UK here. My kid's school is insane. They think they are so progressive because they banned personal phones entirely, which is fair enough. But forced us to buy marked up Yondr pouches, which is not fair. They also force us to pay monthly for iPads with wonky ass Logitech cases to be issued on which they do everything on Google classroom.
Google Classroom is an abhorrently bad bit of software on an iPad. It's just horrible in every possible way. Clunky, interface sucks, slow, unreliable.
Then they give detentions when children can't submit work, some auth issue means the entire device goes down the toilet for two days, documents won't open because the staff use Office instead, they keyboard case craps out and you can't type with anything but the screen, the staff forget to submit the work until an hour before it's due, the entire school wifi network is down for a week and they have no backup.
They should ban that too.
Go back to paper for everything. Work, journals, timetables, the lot. And the teachers can use whatever to drive projectors in the classroom.
mentalgear 3 minutes ago [-]
'Engaged Students, Joyful Teachers' ... but sad Zuck !
As soon as engagement numbers tank, prepare for a propaganda campaign of nuclear proportions - maybe they even pull the OG Sheryl Sandberg back to steer the PR ship. And with the current crop of cronies in office, don’t be surprised if a new ID bill will be introduced that requires "social connectivity" as requirement for ID verification. Your "trust score" might eventually depend on how much data you feed Zuck's sucking machine and whether you’ve hit your daily scroll quota. If you think that sounds crazy, you haven't been paying attention to how fast the goalposts are moving.
ronbenton 13 minutes ago [-]
I remember reading somewhere else that there was a psychological benefit for kids as well. Not having the constant pressure to check the device. Just seems like a big win all around.
windexh8er 2 minutes ago [-]
In our district phones are banned during the day. Most students don't care about their phones, what they care about is FOMO. And so the ban does great to not only reduce distractions but also the cognitive load of constantly wondering what they're missing.
bawolff 7 minutes ago [-]
I'm a little confussd... was there a point they were allowed? I went to school in the late 2000s, and even at that point if a teacher saw you with a cell phone it was immediately confiscated.
Rebelgecko 52 seconds ago [-]
Around 2015 or so they became a lot more accepted. From talking to teachers, a surprisingly large amount of the distraction is parents texting kids while they're at school.
rootusrootus 2 minutes ago [-]
Late 2000s was just after smartphones became a thing, and before they became a crack epidemic. In my personal experience, it has really been bad for about the last 10 years, getting better over the last few years however. Took a few years for everyone to really understand how bad the problem had become and how quickly.
technothrasher 5 minutes ago [-]
My son, who recently graduated high school, went to a school that banned phones but insisted on laptops (providing them for the kids who couldn't afford one). He said it was ridiculous, as none of the kids had any problem using their laptop for anything they would have used the phone, which was mostly texting, scrolling social media, watching videos, and playing games. Even when the school tried to lock down services, as soon as one kid found a way around it, they all did.
kleiba 7 minutes ago [-]
This has absolutely been the standard in every school around where I live for years. Anecdotally, however, I wouldn't go so far and say it lead to "engaged students" and "joyful teachers" :)
reedf1 9 minutes ago [-]
My understanding is that these are already banned in most schools and the practical difference between enforcing this at a state or national basis is basically nonexistent vs simple local enforcement.
rootusrootus 30 seconds ago [-]
[delayed]
ecshafer 15 minutes ago [-]
I agree with the cell phone bans (I would extend it to all electronic devices, schools should be pen and paper). But we just got our phones taken away in highschool.
galleywest200 13 minutes ago [-]
Surely an electronic wrist watch is fine, and maybe an mp3 player. Also graphing calculators.
bawolff 4 minutes ago [-]
Do graphing calculators actually help people learn? We used them in high school, but when i needed to take calculus in university we didn't use them. I'm doubtful they are good for learning especially when trying to teach the foundations.
drivebyhooting 13 minutes ago [-]
Why do you need a music player in school?
bityard 8 minutes ago [-]
"Need" might be strong, but I am okay with music players. My ADHD self is able to focus many times better if I have certain kinds of music playing to block out nearly talking and other distracting sounds.
mrinterweb 11 minutes ago [-]
Listening to music can help people focus.
bananamogul 8 minutes ago [-]
In 2026 the number of people with mp3 players that are not also smart phones is vanishingly small.
shimman 1 minutes ago [-]
If you are interested in standalone digital audio players (DAPs), I just recently bought this:
For ~$60 you get a device that can play every type of audio file and has better sound quality than your cellphone + streamer combo.
I've been reading more about Chinese hardware and if you've been sleeping on it there are a lot of great Chinese consumer products that are both extremely high quality + very cheap.
Turns out when you have tens of millions of engineers they pump out banger after banger. Also always hilarious, in an enduring way, finding the factory engineers engaging with consumers on random forums that take their feedback seriously.
throwawayk7h 9 minutes ago [-]
music players were often essential for my ability to stay focussed on my work and reading.
rootusrootus 9 minutes ago [-]
During class time?
superkuh 8 minutes ago [-]
I mostly just listened during homeroom and lunch period. But once I was sent to in-schoool-suspension in high school in the early 2000s for listening to my mp3 player (Diamond Rio PMP300) after I finished taking the yearly standardized tests the state used to judge schools.
WithinReason 11 minutes ago [-]
For the walk home
bananamogul 5 minutes ago [-]
"decreed by executive order"
That's the only bummer here. I do agree with this policy, but no one voted for it. The governor just said "you're going to do this".
Yes, yes, I know - people elected the governor. But this sort of policy seems like something that should require legislative approval, not just one person deciding the whole state must do something.
For every time something good comes of that kind of behavior, there's 10 times when it's a disaster.
roughly 20 seconds ago [-]
FTA:
> The kids also weighed in on the debate around the extent of the ban. The two options bandied in Salem were a “bell-to-bell” policy or just inside classrooms. The latter would allow kids to use their phones during passing period and lunch. Several advocated for that change. That mirrored the debate within the Oregon legislature. It ultimately led to a stalemate and the need for Gov. Kotek’s executive ruling.
It sounds like the legislature broadly agreed on the ban, but couldn’t agree on a couple final details. Insofar as an executive is useful, that’s the case for it: calling the shot in the face of several good (or bad!) options but no clear winner.
j2kun 2 minutes ago [-]
The legislature (of states and the federal government) routinely passes laws explicitly giving the head of state the power to make decisions like this without passing a law. The most recent one in Oregon about schooling was SB 141.
superkuh 17 minutes ago [-]
It's crazy to me that cell phones, and especially smart phones, were ever allowed in the classroom during class.
coffeefirst 6 minutes ago [-]
I suspect it was sneaky.
The old Nokia in school wasn't a problem. You get in trouble for playing snake. The iphone 1 wasn't really a problem. There weren't that many, and it served as a calendar.
But year after year, release after release, the industry deliberately loaded more and more addictive machinery, pushed more and more boundaries, until it's beyond unacceptable.
As an aside, it's amazing how hard it is to turn the modern phone into a no-nonsense tool, and I'm an adult with self-control, a deep understanding of dark patterns, and a fully-functioning brain after 3 cups of coffee.
reedf1 8 minutes ago [-]
They are not allowed in any school I've been to, especially during class.
2OEH8eoCRo0 14 minutes ago [-]
I once had to sit in the principals office for bringing in some electronic fishing game. How we went from that to phones being allowed is insanity. They came like a tsunami.
jasonmp85 10 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
jasonmp85 12 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
caderosche 9 minutes ago [-]
I don't think banning is the right solution to this. At some point, I think we are going to have comms devices imbedded in our heads and whatnot.
I think the right approach is finding teaching techniques that still work when every human has all the world's info at their finger tips 24/7.
At some point, an uninterruptible, 24/7 live connection to the rest of the world is inevitable.
I'm not convinced a human teacher is a required part of this.
shimman 5 minutes ago [-]
Ah yes, some point (possibly 100s of years into the future) we have to be concerned with a sci-fi scenario not borne in reality so we can't possibly ban cellphones now. Just ignore all the negative externalities of these mass misery machines, we have to plan for a future that has no basis in reality!
There needs to be a politics of rejection, because I an assure you 95% of humanity does not want a device implanted in their skull where communication sent to you is unblockable.
SV has clearly cooked a generation of engineers that think working on ad surveillance tech is the pinnacle of humanity and not just another American moral failing that is wrecking the world while a select few profit off it.
scuff3d 4 minutes ago [-]
We're talking about kids, not adults. You ban cell phones for the same we weren't allowed to play our Gameboy during class when I was a kid. They lack the self control and decision making capabilities to forgo something fun for the sake of something important.
Not to mention we have plenty of studies that show even a silent phone sitting quietly in your pocket or on your desk can be an attention drain, as you're subconsciously waiting for a notification to go off.
I'm amazed it took this long for the schools to finally ban the damn things.
Rendered at 16:13:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Google Classroom is an abhorrently bad bit of software on an iPad. It's just horrible in every possible way. Clunky, interface sucks, slow, unreliable.
Then they give detentions when children can't submit work, some auth issue means the entire device goes down the toilet for two days, documents won't open because the staff use Office instead, they keyboard case craps out and you can't type with anything but the screen, the staff forget to submit the work until an hour before it's due, the entire school wifi network is down for a week and they have no backup.
They should ban that too.
Go back to paper for everything. Work, journals, timetables, the lot. And the teachers can use whatever to drive projectors in the classroom.
https://www.fiio.com/echomini
For ~$60 you get a device that can play every type of audio file and has better sound quality than your cellphone + streamer combo.
I've been reading more about Chinese hardware and if you've been sleeping on it there are a lot of great Chinese consumer products that are both extremely high quality + very cheap.
Turns out when you have tens of millions of engineers they pump out banger after banger. Also always hilarious, in an enduring way, finding the factory engineers engaging with consumers on random forums that take their feedback seriously.
That's the only bummer here. I do agree with this policy, but no one voted for it. The governor just said "you're going to do this".
Yes, yes, I know - people elected the governor. But this sort of policy seems like something that should require legislative approval, not just one person deciding the whole state must do something.
For every time something good comes of that kind of behavior, there's 10 times when it's a disaster.
> The kids also weighed in on the debate around the extent of the ban. The two options bandied in Salem were a “bell-to-bell” policy or just inside classrooms. The latter would allow kids to use their phones during passing period and lunch. Several advocated for that change. That mirrored the debate within the Oregon legislature. It ultimately led to a stalemate and the need for Gov. Kotek’s executive ruling.
It sounds like the legislature broadly agreed on the ban, but couldn’t agree on a couple final details. Insofar as an executive is useful, that’s the case for it: calling the shot in the face of several good (or bad!) options but no clear winner.
The old Nokia in school wasn't a problem. You get in trouble for playing snake. The iphone 1 wasn't really a problem. There weren't that many, and it served as a calendar.
But year after year, release after release, the industry deliberately loaded more and more addictive machinery, pushed more and more boundaries, until it's beyond unacceptable.
As an aside, it's amazing how hard it is to turn the modern phone into a no-nonsense tool, and I'm an adult with self-control, a deep understanding of dark patterns, and a fully-functioning brain after 3 cups of coffee.
I think the right approach is finding teaching techniques that still work when every human has all the world's info at their finger tips 24/7.
At some point, an uninterruptible, 24/7 live connection to the rest of the world is inevitable.
I'm not convinced a human teacher is a required part of this.
There needs to be a politics of rejection, because I an assure you 95% of humanity does not want a device implanted in their skull where communication sent to you is unblockable.
SV has clearly cooked a generation of engineers that think working on ad surveillance tech is the pinnacle of humanity and not just another American moral failing that is wrecking the world while a select few profit off it.
Not to mention we have plenty of studies that show even a silent phone sitting quietly in your pocket or on your desk can be an attention drain, as you're subconsciously waiting for a notification to go off.
I'm amazed it took this long for the schools to finally ban the damn things.