What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/17/cellphone-smartphone-bans-schools

by robaato • 3 years ago

77 102 3 years ago

teeray• 3 years ago

Maybe I'm out of the loop... smartphones are allowed in the first place? When did that happen? In my high school, cell phones and ipods (at the time) were to be in lockers and turned off during the day. It was an insta-detention if you were seen using one.

forinti• 3 years ago

You wouldn't believe what an issue this can turn into. Some parents will fight for their kid's right to use cellphones.

Firmwarrior• 3 years ago

Pretty wild.. what's the point in even making them go to school if you're just going to let them goof off on their phone all day? Just let them sit around at home watching TikTok until they turn 18 and have to get a minimum wage job

wharvle10• 3 years ago

This right here. Parents ultimately run schools, and a surprising proportion of them get really pissy if their kids can't have phones in class. Schools aren't letting kids have phones because they want to.

My wife used to teach and had multiple parents, over a handful of years, who'd semi-frequently call their kids while they were in class. Just to, like, chat. A lot more would text with them, again, usually just to shoot the shit. Lots of parents are... let's be kind I guess and go with really fucking weird.

jonlucc• 3 years ago

At my work, there are certain areas that we are not allowed to have any cameras, and that includes all personal cell phones. I have a colleague whose daughter was at school during an active shooter incident, and she was able to use her phone but he was not able to receive her calls or texts. She was not killed, but I am glad she had a cell phone that day, and I wish he had his too.

tempest_2• 3 years ago

Those light phones are interesting products and I thought about trying one at one point but seen some mixed reviews.

Podgajski5• 3 years ago

Why can’t someone just make a phone. I don’t need a phone that plays music or can listen to podcast. I just need a phone that can make calls and make texts. I think their problem is they wanted this phone to still be like a smart phone.

goles2• 3 years ago

They're expensive. ~300 USD, while the e-ink and design is nice that's a pretty big bill for something that does less than a modern phone that is also cheaper.

Previous discussion (2020): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943649

I think the most cost effective solution is probably buying the cheapest used A12+ iPhone one could find. Factory restore, then setup Assistive Access or parental controls, which can limit any ability to install apps or settings without a different passcode to unlock the phone. Have a friend or partner set that passcode so you can't be tempted to add anything smart to your Dumb Phone.

shannifin• 3 years ago

Around here, unfortunately yes. The general argument I've heard is that kids need to be able to contact parents in an emergency, or something.

boeingUH604• 3 years ago

There should be a public phone (manned by an administrator or teacher) that parents can call and get connected to their child or vice versa.

Allowing smartphones for everyone is an unbelievable distraction.

dataflow2• 3 years ago

It's amazing how these arguments come about. Were parents freaking out about emergencies at school when they were kids?

egeozcan• 3 years ago

It's as if the school doesn't have any phones they could use in an emergency.

wharvle10• 3 years ago

School shootings come up a lot in these kinds of conversations.

Of course you can run the numbers and realize this plainly falls way below the level at which anyone should be using that use-case as a justification for anything.

(nb. the vast majority of school shootings you'll see in the statistics aren't the sort where kids having phones matters, they're e.g. targeted attacks on a single person, gang- or otherwise crime-related targeted attacks, violence that just by happenstance takes place on school grounds outside and perhaps not even involving any students or staff; all of which tend to be over almost as fast as they start and aren't an ongoing threat to bystanders once they're over, and even those aren't terribly likely to be something a kid is present for during their school career, on average)

semanticist• 3 years ago

It's a boarding school, so something a bit different than your standard high school. Imagine if the school rules were no smartphones... at all, except on the school holidays and maybe weekends.

Slightly different context.

__MatrixMan__3• 3 years ago

Most of my wife's high school students write their papers on their phones.

rootusrootus2• 3 years ago

Can't speak for the rest of the country, but in our district smartphones were allowed for a couple years. I don't know the rationale about allowing them in the first place, but it happened in 2020. It took them two years to decide it was an unmitigated disaster and they promptly re-banned all electronics. No music players, phones, headphones, etc. Get caught and it gets confiscated and your parents have to come retrieve it.

Maybe that's draconian. But maybe it's just good sense -- our high school is close to #1 in the state for academic performance, so they are doing something right.

brayhite• 3 years ago

My 4 year old son has an iPhone, and we’d sooner homeschool him than keep him enrolled if the only schools we could send afford would confiscate or ban it.

I recognize we’re an exception, but he has type 1 diabetes, and his iPhone is essentially a medical device that sends us updates on his glucose levels throughout the day.

I’d hope schools at least make exceptions for cases like this.

wharvle10• 3 years ago

What's wild to me is that almost all the individual devices a smartphone represents, not even counting the phone itself, would have been confiscated if used in class, for my generation (and I'm a millennial!)

Flashlight? LOL, they might not even wait for you to use it, just assume there's no way you're not going to do something dumb with it, and take it.

A handheld gaming device? Insta-yoink.

Note-passing? Notes confiscated.

Basically an ordered-from-a-back-of-magazine-ad spy kit of a miniature camera and voice recorder? GONE. And you might be on the way to the office for a chat, and parents called, if you'd actually been using any of it.

A glossy fashion magazine, seen out at any point that's not explicitly totally-free time? In the teacher's desk. (and that's on the tame side of the kind of thing one might be looking at on one's phone...)

A portable mini-TV or small radio? Jesus, of course you can't have that in class.

But smartphones? Nope, they can have those. Which is the exact same as having all those things above, and way more.

It's such a crazily-different direction for policy.

z500• 3 years ago

Hell, at my school you couldn't even listen to a CD at lunch. It boggles the mind.

HDThoreaun• 3 years ago

This policy isnt about use in class. Afaik every school bans devices in class. The question is whether they should be allowed during lunch, in between classes, before/after school.

tennisflyi• 3 years ago

Totally out of the loop

Podgajski5• 3 years ago

I mean, I agree that cell phones can cause interruptions in schools, but doing this at a place like Buxton compared to some of the public schools I’ve taught in, well, that’s a whole different story.

“Buxton School is a private, coeducational, college preparatory, boarding and day school for grades 9–12 located in Williamstown, Massachusetts.“

I mean, it’s one thing to take away a kid, cell phone and offer them nothing and then another thing to take away their cell phone and offer them

“When the weather is nice, the Buxton boarding school moves lunch outside. Students, faculty and guests grab their food from the kitchen, and eat together under a white tent that overlooks western Massachusetts’ Berkshire mountains.”

schnitzelstoat• 3 years ago

Yeah, it seems like you'd basically always get good outcomes in a school like this.

If the students become disruptive instead of just wasting time on their phone it could have a negative impact in many schools.

galdosdi2• 3 years ago

Look at it the other way -- the fact that even such an elite school was having serious problems when they were allowing smartphones, shows how pernicious their influence is in education. It's like putting a TV with full access cable on every desk in the classroom. It's no wonder literacy is going down instead of up for the first time in decades.

jt2190• 3 years ago

Tuition for the 2023-2024 academic year is USD 62 000 for a boarding student and USD 33 000 for a day student. The fee covers room, board, academic study, basic materials for courses, lab fees, field trips, tickets to cultural events, athletics (including ski passes) and programs and activities held on campus.

axus• 3 years ago

Google says enrollment was 78 students nine years ago, let's guess it's around 100 now; 25 kids per grade, managing those cell phones is a tractable problem compared to a school with 1000 kids.

Podgajski5• 3 years ago

And they cost $300 apiece! You have teachers buying just regular school supplies out of their own pocket in public schools.

sixthDot• 3 years ago

Big public schools could use jammers, but afaik those equipements are not legal.

a_vanderbilt• 3 years ago

There's also having to cater to the lowest common denominator. American students are required to go to school, and the catch-all is public school. Going to a private institute is a privilege, so if they don't like the policies they can choose to not go or ignore them and get expelled. If parents or students don't like the policies of their public school, they can complain to the board and... that's it.

exhilaration• 3 years ago

Similar phone ban in Minnesota discussed last year (221 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38522142

tallowen• 3 years ago

In talking to my teacher friends, one thing that I hadn't understood is how being the parent of a child has changed due to mobile devices since I was a child.

Parents obviously worry about their children. Parents exist in a community of other parents that uses phones belonging to children to keep track of their children. It was very hard for me to wrap my head around how strongly parents expect to be able to reach their children at any point in time. Most solutions (e.g. Yonder Pouches) end up shutting down location services not to mention the ability of students to say "yes I'm find". This leads to way more resistance to these policies that I ever would have expected!

nyc111• 3 years ago

Those phones contain all the knowledge the school pretends to teach the students. Techers are worried because they see telephones as competition.

This would be a nice experiment: Divide the students into two groups and let one group come to school without phones and let the other group stay home and learn the same material from their phones. If the material to be learned is well-defined I believe that students staying at home with their phones will learn the material much faster.

The only good thing about the school is that you get to hang out with your peers. The education system is not good for teaching.

poulpy123• 3 years ago

LMAO

boeingUH604• 3 years ago

If the material to be learned is well-defined I believe that students staying at home with their phones will learn the material much faster.

Extremely wrong. Most people don't have the will and motivation to learn complex stuff on their own without external pressure, especially stuff they're not naturally interested in.

There's a reason people still go to college despite all the knowledge being available freely online. There's great value in learning in a structured environment alongside peers with whom you can freely exchange knowledge.

slater• 3 years ago

Hmmm... 3,000+ years of education, or some rando on hn.

Tough call, folks!

blackmesaind2• 3 years ago

Children, by and large, are not very good at self control. Give them free reign to learn at their own pace, and you will see some do very well, and many do extremely poorly.

The public education system (at least primary/secondary) is not about maximizing a few students' learning potential, but the average education of the collective.

Our current system does need major reforms, but to send kids home with phones to learn on their own? Not an effective solution imo.

galdosdi2• 3 years ago

Obviously you don't have kids and don't work with kids and your only experience with children in your childless social circle is vaguely remembering your own childhood.

Kids aren't looking at Wikipedia on their phones. Statistically speaking, they are probably looking at some AI generated TikTok video compilation of funny inside jokes, or something.

The only good thing about the school is that you get to hang out with your peers.

Not if all your peers are too zombied out looking at their phones everytime they get a free moment between classes

cabaalis• 3 years ago

I guess I date myself, but cell phones were banned in my high school because of a strong association at the time with drug dealers. A teacher seeing one was equivalent to seeing contraband.

dylan6045• 3 years ago

in the mid-90s, i was branded a drug dealer because i bought a pager. this was essentially when i finally succumbed to the realization that people are idiots.

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

Related from a few months ago:

Florida School District Banned Cellphones. Here's What Happened

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/technology/florida-school...

seydor• 3 years ago

I hope this is the beginning of the new anti-smoking campaigns

33a• 3 years ago

This is an elite boarding school in the Berkshires. Not sure that the cell phone ban is the most important thing in these outcomes and I'd hesitate to draw sweeping generalizations here.

rapind2• 3 years ago

Agreed, but some of these surveys quoted are troublesome.

A survey of a school district in Virginia found that about a third of teachers were telling students to put away their cellphones five to 10 times a class, and 14.7% did so more than 20 times a class.
When a middle school in Canada surveyed staff, 75% of respondents thought that cellphones were negatively affecting their students’ physical and mental health. Nearly two-thirds believed the devices were adversely affecting academic performances as well.

wharvle10• 3 years ago

One observation about private v. public schools:

Private schools, perhaps counterintuitively, have greater ability to enforce rules that some parents dislike, than public schools. They can organize around and enforce a general culture in ways that public schools cannot, and this ability increases the more prestigious they are. Families self-select to be generally agreeable to and aligned with the school's culture, and bad fits can simply be sent away. Public schools have to deal with whatever mix of families they happen to serve, period. Private schools are sometimes pointed to as being more-accountable to parents, and that's sort of true, but they also have much greater freedom to tell a loud minority of their "customers" to, frankly, go eff themselves.

An observation of trends I've seen with a limited dataset but that I suspect generalizes pretty well:

Better-off, if you will, parents, or at least those with a "higher-class" cultural background (Fussell's upper-middle and higher—doctors, lawyers, executives, in short) are giving their kids phones later, restricting use more, and are more-amenable to restrictions on phones imposed by schools, than lower-class (Fussell's middle and lower) parents. These factors tend to significantly reduce student phone use in ritzy private schools, "captive" nigh-private-school public schools, and the tip-top of other upper-tier public schools, compared with practically all the rest of the school landscape.

I fully expect this to widen already-large class differences in education.

yttribium• 3 years ago

We learned during the COVID school shutdowns that schools would really prefer parents not be aware of what actually goes on during a typical schoolday.

hunglee2• 3 years ago

France banned mobile phone use in Primary and Middle school in 2018 - anyone have data on the impact on educational performance? China followed suit in 2021. I think that is it though for state wide suppression of mobile phone use in the classroom

orwin• 3 years ago

Worsening Pisa results, but no other data.

falcolas2• 3 years ago

I have one part approval for this (back in my day, off my lawn, etc). But I also think about how many general tools cell phones replace, and the sudden added cost is a concern.

Flashlight. Probably not necessary 99% of the time at a school, until it is valuable.

Calculator. "Approved" graphing calculator replacements are stupid expensive, in many cases more expensive than the phone they're replacing.

Camera. We didn't have a ton of these at schools in the 80's, but they weren't entirely absent either. Useful for documenting (and yes, perpetuating) bullying.

Music. Even in the stone ages, we had music and headphones. Great for study hall and general focus.

Dictionary/Encyclopedia. Sure, folks can use bound volumes, but that's not a skill they'll use. Searching for things on the internet at large, is absolutely a skill they need.

Anyways, mixed thoughts. I'd say I turned out fine, but I had to re-learn a lot of mis-information innocently passed on by my peers and teachers.

hermanradtke• 3 years ago

how many general tools cell phones replace

The article says the students received phones with some of these tools:

instead coming with deliberately cumbersome versions of music and mapping apps

rapind2• 3 years ago

I don't remember needing a fancy calculator until Engineering in University. Possibly they are now needed in High School, but I haven't heard that before?

The article actually addresses the lack of camera as a positive in that it greatly increased interest in photography courses.

The Light Phone they are using can have some basic utility features like a music player, calculator, calendar, etc.

That being said, I'm cynical this is just an ad for Light Phones lol.

falcolas2• 3 years ago

I remember using graphing calculators to do High School geometry. Loved it, we programmed games on it.

I'm cynical this is just an ad for Light Phones lol.

It is definitely a bit over the top on the praise for it.

OkayPhysicist• 3 years ago

SAT allows (and thus requires to be competitive) a graphing calculator, typically a TI-84, but there are approved CASIO ones as well.

dotnet00• 3 years ago

Agreed, back when I was in highschool, smartphones were relatively new, and even then the benefits were obvious in the form of being able to use them for music in any sort of study hall and for the calculator, and in university it quickly became very normal to see people taking a photo of things they thought would be especially noteworthy (which was very helpful because professors would often be going too fast to note it down). My highschool had the additional option of bringing and using a laptop in class, which I always used and found to be far more convenient.

I get that social media and texting are distractions in the classroom, but I really don't buy that a blanket ban is the solution. That's just draconian and brings to mind all the other arbitrary rules/limitations I had/have to deal with as a student which just built up resentment and encouraged malicious compliance rather than any respect of the school.

Also brings to mind the old joke about teachers telling kids to solve even complicated equations (without convenient numbers) by hand because "you won't always have a calculator at hand", and how wrong that turned out to be.

Edit: Come to think of it, it's interesting that social media sites haven't thought to do something about this as a PR move. They could sell beacons (specifically to schools) which if the phone detects, it notifies the teacher. Not being able to get away with sneaking a look at a phone would quickly reduce the issue of having to tell kids to put their phones away.

mstudio• 3 years ago

Great, but this is a private boarding school. I'm more concerned about the (over) use of Chromebooks in public schools. It's trivial for kids to tab over to Youtube or a gaming site in the middle of class. I would've done the same thing if I'd been given a laptop for 6 hours a day in school. When I see my kids trying to write math equations or use a virtual ruler/compass to do math homework, it really pains me. Let's go back to writing things by hand.

ravenstine2• 3 years ago

I don't see why schools really need to provide access to the open internet. Providing computer access is fine, but the network should be internal. Wikipedia PR Britannica can me mirrored, as well as any videos that teachers decide to have cached.

blackmesaind2• 3 years ago

Most schools utilize cloud-based education platforms (Google Classroom, Canvas, etc) that require connectivity. Local hosting requires infra + someone to manage it, not to mention that there aren't very many good self hosted edu software resources.

mortallywounded• 3 years ago

Can you not "lock down" a smart phone to emergency calls + whitelist of numbers (mom, dad, etc)?

I'd prefer my kids to keep their phone, but only able to contact me during school hours (otherwise the device is as useful as a brick).

What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation

Related Stories