What's Happening to Students? | Hacker News Reader

What's Happening to Students?

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3 pointspaulpauper7 comments

What I've wondered about is why schools don't just use jamming towers indoors. I remember going to a theatre production in the early 2000's where the theatre employed this. It kept inbound and outbound calls from ringing through and only affected the theatre itself. Employing this tactic would stop calls and SMS. If students used wifi inside the school it would be the controlled network of the school where domains could be blocked to keep texting social media posting etc. to a minimum. The company I work for does a lot of this at the office to prevent the leaking of proprietary data and to enforce productivity. Schools are lagging behind because of the lack of funding for boring IT problems when the money is seen as better spent on "AI" in the classroom or "girls who code" programs. The companies who put students in this position should be on the hook to provide the funding for this infrastructure instead of forcing the schools to decide between programs that help students to focus and programs intended to help them get ahead. Especially in the future without federal funding or oversight.

Why do schools allow phones into classrooms? I don't get it. It's as if schools in the 80s allowed Walkmen into classrooms where we could listen to music in class. That wasn't a thing.

Yes, our parents needed to call to the office to have us summoned (via the phones or intercoms in every room) if there was something especially problematic that we truly needed to be summoned for, and... why would that still not be a thing?

It's totally nuts that students would be distracted by their personal phones, and all of the absurd low-stakes notifications that occur no matter how hard you try, in a classroom.

https://www.businessinsider.com/high-school-teacher-all-scho...

> In talking to teachers across the country, the reasons phone policies don't work or are not implemented center on three main issues: safety (parents want their children to be reachable, especially during our era of heightened school violence), liability (phones are expensive, and in some districts, teachers have been held liable when they confiscated a phone the student later claimed was damaged), and lack of clear, consistent policy support (it can be difficult to rally an entire staff around a policy, maintain energy for its consistent enforcement, and make sure the work of its enforcement is upheld equitably).

It's possible to come up with excuses for any terrible policy. The presence of excuses doesn't mean in any way that those excuses are good or reasonable.

You asked "why", I gave a pointer.

I feel like your comment is a knee-jerk reaction to the text I quoted, rather than a response to an article which fully agrees that these are neither good nor reasonable arguments.

The headline text says "I'm a high school teacher, and my school banned cellphones in the classroom. Every school should do the same."

The author's direct response to those excuses is:

> However, if you're a teacher, administrator, parent, or just someone who cares about the experience of young people in your community, I urge you to think beyond these concerns — What if they complain? What if I can't reach them? What if it doesn't work? — and take a few moments to reread what my students wrote above.

You are absolutely correct that I was reacting to the text you quoted.

This was because I was reacting to... the text that you quoted.

The small amount of text you quoted from the linked article was largely in opposition to majority of the article you linked to, which supported my position.

This is like a movie review that's like:

"The director had risen to the task - magnificent!"

When the review stated:

"If the director had made substantial changes, and the actors had risen to the task, perhaps one could say that it could have been magnificent!"

An incautious review says more about the reviewer than what is reviewed.

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