Los Angeles Schools To Consider Ban on Smartphones (reuters.com) 92
The Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday will consider banning smartphones for its 429,000 students in an attempt to insulate a generation of kids from distractions and social media that undermine learning and hurt mental health. From a report: The proposal was being formulated before U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called for a warning label on social media platforms, akin to those on cigarette packages, due to what he considers a mental health emergency. The board of the second-largest school district in the United States is scheduled to vote on a proposal to within 120 days develop a policy that would prohibit student use of cellphones and social media platforms and be in place by January 2025.
The L.A. schools will consider whether phones should be stored in pouches or lockers during school hours, according to the meeting's agenda and what exceptions should be made for students with learning or physical disabilities. Nick Melvoin, a board member and former middle school teacher who proposed the resolution, said cell phones were already a problem when he left the classroom in 2011, and since then the constant texting and liking has grown far worse.
The L.A. schools will consider whether phones should be stored in pouches or lockers during school hours, according to the meeting's agenda and what exceptions should be made for students with learning or physical disabilities. Nick Melvoin, a board member and former middle school teacher who proposed the resolution, said cell phones were already a problem when he left the classroom in 2011, and since then the constant texting and liking has grown far worse.
Didn't they try it with weapons already? (Score:1)
And failed?
Re:Didn't they try it with weapons already? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's continue your line of logic. Crime is still happening despite the many laws against it. Do away with these laws and you won't have crime.
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...because if you take away our freedom through laws we will just kill ourselves because we don't want to be controlled?
If that was a potential problem China wouldnt have over a billion people.
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China is currently concerned about the start of a population decline.
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Well, suicide is the leading cause of gun violence after all.
We tried it with houch (Score:2)
Sometimes criminalizing things makes shit worse. And sometimes you're just trying to shift blame away from underlining failures you refuse to address, like poverty and underfunded schools deep in the city...
Hell, in high school my kid's math class had more students than seats. If you didn't get there quick you had to stand for the period. And this was one of the *better* schools in the area...
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Let's continue your line of logic. Crime is still happening despite the many laws against it. Do away with these laws and you won't have crime.
Don't you mean your line of logic [hoover.org]? :)
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First, it was an unarmed woman who ran into the building to save her child and it was the male law enforecement officers who tried to stop her.
Second, those male law enforcement officers admitted the reason they didn't immediately go after the terrorist was because he had an AR-15 [propublica.org].
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Second, those male law enforcement officers admitted the reason they didn't immediately go after the terrorist was because he had an AR-15 [propublica.org].
In their defense, most any rifle (not sure why everyone singles out the AR-15) will go through police body armor like a hot knife through warm butter. So I can understand the "Oh shit" moment as they roll up to the call and realize they're facing a rifle. Rifles are more deadly too. Roughly 80% of people shot with handguns will survive. That number is nearly reversed for those shot by rifles. You don't want to get shot by anything but you really don't want to be shot by a rifle.
That said, that's a
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Uvalde
376 law enforcement officers show up and stand around for 1.5 hours listening to children being murdered. First the cops started arresting parents who tried rushing in because the cops were all massive pussies. It all happened in this liberal hell hole, oh wait *checks notes*. It happened deep in the reddest of red states, Texas. Where where all the good guys with guns? https://apnews.com/article/sho... [apnews.com]
Probably hard at work making money to pay for the groceries to feed their families?
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Where where all the good guys with guns?
Nowhere. The cops aren't the good guys. They are government agents sworn to protect and serve and choose to do neither. The armed citizens are and there are basically none of those left do to societal pussification and anti-gun morons working against the people's interest in keeping their individual rights.
The cops were chicken shit pussy assholes like they always are (remember the "Coward of Broward" Scot Peterson?). Of course, they fucked it up, they fuck nearly everything up because they aren't interes
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remember the "Coward of Broward" Scot Peterson?
There's a compelling argument [theatlantic.com] to be made that he was scapegoated. I didn't believe it either and thought the jury fucked it up but that article changed my opinion of him.
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Uvalde
376 law enforcement officers show up and stand around for 1.5 hours listening to children being murdered. First the cops started arresting parents who tried rushing in because the cops were all massive pussies. It all happened in this liberal hell hole, oh wait *checks notes*. It happened deep in the reddest of red states, Texas. Where where all the good guys with guns? https://apnews.com/article/sho [apnews.com]...
One person's 'troll' is another's 'informative'. It's bad enough that we don't do a fucking thing when this sort of shit happens, but modding down well-earned criticism of it?!
Re: Didn't they try it with weapons already? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just ban using them (Score:4, Insightful)
So I am guessing the school board will, in a fit of good intentions, barrel ahead with the ban and then pull it back when parents angrily protest over a real incident or a perceived threat.
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A blanket ban "during school hours" seems like it runs afoul of the rights of students to use their phones during lunch and free time between classes. I'm all for distractions being removed from classrooms, but the rest of the time it's the decision of the individual parents whether a kid should or shouldn't have access to a smartphone.
Re:Just ban using them (Score:5, Insightful)
The students have a right to use their cell phones during breaks? Where exactly is this "right" coming from? As far as I can see they're children and they are under the care of the school, as long as they are on campus the schools should be perfectly in their right to hold on to their phones.
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The students have a right to use their cell phones during breaks? Where exactly is this "right" coming from?
The 1A applies to minors. You might want to consider reading up on some examples where schools overstepped their bounds and got slapped down by the courts. Like it or not, smartphones have become an essential part of participating in the modern town square, and it should be up to the individual parents whether their kid is responsible enough to do so on their free time, not the nanny state.
Re:Just ban using them (Score:4, Insightful)
So when a teacher tells students not to talk in class during a test (for example), are their free speech rights being trampled on then?
Even the ACLU says there can be non speech-specific bans that have nothing to do with the expressed message. For example, they can ban hats. They can NOT ban specific _types_ of hats with specific messages on them.
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So when a teacher tells students not to talk in class during a test (for example), are their free speech rights being trampled on then?
That's a bad example. This is more like a school instituting a policy where students are not allowed to discuss politics during lunch.
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Except it's not, because the entirety of their ability to express themselves isn't tied into their phone.
I had FAR more deep and interesting conversations with my group of lunch friends in high school than most of the stuff that passes for "discussion" online today.
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I had FAR more deep and interesting conversations with my group of lunch friends in high school than most of the stuff that passes for "discussion" online today.
So, you found a clique you connected with in your youth? Good for you. But what about the kid sitting by himself who'd rather discuss furry fandom or something along those lines rather than deal with his peers? School is hell for those who don't fit in, and at least being able to go online gives today's generation a small bit of escape from that.
I had to wait until I got home to go online (which at the time meant dial-up BBSes) to actually converse with people who were interested in things other than sex
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That's all well and good, but that's still not _affecting their free speech_.
And I was a not-quite-leper tier outcast in middle and early school too (prior to moving states and falling in with a much more accepting group of people). I just went to the school library to read. If I was a student in today's society and I couldn't use my phone, I'd just... go to the school library to read or use the computer. I can still keep up with my interests, I can still be on social networks, I can still basically do,
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If I was a student in today's society and I couldn't use my phone, I'd just... go to the school library to read or use the computer. I can still keep up with my interests, I can still be on social networks, I can still basically do, more or less, whatever I want that I could do on my phone.
It's probably a safe assumption that social media is blocked on school-owned computers. There's also generally not enough time between classes to visit the library, and you'd have to forfeit most of your lunch break to go during lunch.
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I and millions of others did just fine in school without phones and they've proven to be more of a distraction and harmful thing than anything.
What's more harmful is raising a generation that accepts the state always knows better than you about when you're allowed to express your opinion, even when you're on a damn break.
But hey, that seems like the way this country is heading. We've already banned an entire social media network, ostensibly because we don't trust our own adult citizens enough to use it responsibly.
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Given this is the USA where there are so few laws and actual restrictions on individual liberties
Actually I was joking about this the other day with my partner when we'd noticed some fireworks tents popping up. You can buy fireworks but there's literally nowhere you're legally allowed to set them off. Our neighborhood bans them, all of the public parks around here ban them, and they're also banned at the beaches. Seems somewhat ironic celebrating "the land of the free" by first trying to find a place you're actually allowed to set off fireworks.
Again, taking away rights from kids leads to adults who
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Re:Just ban using them (Score:4, Interesting)
The 1A applies to minors.
Actually it only applies to US governments, not individual people. If the plan was to ban kids from using mobile phones at any time then I'd agree your argument would have a lot of merit. However, banning kids from using mobile phones while they are in school and supposed to be learning specificalyl because use of those phones has been shown to damage learning outcomes seems like a very reasonable argument that is well supported by evidence.
If this is not allowed on free speech grounds then what about rules preventing people like bus and train drivers from using their phones while driving? There are very good reasons for such bans and yet these are adults banned from using phones during the hours that they work which is more hours than kids are in school. Should they have a right to use their phones because of freedom of speech? What about in the middle of a cinema or during the performance of a play? Should any member of the audience have a right to talk on their phone?
I hope you would not support these examples but, if you are right and banning mobiles from schools in an unacceptable restriction on the freedom of speech then clearly all these cases would be too and the implications of allowing mobile use in these cases would be lethal public transport and horrendous cinema and theatre experiences.
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However, banning kids from using mobile phones while they are in school and supposed to be learning specificalyl because use of those phones has been shown to damage learning outcomes seems like a very reasonable argument that is well supported by evidence.
A class-level smartphone ban is reasonable. A blanket ban that includes breaks and time during lunch is not.
In all of the examples you provided, there's some other activity taking place which where smartphone use would be a distraction, an annoyance to others, or a hazard. As to employers making no-phone policies, that's not being done by the government (unlike school policies) and it's something you can opt out of by choosing not to work for that employer. School attendance, however, is mandatory.
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Well all the schools who already have cell phone bans in place haven't had a 1st amendment issue so far https://thehill.com/homenews/e... [thehill.com] .
The positive results these schools have seen are even being cited by LA as supporting reasons for the ban https://edsource.org/updates/l... [edsource.org]
Kids have 1 amendment rights but in a limited fashion and so far no one with any authority seems to see a problem with kids not using phones at school.
You might want to consider reading up on some examples where schools overstepped their bounds and got slapped down by the courts.
I would prefer if you cite sources to support your own claims rather than you shift
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Well all the schools who already have cell phone bans in place haven't had a 1st amendment issue so far.
Kids usually don't have the money to hire lawyers. Plus, as others have said, kids also are pretty good at just not obeying rules they disagree with, so the ones who are opposed to the ban are probably surrendering some old burner phone at the beginning of the day and hanging on to their actual phone to use while pretending to take bathroom breaks.
I would prefer if you cite sources to support your own claims rather than you shifting the burden onto me.
Generally, during school hours it hinges on whether or not the speech is disruptive [americanbar.org], which is why Florida's version [flsenate.gov] of a school cell phone ban specifically refer
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Kids usually don't have the money to hire lawyers.
Sure but their parents do and there are plenty of parents today who feel they need that electronic tether to their child 24/7.
Plus, as others have said, kids also are pretty good at just not obeying rules they disagree with, so the ones who are opposed to the ban are probably surrendering some old burner phone at the beginning of the day and hanging on to their actual phone to use while pretending to take bathroom breaks.
That's a ridiculous reason. There would be no reason to have any rules or laws at all if the metric of their value was whether people violated them or not. Can't have speed limits because Jim drives 5 over! Murder? Well someone is just going to break that law anyways so why even bother creating one to stop that?
That fact is, even the kids who disobey the rules will have a LOT less sc
We say shit like this to kids (Score:2)
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the schools should be perfectly in their right to hold on to their phones.
Absolutely not. Schools "should be perfectly in their right" to forbid students from using their phones.
The saying, "possession is 9/10ths of the Law" is more or less correct: humans are extremely concerned over physical possession of things. Fucking around with physical possession over more abstract concerns is going to cause more grief than it will solve.
But yeah, let's do the knee-jerk thing and engage in authoritarian behavior. Why not? It is so much fun and there is never any fallout. Besides, who does
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Only allowing use outdoors might actually be good since they get to go outside. Yea it rains, it's hot, sometimes it even snows, teaches them to make the tough decisions to use a phone.
Re:Just ban using them (Score:5, Interesting)
None of us had problems going to school and keeping ourselves occupied without a cell phone.
We did strange things like, hang out and talk with real friends in meatspace...played games, talked to girls, etc.
Yeah...we were stuck learning human interaction, and in-person communication skills.
And when class started...as boring as it was, we really had nothing much to distract us from the actual work being taught.
Ok, sure, back when the Mattel "Electronic" football game unit hit in like '79-80....that was happening...and generally the teachers would confiscate those for the day too.
We'd then go back to playing paper football on the desks.
Is that still a thing?
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Funny....for the many MANY of us that grew up even before cell phones..
My parents' generation brought comic books into school. My generation had Walkmans and Gameboys, which did get brought into school to use on our free time. My younger brother's generation had slightly more advanced handheld gaming systems and pagers. Again, they weren't a problem if they weren't out during class.
Smartphones are just the latest thing to be demonized by folks who don't remember that their generation did exactly the same damn thing with what was available at the time.
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Now they have Nintendo Switches [usatoday.com].
Florida's drop-out age is 16. That 17-year-old "kid" could've just stayed at home and played his Switch all day if that's really the lifestyle he'd preferred.
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Banning them also will just create a cat and mouse game, where kids will just hide smartphones on their person or use them when not visible. Yes, the school can start searching students when they enter the building, but all that will do is just get students to have people sneak a phone to them as a "locker phone" which will get charged by throwing a battery bank into the locker with the phone overnight. Locker searches? Kids will just find another place to hide their devices.
Banning things is something t
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So the teacher takes the phone, sticks it in a drawer, and tells the student they can get it back when they come back for detention.
Don't let 'Perfect' be the enemy of 'Good Enough'.
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>Banning things is something that just teaches kids how to work around Draconian rules
So mandate that all in-school devices be Samsung.
And give the teachers remote battery detonators . . .
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If you ban them completely, in an era of school shootings and other emergencies
Perhaps this is a greater problem than the smartphone ban and should really be addressed as a priority.
Out here in the ROTW where school shootings are not a thing, let alone a common thing teachers telling students not to bring phones into class and confiscating them for the lesson if the are, is not a contentious topic in the slightest. Though generally it's left up to the individual teacher to make the rules for their lesson, rather than something pushed down from administrative levels.
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If you ban them completely, in an era of school shootings and other emergencies, you will never succeed. The pushback from all parents, helicopter or no, is going to be massive and the proposal will be hugely unpopular.
believe you underestimate the hatred parents have for children + phones.
plus, now the school gets to be the "bad guy", taking away the phones, which alleviates the parents.
Yet at the same time (Score:2)
There's talks of utterly transforming education by essentially firing most human teachers and replacing them with AI.
Talk about inconsistency: shielding our children from the stupidity of social media while educating them with stupid chatbots that trained themselves on social media...
Re: Yet at the same time (Score:1)
Re: Yet at the same time (Score:4, Insightful)
So your solution to bad human teachers is accepting AI chatbots because they're not worst? How about raising the bar instead and hiring good human teachers?
Also, when you entrust the education of our children to machine, you turn them into machines themselves. Human teachers may be flawed, but they're human. The last thing children need is more interactions with machines.
Re: Yet at the same time (Score:3)
Great success (Score:3)
Around here, more and more schools were experimenting with different ways of limiting phone usage. Some schools allow 15' of phone use after lunch break, some have banned it altogether like for entry classes.
Due to the overwhelming results and enthousiasm from students, many schools are expanding their efforts to other grades and more schools are joining the endeavor.
Students feel free to play again, unafraid to fail, without risking going viral on chat groups with something silly they do or say. They say it is very liberating not having phones around.
Ali G would definitely proclaim Great Success.
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How about building a Faraday cage around the classrooms? Metal screens should suffice for the enclosure, or possibly even hardware cloth. That would still leave bluetooth connections. And the shielding doesn't need to be perfect. Usually reducing the signal strength by 50% or so would suffice, and 95% should be relatively easily achievable.
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What if you never hear from the kids like me who just hate being controlled by the utter idiots you adults have proven yourselves to be with this nightmare of a society you have constructed, with no way out for me?
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Around here, more and more schools were experimenting with different ways of limiting phone usage. Some schools allow 15' of phone use after lunch break, some have banned it altogether like for entry classes.
Due to the overwhelming results and enthousiasm from students, many schools are expanding their efforts to other grades and more schools are joining the endeavor.
Students feel free to play again, unafraid to fail, without risking going viral on chat groups with something silly they do or say. They say it is very liberating not having phones around.
Ali G would definitely proclaim Great Success.
I think you mean Borat.
Ali G is a different character done by the same comedian.
Re: Great success (Score:2)
Thanks for setting that straight. It has been a while since I seen either, but that legacy citation stuck :)
Good luck (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh please! The teachers, admins, security and maintenance people have phones in case of emergency.
Students are there to learn and socially interact. Phones interfere with that.
Students and schools did just fine before cell phones.
Re: Good luck (Score:2)
It doesn't matter that previous generations didn't need it. The parents are going to want to be able to call their children directly.
This is where we are now and you can thank Uvalde for it.
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The parents are going to want to be able to call their children directly.
Their kid is hiding in the coat closet while a shooter checks out an 'empty' room.
Ring, ring!
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Alternatively: "My kid dropped a pin in the gym, the shooter's two buildings over."
We could barb over what-if scenarios for hours, at the end of the day the parents are going to say "we want contact with our kids".
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the parents are going to say "we want contact with our kids".
But it appears to be the kids who are trying to hack/circumvent all the no phones in class rules.
When I was a kid, if my parents handed me a device so they could track and contact me at their convenience, I'd have buried it in the bottom of my backpack. Turned off. On the other hand, if they gave me a device that I could use to play games, surf for porn, cheat on tests, I'd be fine with that.
Re: Good luck (Score:2)
Again, at the end of the day the parents are going to drive that. Maybe when Uvalde is a distant memory from a faded era we'll be able to revisit the notion.
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When has a kid with a cell phone ever made a difference during a school shooting? Are they going to throw it at their attackers?
The school will still be loaded with phones anyone can call 911 on not to mention the teachers will all still have their phones. Meanwhile students with cell phones are hardly a necessity in the context of a school shooting. The only "problem" with them not having one is that parents wont get a call during the event which then triggers panic and crazed parents showing up in front o
Why can't they see that they are the problem? (Score:1)
Why are adults projecting all their own faults onto social media?
In the 1980s how come I could sleep anywhere, but narcs would report me for smoking pot, and now I can smoke pot anywhere in this state, but narcs will now report me for sleeping outside on public land?
Is it all really just about certain people telling others what to do, because control?
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Why are adults projecting all their own faults onto social media?
Social media was fine until the orange guy got elected president. Now both sides of the aisle are trying their damnedest to stuff that genie back in the bottle so elections can go back to being decided by good old fashioned campaign spending on traditional media ads.
Today's leaders know that they'll never get a generation raised on social media to vote they way they want them to. That's what it's really about.
Unenforceable (Score:2)
If they really require every phone to be in a special bag, I can see students all showing up with burner phones to put in the bag while their real phone stays with them. A working several generations old Android phone can be had for nearly free.
Re: Unenforceable (Score:2)
Ah yes, the Democratic nanny states are evil because kids can't have their phones in school.. that's so much worse than the states where they're not allowed to have books in school and women aren't allowed to make choices about their own bodies.
Public Schools are a Babysitting Service Now (Score:2)
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I remember people saying that 30 years ago. It wasn't true then and it isn't now. I've personally been very impressed with my kid's public elementary school.
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How many kids in that school that you don't know about will end up suicides?
What's the problem? (Score:3)
If it's a matter of the social harm that's in the news lately, kids supposedly spend ~ 5 hours per day using social media, so school-time is probably just a small part of that use.
Re: What's the problem? (Score:2)
I'm tempted to say "Why not?", as in, what's the exact problem?
School shootings and administrative molasses when dealing with bullying.
Replacement device (Score:2)
Do the schools provide a replacement device for use at school that does all the other things that you need a smartphone for?
(calculator, word processor, access to the course materials etc)
Presumably a laptop or a tablet without access to social media.
And are the students allowed to take this device home to complete homework.
I think homework should be abolished.
Re: Replacement device (Score:2)
Both of my kids have Chromebooks that the school provided, so yes.
Just keep failing the kids (Score:2)
Smartphones (Score:2)
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Depends on the class and what you're supposed to be learning.
E.g. Now in order to jailbreak your phone, the first thing you do is...
Punish everyone (Score:2)
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It's not punishing, IMO. My daughter's school has a complete ban on cellphones during school hours and it's rigidly enforced and everyone (parents, teaches, even my daughter) agrees it's a big win.
How are kids being punished by being phone-free during the active school day? They have all the rest of the time to do whatever, but when at school they need to be paying attention and/or socializing with real-world-humans; that's what school is for.
My daughter's school in SF has long done this (Score:2)
It's pretty great; even my daughter agrees it's a good thing.
Kids now obvs do all have phones, but (in my daughter's public school in SF) they absolutely cannot use them during school hours at all, or they are confiscated.
Parents are clearly told "if you *must* contact your kid, ring the school office and ask them to pass on a note" - this obviously sounds archaic but in practice almost nothing is "that important" so kids do indeed get to go about their school day from start to finish without touching their
Precedent in France (Score:2)