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Comment by iwishiknewlisp | Hacker News Reader

I graduated highschool 4 years ago. What I remember is about 1/3 of the kids not even paying attention in class and just being on their phones. For honors and ap classes it was a little better, but even then there were always a few kids completely distracted with their cellphones.

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If this is the case, question what will happen when the students you describe graduate. Maybe, they will get a reality check. Why didn't that check come in high school? Maybe, they will fail in life. In both cases, the school system has failed them. High school should be a controlled environment that allows youth to safely fail, learn from failure, and grow.

Phone addiction is an immensely complicated problem. This strategy of blanket bans will not rehabilitate students, just as the war on drugs failed prior.

> If this is the case, question what will happen when the students you describe graduate. Maybe, they will get a reality check.

I just went to whole foods the other day and the butcher didn't know how to convert between fractions and decimals. They were American btw, in 20s or 30s

Maybe they'll fail after high school? Who knows? But anyway, at least they'll know how fractions work. At least they'll have basic reading skills and be capable of voting and participating in society

I minored in math and damned if I can be bothered to convert 12/13 to decimal in my head.

That said if it was 1/2 lb and they were having issues... Yeah not good!

I don't think that's exactly fair. I took a few years between high school and college, it's surprising how much basic math skills I forgot how to do. Now, it was simple to relearn that information, but if you asked me at that time how to convert 12/13 to decimal I probably wouldn't be able to do better than a rough approximation.

> but if you asked me at that time how to convert 12/13 to decimal I probably wouldn't be able to do better than a rough approximation

lol now I kind of want to try this at the butchers and see the response I get

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