small
| delta of additional effort.
| bborud wrote:
| The thing to ask is if these conveniences are _more_
| important than the presumable benefits of making the cell
| phone inaccessible during school hours.
|
| The thing is: these benefits manifest at different time-
| scales.
| discordance wrote:
| I'm ok with your child having to deal with a few
| inconveniences if it helps improve an entire generations
| mental health and development
| unethical_ban wrote:
| If the bus doesn't show up? This must be public buses and not
| yellow buses. Call your council and tell them to fix the
| transit system. Meanwhile a child can walk home and get a
| ride, or show up to the stop earlier.
|
| She can call from where she goes after school, no? Or she can
| go home first, or make plans a day ahead.
|
| She can learn the consequences of not packing her school bags
| properly and keep a checklist to review each morning. The
| only time I recall in 12 years of primary schooling, where I
| _had_ to get something from home after forgetting, was a prop
| for a demonstration in front of the class. I remember because
| it was the only time it mattered.
|
| I am not familiar with your specifics, I don't mean to be
| personal. I don't have kids. But I am young enough to
| remember being one - I am also addicted to my phone, and I
| know how convenient it is to not plan anything and to
| instantly communicate with everyone. I am unconvinced that
| children in a controlled, supervised environment need a
| phone.
|
| I say all this with humility because I haven't dealt directly
| with kids or the public school system in a long time.
|
| ...finally, if I did agree and say "yeah they should at least
| be allowed to have a phone on their way", it should
| absolutely be banned in the classroom. But what to do when
| the children inevitably break that rule? It doesn't sound
| like you would support them confiscating it, and it's a
| logistical quagmire to do so anyway.
| vitro wrote:
| But why smartphone then? Simple button phone would suffice.
| AAAAaccountAAAA wrote:
| Have you used any of the recent button phones? They are not
| particularly dependable things in my experience.
| nkrisc wrote:
| These are all normal childhood things that were managed long
| before smartphones existed. Yes, a mobile phone makes these
| things more convenient, but it is far from necessary.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Just give her a dumb phone? Kids don't need a smartphone to
| make a call or send a message.
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| I heard a variant of this recently. I told a colleague I
| don't use my phone for long periods, days at a time, that I
| miss nothing, am a happier person, do stuff with my time that
| makes me happier, etc, and she broke out in a mild panic,
| along the lines of:
|
| "What about emergencies?? What about when you need to phone
| someone about X, or phone someone else because Y happened?"
|
| It's a good argument - the typical phone in 1998 _was_ a
| useful and practical device. Seriously, being able to ring
| people has many excellent and real use cases. Phones aren 't
| just calling devices anymore, though.
| const_cast wrote:
| None of these require a smartphone. There's no reason to jump
| to the most extreme solution where there are cheap,
| addiction-free solutions available.
| jajko wrote:
| So your daughter is using basic indestructible Nokia with
| endless battery, correct?
| krferriter wrote:
| This is a really bad argument. None of this is a good reason
| for K-12 students to have their phone on them all day.
| ysavir wrote:
| I agree with your take on the purpose of schools and that
| smartphones contribute little.
|
| But my concern is that actions like these teach students an
| additional lesson: That it's okay to coerce people into
| specific actions or forfeitures if it serves your purposes.
| Children and teens absorb a lot, and while they don't always
| absorb the contents of their lectures, they do typically absorb
| how they're treated and how that implies they can treat others.
|
| The ultimate problem with education (at least in the US, can't
| speak for other countries) is that students are given very
| little motivation to participate in the educational process.
| Their participation is demanded and their disengagement is
| punished. There's little about the system that actually
| motivates and rewards their participation. If we really want
| students to spend less time on smartphones at schools, we
| should be looking at how we can restructure our approach to
| education so that students would actually feel encouraged to
| participate and ignore their smartphones.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >That it's okay to coerce people into specific actions or
| forfeitures if it serves your purposes
|
| It is acceptable for public schools, whose mandate is
| education of the youth, to enaxt restrictions on behavior to
| that end.
|
| And smartphones are an addictive item. I want school to be
| fun and engaging. That doesn't mean every kid who's been
| raised on an iPad since age 0.5 will put down their phones if
| the teacher has rizz.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >But my concern is that actions like these teach students an
| additional lesson: That it's okay to coerce people into
| specific actions or forfeitures if it serves your purposes.
|
| Well, of course it is. Organized society largely rests upon
| this principle. In the oppressive ones coercion is exercised
| arbitrarily or by a select few, and in societies based on
| rule of law it is exercised, well, using law.
|
| >The ultimate problem with education (at least in the US,
| can't speak for other countries) is that students are given
| very little motivation to participate in the educational
| process. Their participation is demanded and their
| disengagement is punished. There's little about the system
| that actually motivates and rewards their participation. If
| we really want students to spend less time on smartphones at
| schools, we should be looking at how we can restructure our
| approach to education so that students would actually feel
| encouraged to participate and ignore their smartphones.
|
| Maybe. Or maybe the pesky slot machines and gossip
| aggregators are impossible to compete with, if you leave the
| adolescent attention economy in the hands of the almighty
| free market. Either way, banning cell phones certainly won't
| hurt efforts to engage students, if any.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Agree school could be more interesting--but the idea it could
| compete with highly addictive drugs, er youtube et al is
| laughable frankly.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| We put a lot of restrictions on minors and what they can do
| or be done to. On top of that, some things which would be ok
| in a different setting would be inapropriate and disruptive
| in a classroom environment.
|
| Also, with regards to the motivational aspect, I would not
| expect a toddler to be able to make the appropriate choice
| between a healty meal and candy. I do not expect a teen to be
| able to restrain themselves from the pubescent games of
| social media prancing and paying attention to the class
| teaching.
| thebiss wrote:
| > [...] how we can restructure our approach to education so
| that students would actually feel encouraged to participate
| and ignore their smartphones.
|
| Is there any precedent for this that we can model /
| reproduce? Any country or region where students are
| considered academically successful, while having unrestricted
| access to the internet in their pocket?
|
| If it exists, it would be very worthwhile to understand what
| gives those students such strong self control. Do they do it
| on their own? Are they somehow admonished/shunned publicly
| for that behavior?
| gostsamo wrote:
| Kids should not have access to anything more complex than a Nokia
| with a flashlight.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| TI calculator with Doom?
| abofh wrote:
| Kids have access to what their parents give them - I suspect
| most parents shouldn't be trusted with a flashlight or a nokia.
| bcraven wrote:
| I'd recommend watching Social Studies to get an idea of what
| phone use in schools can look like. It's filmed in LA but I'm
| sure can be applied generally.
|
| The amount of anxiety on show is really saddening.
|
| https://thetvdb.com/series/social-studies-452444
| geremiiah wrote:
| Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff?
| While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop
| these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need
| to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to
| Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which
| are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long
| term and dangerous for other reasons.
| _flux wrote:
| Maybe it does help increasing resiliency by forcing them not
| use the device for the day? Whether it does that will be found
| during the next few years. Why is it unlikely in long term?
|
| You pose this as a question, but I find it's quite easy to say
| "we need to achieve this some other way" but then not having a
| concrete suggestion what that other way could be.
| ndr42 wrote:
| I do not think kids and everybody else are standing a chance
| against all the money that is thrown at making and keeping them
| addicted.
|
| So I fear if we do not want them to be addicted we have to
| prohibit things (it does not need to be smartphones, it could
| be mechanisms on these devices).
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| Bingo. The decline of smoking wouldn't have happened if it
| wasn't for banning smoking in most public places and
| everywhere indoors, removing cigarette vending machines, etc.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Prohibition didn't work for booze, doesn't work for drugs.
|
| Why would you be expecting better results for this ?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Smoking ban in bars and restaurants seem to work. So doing
| same with phones in schools during lesson time does not
| seem unreasonable.
| Miraltar wrote:
| This and taxes, it's much much harder to get cigarettes
| as a teenager now because of the price
| ty6853 wrote:
| I agree it is not unreasonable, but I'd also note that
| bars have their livelihood at stake. While a child has
| their phone at stake, you cannot threaten their
| livelihood without a trip to prison.
|
| There are no material stakes to the child other than
| losing their entertainment device. Might as well break
| the rules.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Limited restrictions for specific times and places is
| totally reasonable, I read the parent comment in a larger
| scope as it was about stopping addiction.
| ndr42 wrote:
| If you would like to prohibit e.g. gambling mechanisms in
| games or social media you need a legal framework and then
| you investigate and fine the firms that don't adhere to the
| rules. This works very well in the EU as seen by the
| example of apple and facebook last week. It's not perfect
| but what is?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The EU still largely allows for lucrative gambling
| mechanisms, they just can't be predatory or deceptive.
| Which I agree is probably the best approach, coupled with
| advertisement restrictions etc.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| I think you're right in a way because if school wants to
| prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent with
| tech.
|
| But at the same time, I think banning smartphones is perfectly
| fine because you can still use computers and stuff. It's not
| like they're going back to quills and ink.
|
| Smartphones fry your attention span and enable bullying. And if
| parents want to have emergency contact, you can always have a
| simple mobile phone with texting/calling.
| graemep wrote:
| > I think you're right in a way because if school wants to
| prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent
| with tech.
|
| 1. Educational is not vocational training. Schools should
| give kids skills and a foundation, not teach them how to use
| particular technology.
|
| 2. Not all jobs require much knowledge of how to use
| technology.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| 1. Correct, I think you've changed my mind on this and I'll
| investigate further. Though they should probably get
| foundational knowledge on tech literacy.
|
| 2. True, though less true over time. Even in the non-tech
| jobs you're now constantly using technology. In the trades,
| you need to know how to operate a CNC machine. As a nurse,
| you're operating medical devices that are getting more and
| more powered by technology.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| >I think you're right in a way because if school wants to
| prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent
| with tech.
|
| They are failing spectacularly on that front anyways. You
| don't learn useful skills by being handed a remotely
| administered tablet or Chromebook, which is what schools
| provide.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Growing up we had computer class in school, where we did
| BASIC programming and worked on typing, and this wasn't a
| particularly good school system. Moving towards "you'll
| learn computers and typing by having them in your face all
| the time" feels like a considerable regression in both
| computer and general skills.
| zx90 wrote:
| I saw this in the Netherlands: Chromebooks with which the
| children did their research online, submitted their
| homework online, got them graded online, organized their
| workgroups, schedules and meetings online ...
|
| Actually </s> they were learnig vital skills like Agile
| Sprint management! (I don't know if they ever physically
| met for standup meeetings)
| zx90 wrote:
| Using a dumb-phone is the reason a pre-teen neighbor of mine
| got bullied. So much that she ended up stealing money to get
| herself a smartphone. Shortly afterwards the parents folded
| and became less strict with their anti-consumerism stance.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| yeah but isn't that precisely what banning smartphones in
| schools fixes? Nobody said anything about outside of
| school.
| zx90 wrote:
| Sorry, I was not clear.
|
| Absolutely smartphones should be banned, at least during
| lessons, and at best during the whole time in the school,
| recess, etc.
|
| Giving a child a dumb-phone in an environment where
| everybody else uses a smartphone doesn't work. If
| smarphones are not banned then _all_ will end up with a
| smartphone, and socialisation difficulties, etc...
|
| This is a case where individual freedoms end up in
| collective damage. Maybe I'm an outlier here but I'd ban
| all kinds of social media all the time.
| forinti wrote:
| In Uruguay in the 1980s there was no TV before 10am. I liked
| watching cartoons a lot, but I'm glad this made me do more
| interesting stuff in the mornings.
| jalict wrote:
| > Is it possible to fight Internet addiction...
|
| Yes!
|
| > ...without banning stuff?
|
| What incentive do companies have to do this? It seems quite
| profitable for them?
|
| I am quite strict here with my comment; but honestly, I can't
| see much reason other than making new products that are made as
| an "anti" movement, but companies will just find new ways to
| get people hooked -- because it is profitable for them to do
| so.
| enaaem wrote:
| Easiest way to fight addiction is to remove the triggers, like
| seeing your phone. Requires less willpower.
| piva00 wrote:
| No, I don't think there's a way without regulating addictive
| feed-based content machines.
|
| As much as we would like to tout some individualised solution
| for this, there's no way for all individuals to be trained to
| resist products designed for maximising its usage. There are
| armies of smart people being paid to think about ways that will
| make users be "engaged" with their products for as long as
| possible for it to be profitable, armies of experts in user
| behaviour, developers that can churn out good quality digital
| products, designers who can make the experience feel smooth.
| It's all geared to be addictive since the incentive is to
| capture as much attention as possible.
|
| Is it possible to fight gambling addiction, alcohol addiction,
| nicotine addiction, drugs addiction, without banning them? Yup,
| it's costly, relies on a lot of regulation, control from the
| State on what kind of behaviour these companies can engage, and
| so on.
|
| The addictive thing is not the smartphone but what it gives
| access to, without a conversation about what kind of
| regulations could curtail the addictive side of the real
| culprit, social media, there's no way out on an individual
| basis.
|
| Banning smartphones in schools is akin to banning cigarettes'
| commercials, you aren't banning the stuff completely but at
| least trying to curtail its reach. We need more of this, social
| media has a lot of benefits so I don't think it should ever be
| outright banned, we do need more talk about its downsides and
| potential mitigations on a societal level.
| _joel wrote:
| Irony being, the cold-dark nights have helped a generation of
| computer programmers from the Nordic countries.
| Kaethar wrote:
| I wonder if there's any alternatives to this that teach actual
| discipline when it comes to phones. Methods that actually attack
| the reason kids are using phones in school (boredom, social
| anxiety, uninterested in school etc.).
| skydhash wrote:
| I remember being a kid and I wouldn't need any reason to using
| smartphones at school. And we did bring banned things like
| walkman, gameboy, dumb phones,... And we only needed to spend 5
| hours there.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I think this would be reasonable except for all the billion
| dollar companies pouring their money into researching how to
| keep the kids on their phones. The solution supposes that
| there's a state of mind the child could have that would give a
| smaller intrinsic need for the phone and that would be that,
| but this falls down when there are better funded and more
| powerful entities than the schools and parents pushing
| extrinsic motivations to stay on the phone for longer and
| longer.
| stevage wrote:
| What I hear from teachers is they are constantly bombarded by
| notifications. They aren't idly playing on their phones.
| They're constantly responding to things happening.
|
| There's seriously no alternative to banning them, and I don't
| even see the interest in trying.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| I'm totally in favor of this, but there's something poetic about
| the country of Nokia banning smartphones.
| adverbly wrote:
| Is this just smartphones they are banning? Can kids still use
| oldschool Nokia phones?
| cromulent wrote:
| Note that this means "in class" rather than "in school".
| nicce wrote:
| "in school" is left for the school to decide. The can ban in
| breaks too.
| nntwozz wrote:
| What about smartwatches? The Apple Watch is very capable, I
| wonder if this will become a loophole.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Phones, tablets, headphones, laptops, and smartwatches
| according to HS.
|
| https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000011201797.html
| Tade0 wrote:
| The main (literal) takeaway is that teachers can now confiscate
| phones.
|
| Over here, at the other end of the Baltic sea, there's an ongoing
| debate about phones in the classroom and some schools have
| regulations in place regarding the use of electronic devices, but
| these are largely toothless as otherwise they would infringe on
| the right to property.
|
| I graduated high school before the smartphone era, so I don't
| have much of a point of reference, but I'm leaning on disallowing
| at least Wi-Fi/mobile data - that's the largest source of
| distraction in my view.
| esperent wrote:
| > they would infringe on the right to property.
|
| Can children bring in portable hifi systems? What about those
| squeaky chicken toys? Or a water pistol?
| Tade0 wrote:
| My sister's friend brought a microwave oven once and started
| making grilled cheese sandwiches during recess. He was told
| to unplug and never bring it again, but it was not
| confiscated.
|
| My classmate brought a super-sized calculator to class for
| tests, as he had a medical condition which allowed him to
| bring "a calculator". The buttons made a lot of noise but,
| again, it was not confiscated.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Can you make grilled cheese in a microwave?
| asadotzler wrote:
| the hifi system has a much better chance at attaching itself
| to freedom of speech protections than squeaky chickens or toy
| guns.
| jampekka wrote:
| This was mostly a kind of political posturing law by a deeply
| unpopular government. Teachers and schools already had the
| authority to ban phone use in class, including that they must be
| put into a cabinet, and most in fact already did.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I deplore the fact that schools need to resort to banning phones.
|
| When I was younger I imagined a world in which computing devices
| would be a boon to (young) people everywhere.
|
| But many apps appear to be detrimental to people's mental health,
| both young and old.
|
| Possibly this can be changed. Maybe separate app stores are a
| solution (think f-droid)? Or maybe we need to start looking a lot
| harder at apps that might actually be user hostile.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Computing devices could have done that except the people making
| them built hellscapes with black hole level gravity to sell us
| shit we don't need so now we have to treat computing devices
| like cigarettes and begin limiting their use in meaningful ways
| and teaching society to shun them, not because they couldn't be
| amazing, but because they are not now and probably won't be
| given Big Tech's stranglehold and inherent evil.
| fsloth wrote:
| Apps are the result of darwinian competition for engagement in
| a user base of billions.
|
| It's a horrible way to optimize technology for addictiveness.
|
| Not sure if there is a fix for that.
| CivBase wrote:
| Counter point: Materals which are needed/useful for education
| should be provided by the school and used at the teacher's
| discretion under their supervision. A personal smartphone
| shouldn't have any place in classroom activities since it is an
| obvious distraction and not equally accessible to all students.
| shayway wrote:
| Smartphones were just starting to be common right around the
| time I hit middle and high school. Teachers let us use them
| whenever we wanted, more or less, but if there was something we
| were supposed to be doing, we were only allowed to use them for
| educational purposes.
|
| We were often encouraged to use them, in fact. If there was
| ever a question someone asked that the teachers couldn't
| answer, or they heard an argument between students about
| something that could be solved by looking up hard data, they
| would invite us to take out our phones and look it up. One of
| the teachers would occasionally make little websites and apps
| related to whatever we were learning at the time. Sometimes we
| were shown interesting blog posts, educational youtube videos
| (before it was an industry), personal sites from people who
| make things. It was reinforced again and again that they were
| for discovery first, creation second, and anything else third.
|
| I feel very lucky for that to be how I learned to interact with
| them. The fact that we have magic machines that can answer any
| question in our pocket, that can take photos and connect us to
| people and teach us languages, yet we've corrupted them to the
| point that people are willingly giving them up and banning them
| from educational settings, is one of the greatest failings of
| modern society in my view. Or rather, an indication of even
| deeper and more troubling problems.
| jofzar wrote:
| A big thing these days are kids have no respect/fear of
| teachers. Misuse of phones doesn't have a solution where the
| teachers can't act on it and parents don't back up the
| teachers.
|
| I don't remember anyone "misusing" their smartphones when I
| was in highschool because the fear of getting it taken away
| was massive.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I think what Finland did is the right take because these are
| devices which kids do not need.
|
| They can call their parents if required from the main office.
|
| This is fantastic and once again shows why Finland is a pioneer
| in childhood education and why Americans and other countries
| are so far behind.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > why Americans and other countries are so far behind.
|
| Americans sure, but not all other countries e.g. in
| Singapore, many schools make the students put their
| smartphones in lockers and don't allow access at all during
| school hours. In case of emergency, they can call from the
| Main/General office.
| andrepd wrote:
| The internet is great. A kid even in bumfuck nowhere can
| _today_ , with a 100$ phone or computer, browse the biggest
| encyclopedia ever written in human history, read every book
| every published more 100 years ago (or more recently, if
| willing to pirate), watch lectures from the world's top
| universities and professors in subjects from physics to art
| conservation, listen to more concerts that you'll ever be able
| to in your entire lifetime, etc etc etc, all for FREE. Tell
| someone even 30 years ago that she would be able to hear the
| best orchestras in the world, on-demand, from rural Macedonia
| or whatever, at no charge, and it would be a vision of an
| utopian future. And yet here it is.
|
| Unfortunately when you buy a phone you don't get a link to
| libgen or a youtube account with DW Classical or Veritasium
| pre-installed on your phone screen. You get tiktok and
| instagram and similar slop. If even adults are vulnerable to
| these turbo-addictive attention harvesters, how can kids hope
| to escape?
| threatofrain wrote:
| I don't think it's the quantity of apps that are the problem.
| Khan Academy is famous by now. There are world-class education
| apps, it's just that education apps have never taken off that
| much. The problem is in the competition for your joy, some apps
| win and some apps lose.
| nabla9 wrote:
| It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and
| most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take
| away.
|
| Current legislation allows the teacher to tell a student to put
| their phone away in a pocket or backpack, for example, where it
| will not be a distraction.
|
| The use of phones during breaks cannot be completely banned, as
| students have fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees
| everyone the protection of property, which also applies to
| students' phones. Restricting the use of mobile devices must be
| considered from the perspective of freedom of speech and the
| protection of a phone call or other confidential message.
|
| Section 12 from Finnish constitution:
|
| -----
|
| Section 12 - Freedom of expression and right of access to
| information
|
| Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression
| entails the right to express, disseminate and receive
| information, opinions and other communications without prior
| prevention by anyone. More detailed provisions on the exercise of
| the freedom of expression are laid down by an Act. Provisions on
| restrictions relating to pictorial programmes that are necessary
| for the protection of children may be laid down by an Act.
| Documents and recordings in the possession of the authorities are
| public, unless their publication has for compelling reasons been
| specifically restricted by an Act. Everyone has the right of
| access to public documents and recordings.
|
| -----
|
| See also: Convention on the Rights of the Child
| https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
| Wikpedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...
| Gormo wrote:
| > It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and
| most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take
| away.
|
| It's a strange concept to hold that there are rights that can't
| be taken away, but then take them away merely by passing
| legislation.
| chithanh wrote:
| The keyword here is _just_.
|
| They cannot simply order children to comply, there has to be
| same legal basis like there has to be for ordering an adult
| to comply.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Maybe I'm seeing this wrong but a public school is a
| government institution, right? It seems reasonable, then,
| that the government could say "no phones in here", just
| like they can say "no drinks in the courtroom".
| askonomm wrote:
| Not all schools are government institutions or funded by
| the government. But it wouldn't matter to your point,
| because by that logic anyone who owns the building should
| then be able to make rules about what goes on inside that
| building, or any organization, etc. Much like how you
| have basic wardrobe etiquette, you could also have a rule
| that says no phones in a classroom.
|
| Now me being Estonian, just across the sea from Finland,
| I was surprised to learn this needed to be a law in the
| first place since when I went to elementary/primary
| school smartphones and laptops were not permitted in the
| classroom. Didn't need a special law for that, it was
| just the school's rules. You either play ball or you get
| called into the principals office. This happens enough
| times and you simply get kicked out of the school.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Well sure, I tend to agree with that. Government
| buildings can be an exception because they're public and
| we more carefully constraint the things the government
| can do, and because you can be forced to go there.
|
| I too am a bit baffled by the idea that you need a law
| for that. But, as I said, we have a different common law
| tradition in America that changes things. The only two
| big legal influences which I've read on are common law
| and the justinian codex -> napoleonic code path; scandi
| law is alien to me.
| eptcyka wrote:
| You have the right to get intoxicated, you possibly have the
| privilege to drive a car if you are licensed. It's quite the
| shame that these shmucks legislated against doing both at the
| same time.
| anhner wrote:
| Those rights can't be taken away... without existing
| legislation.
|
| There are many rights that can be taken away, freedom of
| movement for example in the case of prisoners, but you need
| laws in order to not make that taking away a crime itself.
| You can't just apprehend and throw someone in your basement
| because they stole something from you.
|
| Same thing with children's phones, a teacher can't just take
| away the phone because they didn't have the authority before.
| devsda wrote:
| Now I'm curious. Is there a law that carves out specific
| exemptions for parents disciplining kids/teenagers like
| grounding, taking away phone and internet privilege etc.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Sure, I think this just looks a little alien from an
| American perspective because most of our rights are set up
| as explicit negatives to block the government from
| legislating them away, more than to prevent Joe or Jane
| Teacher from taking a phone. "Congress shall pass no
| law..."
|
| I guess the nordics don't have a common-law tradition and
| so never inhereted the _in loco parentis_ doctrine that
| allows schools to take substantial actions regarding
| students? I 'm not familiar with their legal history.
| jofzar wrote:
| You have free speech, but you can't say a certain threat
| that is in a whitest kid you know sketch. It's the same
| thing
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY&pp=ygUcd2hpdGVz
| dCB...
| _bin_ wrote:
| This has always seemed blatantly unconstitutional,
| though, intentionally abused to create a chilling effect.
| It's not something I have or will say, but if "I want to
| kill Fred" isn't classed as a Virginia v. Black "true
| threat", the government has no legal basis for charging.
| Technically the statute isn't unconstitutional, it's just
| widely-abused.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > most of our rights are set up as explicit negatives to
| block the government from legislating them away,
|
| Of course, as we've discovered, those rights don't mean
| much, when the executive doesn't want to recognize them.
| So what was the point anyway?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| They also don't mean much when state governments just
| ignore them and never get called to account (and I can
| point to examples on both sides of the aisle).
| II2II wrote:
| It's too early to make that claim. There are multiple
| branches and levels of government to deal with situations
| like this. They have worked in the past for smaller scale
| violations. They should work in the present for larger
| scale violations. The problem is that it takes time, it
| always took time, so a lot of people are going to get
| hurt in the process. (Granted, it is also important for
| people to fight for their rights because the current
| government is pushing the limits.)
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| > current government is pushing the limits
|
| The Republicans* are. Important to be factually accurate
| here's the Democrats have never done anything remotely
| this lawless and authoritarian before.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| . . . aside from supporting slavery and then the
| Dixiecrats opposing civil rights, you mean? If you
| actually look at American history, the ugly parts are
| ultimately bipartisan.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > . . . aside from supporting slavery and then the
| Dixiecrats opposing civil rights, you mean? If you
| actually look at American history, the ugly parts are
| ultimately bipartisan.
|
| You are really pushing both-sides-ism to its limits.
|
| It goes without saying that if you have to go back that
| far in history to find an analogy to today's abuse of
| power, you are proving GP's point: the lawlessness of the
| Republican party is unprecedented in modern history.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| The person I was replying to said "never before," which
| means that AND the internship of Japanese-Americans
| during WWII are squarely on the table.
|
| I never voted for Trump and I don't support the power
| grabs he's trying to make, but I also understand America
| has a history of playing footsie with authoritarianism
| every 80-100 years or so.
|
| Internment camps, a civil war over literally owning
| humans as property, the Alien and Sedition Acts . . .
| _bin_ wrote:
| It is not. The precedent is around ninety years old, but
| firmly within modern history. As Franklin Roosevelt
| attempted to enact his New Deal agenda, the so-called
| "Four Horsemen", often along with Justice Roberts and/or
| Chief Justice Hughes, repeatedly ruled against his
| alphabet agencies and sweeping social bills.
|
| So, Roosevelt worked to find the necessary votes to pack
| the court. His "Judicial Procedures Reform Bill" was not
| so different from any of the other "judicial reforms"
| we've condemned when other strongmen around the world
| used them to strengthen their power. Politicians from
| Roosevelt's bloc spewed vitriol at the justices who were
| simply trying to do their jobs. In Iowa, effigies of the
| six justices who had opposed any of Roosevelt's actions
| were found hanged by nooses. Once Roosevelt secured
| political support and signaled his willingness to push
| for packing the court, the justices backed down and began
| ruling in his favor, repeatedly. Where months before it
| had struck down a New York minimum wage law, a nearly-
| identical law in Washington was deemed perfectly
| constitutional. The National Labor Relations Act was fine
| and dandy. Coal mining was suddenly interstate commerce
| after all. In fact, the Commerce Clause now covered
| everything; one clothing factory in Virginia was enough
| commerce to quality. Later, the court would rule that a
| man growing wheat _for his own consumption_ was
| sufficient "commerce" to warrant near-limitless federal
| rule-making. After all, it meant he bought less wheat
| from someone else, so clearly it was within the feds'
| purview. Wickard v. Filburn stands as precedent today.
| The justices on that court kept their seats but gave up
| their power.
|
| Now, another populist has shown up. One who has a
| different vision for the nation than that laid out by the
| neoliberal technocrats who have dominated American
| politics since Clinton. Trump has explicitly called out
| FDR's new deal coalition, the coalition emplaced by
| vaguely authoritarian means quite similar to those he is
| using, that was the underlying basis for politics for
| almost the past century. I don't care for Trump's vision
| much more than I care for Roosevelt's or Clinton's. But
| claiming that this is "unprecedented" only serves to
| point people away from the prior time in history when
| this happened, when we utterly failed to stop Roosevelt
| and remove his power. Perhaps learning from history is
| the better choice so this time we can do a better job of
| it.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This tradition goes back further than Roosevelt. In
| addition to being a notorious bigot and racist, Woodrow
| Wilson was open about the idea that the Constitution was
| outmoded and needed replacing so that a technocratic
| government could take its place.
| _bin_ wrote:
| You also have Roosevelt's first appointment to SCOTUS, a
| literal hood-wearing klansman and true-blue progressive.
| Broadly the progressive movement was also home to a high
| level of racism; more of the paternalistic variety than
| the hateful, but still led to e.g. forced sterilizations.
| Progressives today have abandoned that, but there was no
| such radical realignment for them.
| acdha wrote:
| Our history is ugly, but that particular detail needs to
| address the southern realignment where the Jim Crow-era
| Democrats moved to the Republican Party. I think it's
| less about bipartisanship and more that there's a group
| of people who both switch parties and influence within
| parties trying to accomplish their goal of maintaining
| their superiority over other groups. Their loyalty is to
| their group, not the party.
| _bin_ wrote:
| This isn't an accurate picture either. A good example
| would be Justice Hugo Black, Roosevelt's first appointee
| to the Supreme Court. Black remains one of the most
| noteworthy big-time liberals in the history of the court
| (with a few exceptions like Korematsu.) He was a southern
| democrat and a klansman; not a member of some shadowy
| cabal that exploited the democrats for political
| expediency but a true believer in progressivism.
|
| Perhaps one of the funniest elements of the American
| left's propensity to preach slavery and racism as a form
| of original sin is its insistence that it, unlike others,
| is pure, and only through it can one be purified. None of
| us is free from history, none of our forefathers was
| clean, but neither are we responsible for their failings.
| acdha wrote:
| > Perhaps one of the funniest elements of the American
| left's propensity to preach slavery and racism as a form
| of original sin is its insistence that it, unlike others,
| is pure
|
| Opposition to slavery isn't exclusive to the left, but
| also if that isn't hyperbole you really need a wider
| sample. By far the most common perspective I've heard
| from anyone in the anti-racist camp is that nobody is
| perfect because we are all shaped by our environment. The
| whole point of entire campaigns is to avoid reinforcing
| those biases because they're so widespread.
|
| This also touches on the perceived inaccuracy you
| mentioned: my argument is that the key part for Black
| isn't the Democratic affiliation but the southern white
| identity. People are motivated by issues but some people
| prioritize that one above everything else, and that's
| what happened with the southern realignment: some people
| valued white supremacy most and changed what were in many
| cases generational party affiliations, while others
| decided that things like labor rights or social programs
| mattered more and shifted correspondingly. It was largely
| the same people but they sorted themselves into different
| parties and that shaped the policies of those parties.
| hajile wrote:
| Get a list of all democrats in office then highlight the
| ones who changed party. The number that switched were a
| small minority. Wikipedia lists less than 70 and most of
| those were state rather than federal. Compared to the
| thousands of state and federal seats, it's minimal.
|
| So-called civil rights pioneers like Lyndon Johnson were
| raging racist who saw the civil rights act as cheap lip
| service to get black votes for decades to come.
|
| You also forget that republicans were radically IN FAVOR
| of civil rights, but wanted the changes at the state
| level instead of the federal level.
|
| As someone who has lived in the south (my family is not
| from the south), I'll tell you that the Republicans were
| correct. The clan controlled the local counties (most
| important offices) and nobody would stop them from
| disappearing people or burning them out of their homes
| regardless of that the federal government said.
|
| What changed was the people. Each generation has grown
| more tolerant. That finally broke the clan control and
| the millennial generation in the South is overwhelmingly
| not racist.
|
| Unfortunately, the recent moves away from MLK-style
| equality to the radical Marxist-style equity (equity
| except for people who happen to be born white as they see
| it -- very similar to Russian discrimination against
| children of formerly Middle/upper class people like
| engineers) seem to be pushing gen Z back toward racial
| supremacy (this seems true across the whole country).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_party_switchers_in_
| the...
|
| The most interesting question is why republicans and
| democrats supposedly swapped parties in the 1960s, but
| the black vote shifted in the 1930s. The answer seems
| pretty clear. Black unemployment was through the roof and
| the New Deal promised jobs, so they broke with the part
| of Lincoln because they were forced to. As things
| stabilized, there was a risk of them switching back and
| once again creating a Republican supermajority which is
| what spawned support for a federal civil rights act by
| the racist democrats.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You also forget that republicans were radically IN
| FAVOR of civil rights, but wanted the changes at the
| state level instead of the federal level.
|
| No, they didn't. The Republicans took up the "States
| Rights" rallying cry of the old Confederacy only after
| they became the party of the racists, years after the
| 1964 Civil Rights Act. From the 1866 Civil Rights Act up
| through and including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the
| Republicans were always _more_ supportive of federal
| action than the Democrats on the issue. Each of the key
| votes on the 1964 Act (passage of the original version in
| the House, cloture on the Senate version, passage of the
| Senate version, concurrence of the House to the Senate
| version) passed with 80-82% of Republican votes in the
| respective chamber and 60-69% of Democratic votes. The
| attempt to pursue the disaffected Democratic white
| racists, upset about Johnson support for the bill, is
| what distinguished the 1964 Act from earlier conflicts
| over segregation that had split the same faction off the
| Democratic Party temporarily, but not permanently when
| they found no other (major party) place to go, and couldn
| 't form their own competitive major party. And that was
| the second phase of the long 1930s-1990s overlapping
| realignment.
|
| LBJ wasn't a civil rights "pioneer". He was just the
| Democratic President that opened the opportunity for the
| Republicans to steal the most dedicated racists away from
| the Democrats as a constituency by not seeing his
| personal bias as a reason to block equal rights as public
| policy. And all Republicans had to do to win this prize
| was give up on the concept of equality, under the same
| rallying cry pro-slavery forces before the civil war, and
| anti-civil-rights forces from the day the war ended, had
| always used.
| _bin_ wrote:
| A larger proportion of both House and Senate republicans
| voted for the '64 Civil Rights Act, true, but that
| doesn't change the fact that many preferred the state
| model. Goldwater, the party's nominee for president in
| '64, had been an outspoken civil rights supporter since
| before it was cool. He opposed specific titles on
| specific grounds because he, like many others, believed
| in upholding constitutional limitations on federal power,
| rather than just writing a bill and calling it solved.
| This was not as a proxy for racism, and Goldwater had
| been a major proponent of the prior two major civil
| rights bills in '57 and '60. He even spent many of his
| later years advocating for gay rights.
|
| I am personally opposed to maintaining what I see as an
| overreach of the federal government. This goes back to
| the start of the new deal and stretches through much of
| what primarily the Warren Court found constitutional.
| Plenty of us "states rights" types are in favor of it on
| a whole host of other issues, e.g. many of the policies
| Trump promulgates. Please stop trying to erase the
| concept of local governance with hostile and incomplete
| interpretations of the past.
| neom wrote:
| Technically it only takes 38 states governments, no?
| Certainly the Americans would never tolerate such an
| amendment, never the less it is possible.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| Americans don't have constitutional rights. It's a
| fantasy that has crumpled the second it hit the reality
| of having a dictator as president and a political party
| that doesn't care about laws. The Republicans have
| deported American citizens (children) who were born in
| America. The Republicans have arrested a judge in
| Milwaukee because they didn't like that judge following
| the law.
| _bin_ wrote:
| This wouldn't be the first time that it took a while for
| the courts to redress wrongs. _Dred Scott_ technically
| stood until rendered obsolete by the Thirteenth
| Amendment. _Brown v. Board_ didn 't happen until the
| fifties. The courts didn't catch up to applying the Alien
| Enemies Act to japanese during WWII until after the war
| had ended.
|
| This doesn't mean that we don't have constitutional
| rights. The whole point of an _inalienable_ right is that
| it 's an inherent right recognized by governance. The
| state can't take them away, only violate them.
|
| As for your other points, I think you're actually keying
| on the wrong one; the administration's actions with
| Garcia are much more clearly wrong. The Wisconsin Supreme
| Court today temporarily suspended Judge Dugan despite the
| fact that four of its seven justices generally lean
| liberal, and are elected rather than appointed. We'll see
| if there's anything to the charges. If not, maybe we'll
| see each other at a protest, but it doesn't appear she
| was "following the law". As for the children, I believe
| that was due to a policy of keeping families together; if
| their parents must leave the country, they must follow or
| be placed in foster care.
|
| Dismissing rule-of-law as a concept is both premature and
| counterproductive, in the sense that it only discourages
| people who could otherwise focus on using the checks and
| balances in place for this reason to rein in the
| administration.
| groby_b wrote:
| AFAIK, yes, _in loco parentis_ isn 't a thing. Rights of
| the child (or, overall, the individual) are first and
| foremost. Children commonly have voice in e.g. court
| proceedings affecting them, too.
|
| Nordic legal system is interesting - it avoids a lot of
| Roman/Germanic/Anglo-Saxon influence and is rooted
| instead in the old tradition of "Tings". (Nordic communal
| gatherings). Which means there's a strong base of
| communal consensus instead of precedent - in the small,
| reflected by the presence of lay judges in legal
| proceedings. In the large, reflected in the Nordic
| countries together having a set of very closely
| coordinated legal systems. (Since late 1800s, I think?)
|
| It's super-interesting (if legal systems are interesting
| to you ;)
| oortoo wrote:
| Can't "just take away" ie, there has to be a law prescribing
| the removal of the right. Lawful rights vs inalienable human
| rights. Same thing exists in US. You have a right to certain
| things, like the right to privacy, but that right can be lost
| in the right circumstances as determined by law.
|
| The difference here is that in the US, children don't by
| default inherit the same legal rights as adults and instead
| have a different set of rights which often means they never
| had a legal right to, for example, privacy or ownership, in
| the first place.
| teloli wrote:
| You should have seen what happened a few years ago during a
| thing called covid
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Not at all. Libel can punish you for speech. Defamation can
| punish you for expression. If you break a law, you no longer
| can vote in some states (I heavily disagree with this, just
| stating a fact) or own a gun. Etc... Etc... This is very
| normal.
| nabla9 wrote:
| That's how it is everywhere. Constitution gives rights,
| exceptions must be set by law.
|
| You have free speech... then comes the list of exceptions,
| incitement of violence, defamation (libel and slander), Child
| pornography, perjury, speech integral to criminal conduct,
| copyright infringement, state secrets,
| smaudet wrote:
| And hopefully the constitution sets some bounds on said
| restrictions...
|
| Otherwise a constitution becomes ineffective at some point.
|
| There are such things as unconstitutional laws and laws
| that should not be observed nor enforced...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The US constitution doesn't give any rights. It restricts
| the power of the government to curtail rights that already
| exist.
| nabla9 wrote:
| I hope you understand that's just cute wording.
|
| Individual rights exist only as far as they are protected
| by others. If you are robbed and nobody goes after the
| robber, the right to property does not de facto exist.
| The government must take an action.
| seanw444 wrote:
| The government doesn't need to take action when I already
| shot him dead, because they didn't infringe on my
| already-existing right to keep and bear arms.
|
| The "cute wording" is important because the mindset
| matters. If enough of the population believes that rights
| are permitted to a person, they will attempt to revoke
| the permission. If they believe that rights are
| fundamental and inalienable, they wouldn't dare to think
| of trampling it in the first place. Of course, through
| the years, that perspective has shifted a lot away from
| the latter and to the former, to which I say "the tree of
| liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood
| of patriots and tyrants."
| vichle wrote:
| If you think that you have a right to shoot someone in
| the head, you're fucking nuts. Period. Go see a shrink.
| tristor wrote:
| > If you think that you have a right to shoot someone in
| the head, you're fucking nuts. Period. Go see a shrink.
|
| To defend your life, liberty, and property you absolutely
| do have that right in most of the civilized world. Some
| places may put restriction on your ability to access a
| firearm, but self-defense is a basic necessity to have
| /any/ human rights. That said, I agree, trying to shoot
| someone in the head /is/ crazy, you should always aim for
| center of mass because it has a larger surface area which
| matters in difficult situations. That said, the person
| you're replying to never even uses the word "head"
| seanw444 wrote:
| And to clarify, I'm not saying kill someone over $5. But
| if they attempt to steal something of high value
| (monetarily, sentimentally, etc.) and you attempt to
| prevent that or get it back, and they put up a likely-to-
| be-lethal resistance, you have the right to put up a
| lethal defense.
| vichle wrote:
| Head, dead, I misread. Not the point.
|
| You do not have a _right_ to kill anybody ever. However,
| you do have a _right to defend yourself_, within reason.
| That could in some situations mean that you take actions
| that kill someone. A judge and/or jury will decide
| whether it was reasonable. If it wasn't, you broke the
| law. They did not "take away your right" to kill.
|
| FYI most of the world do not allow you to kill someone to
| defend your property. That is a very American thing. If
| someone takes your stuff, you call the police.
| tristor wrote:
| > You do not have a _right_ to kill anybody ever.
| However, you do have a _right to defend yourself_, within
| reason. That could in some situations mean that you take
| actions that kill someone.
|
| You are trying to indicate a difference where there is
| none. It's not me that decides another person's life is
| less than what they're trying to rob me of, it's them by
| taking an action that necessarily forfeits their life
| when I must defend myself against their criminal act
| against me. A right to self defense is /necessarily/ a
| right to kill, because in many cases self-defense
| necessitates lethal force.
|
| I have no desire to ever kill anyone, but the right to
| self-defense is absolute, it is the very basis of /all/
| human rights and is based on a foundation of the simple
| principle of bodily autonomy.
|
| > FYI most of the world do not allow you to kill someone
| to defend your property. That is a very American thing.
| If someone takes your stuff, you call the police.
|
| You seem to be thinking that /property/ is the issue,
| it's the /taking/ that's the problem. How does someone
| /take/ your property? They use force. You have a right to
| defend yourself against that force, and in fact you MUST
| do so, or you will likely be killed or seriously harmed
| by the criminal through their use of force. Yes, you also
| have a right to defend your property, but the real issue
| is and always will be the force a criminal uses against
| you. Taking property is a forcible act. There is a false
| separation in the minds of some people between property
| crimes and violent crimes, property crimes /are/ violent
| crimes, in all but very narrow circumstances.
| miki123211 wrote:
| "can't be taken away" here means "can't be taken away by
| parents."
|
| Different countries fall in different places on the scale
| between "a child is strictly a property of the parent, with
| which the parent may do as they wish", and "a child is a
| human being which the parent has been given an obligation to
| protect from harm, but not to control." The US is a lot
| closer to the former, most European countries, and especially
| the nordics, are much closer to the latter.
|
| The former enables parents to send their kids to a private
| school with a decent curriculum if the state school forces
| propaganda on them, but it also enables parents to send their
| kids to a school where they teach creationism or prohibit
| being gay. The latter prohibits teachers from taking away
| children's rights to get a tattoo or use nail polish, but it
| also doesn't give schools the right to punish children for
| infractions or take away phones.
|
| Those are extremes of course, and most countries fall
| somewhere in the middle, but that point is different in
| different countries.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| Well ethics aren't absolute. If it wasn't this way we would
| be stuck with a set of rules for all eternity, even when
| deemed incorrect at a later point.
| standardUser wrote:
| No more strange than existing laws being reimagined to
| provide rights for those previously denied them. The strange
| idea would be that rights are cosmic and unchanging and not
| the result of a constant negotiation between individuals,
| groups and the state.
| DanHulton wrote:
| I think it was phrased incorrectly and that's leading to this
| confusion.
|
| More accurately, I think, it's that children have rights
| under the law that must be respected. This changes the law
| and sets specific situations where these rights are
| specifically restricted. Outside of those situations, those
| rights still must be respected!
| jpalomaki wrote:
| This is also a question of balancing the different rights.
| The Finnish constitution also states that everybody has the
| right to free basic education.
| adverbly wrote:
| So wait did they ban it for teachers and staff as well?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| If you look into it, you will find that some animals are more
| equal than others.
| Jolter wrote:
| Staff are expected to use phones and other digital tools in
| order to do their job, so I don't think this comment is as
| witty as you might think.
| adverbly wrote:
| I wasn't trying to be witty at all. I was legitimately
| curious.
|
| I didn't know teachers needed to use their smartphones for
| work. What do they need their phones for? Do they have
| landlines in each classroom to call parents or the office?
| Do teachers get laptops or PCs these days or are they
| expected to use a personal mobile phone to google things?
| Jolter wrote:
| At my daughter's school, they use a phone app to check
| the kids in as they arrive, and check them out as they
| leave. It replaces the paper list they used to have.
| Don't ask me how it's an improvement. I suppose they are
| able, in case of fire, to get an accurate head count that
| way.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| The apps are often a part of some larger platform -- some
| of my friends have their kids in schools or daycares that
| do something similar, but the parents can also see the
| checkin/checkout info. I'm guessing at your daughter's
| school, the data is centralized in some way, which the
| admin can use for things like school-wide attendance
| statistics, which are often also tied to funding in some
| way.
| Jolter wrote:
| Another use case is documentation - as they do
| activities, the teacher will use their cell to snap
| photos of the kids doing stuff. They can then use the
| school's app ("platform", I suppose) to send out a short
| note/summary at the end of the day, which parents can
| read on their end in the parent app. Also, reminders
| about things to bring tomorrow, notices about upcoming
| activities, etc. I am assuming they use these
| documentation items at the end of the year for grading,
| etc.
| Aurornis wrote:
| What next? Are they going to let the teachers drive cars and
| smoke cigarettes while forbidding students to do the same?
| jon-wood wrote:
| Pretty sure if a teacher in a school is found to be scrolling
| TikTok when they're meant to be teaching a lesson they're
| going to lose their job pretty quickly.
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Have you interacted with humans anytime in the last five
| years?
|
| People scroll TikTok or equivalent scrolly things as they
| drive, eat, poop, cook, as they "talk", as they walk, as
| they queue, as they "watch" movies and tv shows, during
| their down time, up time, in the bed until the small hours
| of the morning, people wake up on their day off and have a
| big plan and then... scroll the whole day. People go to the
| beach and scroll, they climb a mountain and scroll. They
| cycle and scroll, I've seen them do it.
|
| If they can't hold it - showering, exercise, love-making
| (sometimes) - they get the thing to pump audio and/or
| visuals in their general direction, sometimes propped up,
| sometimes just strewn there. It's a riot.
|
| And yes - people also scroll on these devices, if you can
| possibly imagine it, when they work. In schools, even! And
| in post offices, betting parlors, nail salons, cafes, while
| they do their only fans performance, you name it.
|
| I've never been to Finland, don't speak a word of Finnish,
| and don't know much about Finnish culture, but I'm going to
| go out on a limb and say that if I had a 20c coin for every
| time a teacher in Finland scrolled TikTok for a minute or
| two during work hours, I'd have, roughly, a completely
| ridonculously large bag of 20c coins.
| Jolter wrote:
| Yes, you're right, we should ban smart phones (or at
| least certain types of apps) for adults, too. But sadly
| there is no political majority in favor of that opinion,
| in Finland or elsewhere. (Wait, maybe they're banned in
| North Korea or somewhere? Not sure.)
|
| (This is irony/sarcasm, please don't downvote. Haha only
| serious.)
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Who is saying we ban smart phones for adults? I don't get
| how this is a response to what I'm saying.
| martin_bech wrote:
| Yeah the first thing isnt 100% true, there is no law here in
| Denmark, but in many many schools, kids hand over their phones
| in the morning, and get them back at the end of the day. Is up
| to the schools how they want to handle it
| Teever wrote:
| Does this mean that those little bags that some performers have
| their audience members put their phones into at their shows are
| illegal in Finland?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Austria did too.
| haunter wrote:
| Hungary too
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Netherlands too. They are also banned during breaks. Schools
| where the ban had been implemented reported more concentration
| of students in class and more social interaction between
| students. Various studies show that contacts between students
| are returning, now that they are no longer hunched over their
| phones. There is much more conversation and social contact.
|
| Dutch Government research:
| https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2024/07/12...
| perlgeek wrote:
| At my daughters' school, the rules are roughly:
|
| * no phones during classes or during breaks (with the exception
| of lunch break, I think)
|
| * phone can be allowed by teachers for a particular class and
| purpose
|
| * if a student uses a phone while it's not allowed, the phone
| will be confiscated until the end of the school day
|
| * (there might be a more severe rule for repeat offenders)
|
| IMHO this strikes a pretty good balance between allowing phones
| for coordinating transit to school and back home, and no
| distraction in the class room.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| In Finland the confiscation is the problem (or rather WAS the
| problem, until this law).
|
| Children are people, people have specific rights. A teacher is
| just a random person as far as the law is concerned and can't
| take someone's phone away any more than an usher in a movie
| theatre can take someone's phone for being disruptive.
| CivBase wrote:
| By that argument, it sounds like schools in Finland have zero
| authority. How does punishment work? What's stopping a kid
| from going anywhere they want at any time or doing litterally
| anything that isn't outright illegal?
|
| If Finnish children have the same rights as adults, does that
| mean the children are also subject to the same legal
| punishment as adults? Can a Finnish child be jailed or fined
| for the likes of theft, assault, or battery?
| sureIy wrote:
| I don't know, but I would hope that it works because
| parents are expected to teach their children to behave.
| Also just because they can't take their phone or punish
| them, it doesn't mean that they can't suspend students or
| fail them.
| CivBase wrote:
| > I don't know, but I would hope that it works because
| parents are expected to teach their children to behave.
|
| Unfortunately that hasn't proven to be a reliable method
| here in the United States :(
|
| > Also just because they can't take their phone or punish
| them, it doesn't mean that they can't suspend students or
| fail them.
|
| I'm not a teacher but my wife is so I can only speak to
| what I've heard from her. And by her accounts, out-of-
| school suspention is ineffective because you're
| essentially rewarding misbehaving children with not
| having to come to school. She also isn't allowed to lower
| a student's grade for behavioral issues. Their grade is
| supposed to be purely a reflection of how well the know
| the material defined by the curriculum.
| lotu wrote:
| Presumably there are laws that give teachers some rights to
| act in the place of parents and control students. However
| those laws did not include the ability to confiscate
| property preemptively.
| tootie wrote:
| At my daughter's high school, kids are expected to pay
| attention, take notes and get assignments done. There's little
| restriction on phone use unless the kids are explicitly
| supposed to be doing something else with their hands. Kids are
| even allowed to use personal laptops/chromebooks. They
| routinely send kids to Ivy leagues and top 10 engineering
| programs.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I would be very interested to know under what kind of
| condition such rules work, and where they don't.
| tootie wrote:
| It's an academically selective public city school. Very
| diverse student body in all dimensions (ethnicity, wealth,
| lots of immigrants). Most take public transit on their own.
| Kids there are just kinda treated like adults. They're
| definitely brighter than average, but not necessarily more
| mature or responsible.
| nutanc wrote:
| We all know the advantages of smartphones. What we dont know yet
| are the harmful effects of the smartphones on young minds. I just
| hope we are not stunting the mental growth of our kids just
| because we dont know the harmful effects. Like how smoking was
| allowed everywhere initially and now we ban it everywhere.
| 0xCafeBabee wrote:
| Great to see Finland taking a balanced approach to phone use in
| schools - keeping the focus on learning while still being
| practical about when phones are actually needed!
| throw7 wrote:
| NY just banned cellphones in schools. I don't know the exact
| details but its being called "bell to bell" presumably the whole
| day.
| macote wrote:
| A committee in Quebec also recommends a full ban on cellphones
| and electronic devices at schools.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/commission-cellphone...
| ohgr wrote:
| They did this at my kids school. Then issued them all with iPads
| which half the software they need to use doesn't work properly on
| iPad size devices.
|
| Total fuck up.
| smckk wrote:
| Social media is lipstick on a pig. There's verbal and physical
| abuse, exclusion, name-calling, stalking and all sorts of
| inhumane behaviour towards each other in real life. Social media
| just digitizes that and is a reflection of the ugly parts of the
| socializing aspect of human life.
|
| The ~10% good that comes from keeping in touch with people, for
| example, is not really worth it especially for kids.
|
| Whatever you do you are going to have to deal with the negative
| aspects of society in-person, and we've all kind of accepted
| that. Social media just doubles the problem.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The difference is that physical abuse, name-calling and
| stalking require the people to be actually present and risk
| (physical) consequences.
|
| When done from the safety of one's own couch at home,
| surrounded by family, there are no consequences to name-
| calling, cyber-stalking or spreading rumours about someone.
| intellectronica wrote:
| If I were a Finnish child I would start working hard on getting
| my parents to emigrate, or at least send me on an extended
| exchange program to a country where I can still use modern tech
| to connect to the global network, meet other likeminded people,
| have access to all of humanity's knowledge, and learn any subject
| I'm interested in.
| akie wrote:
| What a ridiculous reply. We're talking about banning
| smartphones during *class time*. There's nothing here that
| warrants leaving the country. Jeez.
| intellectronica wrote:
| Classes in Finland are not so much better than anywhere else
| that they make giving up the internet worthwhile. Children
| learn more in 15 minutes on their iphone than they do in 15
| hours at school.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Would you really need to be doing that during school hours
| though? When would you even have time to do any of that anyway,
| outside of your lunch break?
|
| That's setting aside that "have access to all of humanity's
| knowledge, and learn any subject I'm interested in" could mean
| Wikipedia, or it could mean short-form, attention-wrecking
| candy on Tiktok.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I wonder how many people don't realize there are classrooms all
| over the United States where kids literally play on their
| smartphones and text all through class and don't pay any
| attention at all. They do F work and it gets graded on a curve up
| to a C. The teachers are powerless to do anything about it.
| squigz wrote:
| Do you think that banning smartphones - or attempting to - will
| fix any of that?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| It will absolutely stop the playing of video games in class
| while the teacher is attempting to teach.
| hashstring wrote:
| There was this TikTok internal memo that stated something like:
|
| US teenagers are the ideal target market for TikTok, because
| they (get to) spend so much of their time on that app.
| barotalomey wrote:
| Awesome, finally!
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| Lots of nitpicking in the comments. Personally I support this
| law. Some years ago Finland made some changes to their
| educational system, that resulted in highly improved outcomes.
| Looks like they're trying out a good idea here also.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| Bringing my first android phone to school in high school helped
| me learn linux when i was into rooting.
|
| I don't think phones are the problem. I think it's more social
| media. Schools find it less effort to ban phones vs how to work
| with them.
|
| The nanny state is a troubling trend
| CYR1X wrote:
| Phone bans in schools have been going on for 20 years. Yeah we
| didn't have smart phones back then, but with tactile buttons
| kids would text each other without even looking at their phone
| and keeping it in their pocket. Before phones kids were playing
| snake on their TI-83 when they weren't in math class. At it's
| core these devices are just a distraction when they're supposed
| to be paying attention.
| amai wrote:
| What about Smartwatches?
| malkia wrote:
| Not sure about other US school districts, but LAUSD (Los Angeles)
| had this going for several weeks now - https://abc7.com/post/los-
| angeles-unified-school-district-ce...
| garou wrote:
| Brazil ahead of Finland:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/brazil-bill-phones-schools-restri...
|
| https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-02-07/new-la...
| lacoolj wrote:
| FINALLY
| hashstring wrote:
| Thumbs up. I think this is a step in the right direction.
|
| No matter how you flip it, net result is negative. These apps are
| like crack, and it's morally right to protect developing brains
| from that.
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