This sort of generic ideological flamewar is exactly what we don't want on HN, even in an abysmally politicized thread like the current one.
Since you've repeatedly abused HN this way and ignored our requests to stop, we've banned this account. (No, that's not because we're $ideology ourselves, it's because the spirit of this site is intellectual curiosity, it needs protecting, and ideological flamewars destroy it.)
When I was in school, all I wanted to do was read the Sitepoint forums and learn more about HTML / CSS / PHP.
I had one teacher that took me up on my offer to let me use the one class computer when my work was done and that's exactly what I did with it. Then other kids opted into my sweet deal and ended up ruining it by causing too much disturbance around it.
Back then, I always resented the fact that it was more acceptable for me to sleep during class than to read material on the computer. So I ended up sneaking on my home computer after my parents slept and getting 4 hours of sleep each night so that I would then sleep during school.
I would've KILLED to have a smartphone in my pocket.
Now, I'm not sure what the best policy is going to be, here. But I can certainly relate to the injustice of feeling punished for something that doesn't apply to me.
I can certainly understand that a smartphone in the hands of a student will only make distraction more likely. But to take it away completely seems to overestimate the value of being attentive 100% of the time in school.
For example, imagine if you can take out your smartphone when you're done with your work AND you are averaging above a 85% in the class. Maybe something like that would offer best of both worlds.
I think the problem isn't so much the technology, maybe it is just our general teaching methodology. I feel like in US schools we don't allow much room for self-learning inside the school itself, every class has a teacher and lesson plans, and not a lot of self-guidance. Personally I learned a lot on my own through high school that never would have been taught (z80 assembly to build games for the Ti-83.) I did most of that on my own, at home, rather than during class time for other essentially "irrelevant" courses. I think the main issue is what may seem unimportant to a child when they are a child, might end up being an important part of their life in the future. But they just don't know what they like or what they want to do when they are young, which is why we have general education courses.
Maybe if there were more opportunities for that it would be useful. But given the infinite amount of distractions a personal smartphone can provide I don't see how you can have 30 kids just doing whatever simultaneously and have a positive outcome for the majority.
> For example, imagine if you can take out your smartphone when you're done with your work AND you are averaging above a 85% in the class.
Imagine taking out a book on a different subject when you're done and are keeping up, and no teacher complaining about that, ever. Then imagine being the teacher not having to deal with the other kids protesting because a single one of them is allowed to use his phone in class including all the teenage drama that you're definitely not getting paid enough for.
Not OP here, but there are literally thousands of ways that not having a smartphone could be a punishment. The first thing to realize is that times change. People didn't used to have clean shirts either, but they do now. Making someone wear a dirty shirt might not have been a punishment in the past (what else did they know of?) but it could certainly be seen that way now.
Give a child access to a smartphone for years. It will change their brain, it will become a part of them (as far as they are concerned) as it will be predictable, reactive, entertaining, etc. Then take it away. That is clearly a punishment: you have adjusted the mind of a child to become accustomed to something and then ripped it away. It would be literally insane to not see how this could be a punishing experience for a child (or even, an adult).
Again, I'm not OP and not going to argue the point of phones in schools. But I will say, do not assume that young people today are the same as young people in history.
Our society has given smartphones to children at large. We should not be surprised if taking them away has unknown and potentially negative repercussions. Perhaps access to this kind of technology should be done in moderation (but how to do that? I don't know) so as not to shock anyone's system (or our society's system).
>Give a child access to a smartphone for years. It will change their brain, it will become a part of them (as far as they are concerned) as it will be predictable, reactive, entertaining, etc.
You are describing a drug.
Besides, we're not talking about taking them away for good. Just while they are in school.
When I was a kid, people were into Gameboys. Yet no one took it as a punishment when schools did not allow them.
> Chris Marcellino, who helped develop the iPhone's push notifications at Apple, told The Guardian last fall that smartphones hook people using the same neural pathways as gambling and drugs.
> Besides, we're not talking about taking them away for good. Just while they are in school.
I didn't say for good. Even during that length of time, it could be seen as a punishment. I'm not arguing that it's good to take them away or good to keep them - I'm not sure. I'm just saying it's important to recognize that taking away something like a smartphone could be a punishing experience for a person.
> When I was a kid, people were into Gameboys. Yet no one took it as a punishment when schools did not allow them.
Gameboys have only one purpose: games. Games and games alone are clearly not useful in the school environment. Smartphones have a billion purposes and have limitless potential for learning - not to mention, various other things that are important, like peace of mind in communication, etc. Again, I'm not saying these kids shouldn't be able to do without. I'm just saying it is a thing: people are attached to their smartphones in a new way, as described in the article, and taking it away can cause harm just as keeping it could.
>I'm just saying it's important to recognize that taking away something like a smartphone could be a punishing experience for a person.
So, if my kid is addicted to drugs and I restrict him from having them for a few hours to wean him off, I am punishing him?
I don't know what a "punishing experience" means. If it is a punishment, the actor (parent, school, etc) has to have the intent of punishing. Just because the recipient believes something is punishment does not make it so.
I wouldn't consider it to be a punishment, but I do think they are missing a big opportunity here. A blanket ban suggests that maybe the kids can't be taught appropriate use of the technology in a school setting even though other schools do just that.
By analogy: I used to have incredible direction sense. On one of my cross-country drives, a couple decades ago, I made it to my friend's place, having only vaguely consulted at an atlas a couple of times. I lived in New York; she lived in San Diego. (Edit: And I'm specifically including having navigated the local highways and surface streets in that anecdote, not just which Interstates I used.)
Now, I get lost in my own city without using my phone's mapping app.
When we outsource our cognitive capabilities to the exocortex, we lose those capabilities. When we give our children a tool that obviates their need ever to develop those capabilities, we rob them of something essential.
The problem is not the answers but the having of thema t fingertips. There is value in the slow process of looking things up in dictionaries or stepping through exercises. The downside of instant fulfillment of curiosity is arguably a shallow approach to knowledge; as soon as something become difficult or obscure, there's the urge to summon the answer from the internet, and if it's not immediately forthcoming either lose interest or expend energy rationalizing the default answer.
1) having answers at your fingertips is not that great, and
2) said answers are surrounded in many cases by a sea of useless opportunistic crap deployed by people whose aims are literally hostile to you.
"Punishment" is being dramatic anyway, and sounds a tad narcissistic. No problem in the world is quite so outrageous and unjust as the minor inconvenience that happens to a narcissist. I mean how am I gonna read about all the genocides without my smartphone? IT'S SO UNFAIR!!
I spent four decades being punished by having no smartphone. Do I lament all the answers at my fingertips that I never got? Hardly. I brag about it just like I'm doing right now, because it made me into something better, someone who doesn't need a spell-checker, someone who knows a gerund from a participle, an integral from a derivative, a list from an array, AND my ass from my elbow. Someone who spent his childhood playing outside or studying and not worrying about what some distant asshole thought of me.
And instead of having cheap, instant, abundant answers, I was instead able to wonder first and guess and theorize about those answers. Practicing the act of inquiry. Maybe I'd look them up in a book later, or maybe just forget the hell out of them like the trivial and unnecessary mind-clutter that they were. Which is the beauty of idle questions sometimes. Regardless, it's the same outcome as a smartphone user after having looked it up. If asked again in 6 months they'll have to look it up again. Those answers are like the SUV you've never taken off-road that you only use to go to big-box stores in the suburbs. (To buy stuff that's only slightly less unneeded than the SUV.)
The more cheaply and easily things are available to you, the less special and valuable (or in the case of knowledge, memorable) they are.
> Because you could have the answer to nearly any question at your fingertips, and yet it's arbitrarily taken away?
There's a person there, usually in the front. They have the answers in their head. It is their job to put those answers in your head. To transfer those answers you can ask them a question. It's what they're there for.
The key here is "any question." When did classrooms give you that kind of flexibility? In my experience it was hit or miss between how many on-topic questions an instructor would allow, let alone questions that deviated from the lesson plan.
Modern public schools institutionally are not designed to cultivate the intellect and knowledge of individual students. They're designed to transfer a specific set of ideas to a large group of people at once.
So schools cant set rules? Because of socialism?
My nephew can't bring his cat to math class, or play nintendo switch during english. Does that mean he's being oppressed by socialist policies? Because I call it common sense.
Public Schooling is a socialist policy, taking smartphones isn't. Giving every student a smartphone would be socialism in this context. However nobody is talking about that.
Government is not socialism. Indoctrination is also not socialism. You seem to be conflating the authoritarian/libertarian axis with socialism/capitalism axis. It is authoritarian, it isn't socialist because there's nothing about it inherent to socialism even though yes it is happening within a socialist structure. I think the more accurate sentence is "This is an obnoxious kind of authoritarianism". For example you can have a very socialist, very libertarian governmental structure. Some individuals view libertarian and socialist as opposites but actually they can completely coexist. It just takes viewing both corporations and governments as structures limiting your individual liberty. This kind of authoritarian policy can happen in either a capitalist or socialist environment.
But would these supposed kids with "more potential" realize that potential given access to a smartphone during the time when they are being educated? I fail to see the use of a communications/entertainment device in a classroom unless it is part of the instruction.
EDIT: Genuinely curious of your opinion, I grew up right before smartphones exploded when I was in college, so for me I see them more as a distraction from what is going on around you. Yes, they can be a tool, but I feel like they typically are not that in a group learning setting.
Thanks for your generalization, but I'm actually here for constructive discussion and not personal attacks.
My question is how many kids are actually going to do that? And what justifies them to be the judge of whether what the teacher is discussing is relevant to them or not, given they are 10 years old.
Welp, you asked for my opinion. My opinion is that if you literally can't think of a valid use for the entire internet in a classroom setting, then you aren't trying very hard. It's tantamount to having a library at your fingertips.
* How about using an app to record the lecture, so a student can verify their notes later?
* How about taking a picture of the notes on the board, when they can't copy things down quickly enough?
* How about checking up on a sick relative using SMS, so they aren't feeling anxious about it all class?
I'm not even trying really -- there are dozens of valid use-cases that respect the preset curriculum. Let alone all of the uses that fall outside of respecting it, if and when the curriculum is too facile for the student.
Couldn't I have been learning programming during the time my high school English class was tackling "A Catcher in the Rye" one chapter per week, after I read the entire book within the first few hours we had it? Apparently not, because cell phones aren't allowed, and they can only used for Candy Crush.
>My question is how many kids are actually going to do that?
Not very many, and that's why most people will justify smartphones being taken away from all students. Which will primarily hurt the ones who were using them for more interesting purposes. Typical crab bucket mentality.
>And what justifies them to be the judge of whether what the teacher is discussing is relevant to them or not, given they are 10 years old.
I never said anything about whether the lessons were relevant, nor were ages brought up.
Those are all decent use cases, but they could all be solved without the use of a personal smartphone (Which if we want to dive deeper would mean that we are now basing education on a class divide given most poor children likely wouldn't have a decent one.) A simple webcam on the teachers laptop could record the entire lecture and marker board and they could distribute it to students in numerous ways for free. A majority of teachers probably already have their lecture notes digitized, so those could also be posted online. Those solutions would be much cleaner, more distraction free and accessible to everyone.
The most likely case is that a huge majority of kids are going to text their bff, play a game or cheat on a test and not use it for "continued education" inside of the classroom they are already in.
I don't know, maybe it is just me getting an education in a pre-smartphone era that makes me think of them as more of a distraction when evaluated in the context of a functional classroom.
> Which will primarily hurt the ones who were using them for more interesting purposes.
I guess they can record the lecture with a voice recorder (very cheap on Amazon) and get the lecture slides afterwards, like everyone else.
It's pretty simple: thing A is widely misused and is causing problems to 99% of people. Banning it has a huge net-positive effect, despite having perhaps a negative effect on 1% of people.
Alcohol doesn't cause problems for 99% of people though does it.
You can apply that argument to anything banned. Why ban anything at all, why not let kids drink in class? Because it causes a lot more harm than good, especially in a learning environment.
So, we restrict things. You might not agree where the line is drawn, but there is a line and its position is obviously subjective. I guess we can measure the effectiveness of this on learning and with feedback from the teachers though.
If the ban is limited to a specific space/community (school or classroom), then it's completely different from alcohol prohibition and more akin to the ban of smoking in restaurants, which is accepted by most people even the smokers themselves.
Socialism at its worst, in my opinion. The irresponsible drag down those with more potential.