2.5 Million American Students Now Required to Lock Their Cellphones in Magnetic Pouches (cbsnews.com) 148
In 2016 comedian Dave Chappelle made headlines by requiring concert attendees to lock their cellphones in a pouch to prevent recording.
Nine years later those pouches (made by tech startup Yondr) are required for at least 2.5 million students in America, reports CBS News, "and the company said the number could triple after the 2025 numbers are tallied in about three months... Students in 35 states, including New York, Florida, Texas, California, Massachusetts and Georgia, now contend with laws or rules limiting phones and other electronic devices in school."
For example, The Yonkers School District purchased about 11,000 pouches, according to the article, "to comply with the statewide mandate that bans phones in classrooms." The pouch, which students carry with them, is locked and unlocked using magnets affixed to the entrance of the school and outside the main office... ["Some students have reported long lines and disruption at their schools," the article notes later, "as they wait to open their pouches." But on the first day of school at Yonkers, one student said the lines actually went pretty smoothly, and they ended up having a live conversation with a friend during lunch and "felt human"...] Other students were not so enthralled by the pouch; some reported seeing classmates bypass the Yondr pouch by using their Apple watches, buying "burner" phones and putting them in the pouch, breaking the pouch and other tricks to get to their phones.
[Yondr CEO Graham] Dugoni acknowledged that there will always be some students who can figure out how to get around the restrictions. The purpose of the pouches, he said, was to create a culture change in a school and create an environment conducive to their learning and development. More than 70% of high school teachers in the U.S. say cellphones are a major classroom distraction, according to the Pew Research Center Center.
Yondr CEO Graham Dugoni uses a flip phone, the article points out, and says "Our whole perspective is that it's not taking something away from students, it's giving them something back."
He says his larger mission is to create chances for people "to experience life outside of a fully digital realm" — and that Yondr now has school partners in all 50 U.S. states, and in 45 different countries: The cost of buying the pouches — roughly $25-30 per student — has set off debates around how schools should be spending their limited budgets. It's a particular issue for districts struggling with crumbling infrastructure, limited textbooks and access to other technology needed to learn...Districts in various states have reported spending from $26,000 to over $370,000, with Cincinnati Schools saying they spent $500,000 to provide pouches for students in grades 7-12.
Nine years later those pouches (made by tech startup Yondr) are required for at least 2.5 million students in America, reports CBS News, "and the company said the number could triple after the 2025 numbers are tallied in about three months... Students in 35 states, including New York, Florida, Texas, California, Massachusetts and Georgia, now contend with laws or rules limiting phones and other electronic devices in school."
For example, The Yonkers School District purchased about 11,000 pouches, according to the article, "to comply with the statewide mandate that bans phones in classrooms." The pouch, which students carry with them, is locked and unlocked using magnets affixed to the entrance of the school and outside the main office... ["Some students have reported long lines and disruption at their schools," the article notes later, "as they wait to open their pouches." But on the first day of school at Yonkers, one student said the lines actually went pretty smoothly, and they ended up having a live conversation with a friend during lunch and "felt human"...] Other students were not so enthralled by the pouch; some reported seeing classmates bypass the Yondr pouch by using their Apple watches, buying "burner" phones and putting them in the pouch, breaking the pouch and other tricks to get to their phones.
[Yondr CEO Graham] Dugoni acknowledged that there will always be some students who can figure out how to get around the restrictions. The purpose of the pouches, he said, was to create a culture change in a school and create an environment conducive to their learning and development. More than 70% of high school teachers in the U.S. say cellphones are a major classroom distraction, according to the Pew Research Center Center.
Yondr CEO Graham Dugoni uses a flip phone, the article points out, and says "Our whole perspective is that it's not taking something away from students, it's giving them something back."
He says his larger mission is to create chances for people "to experience life outside of a fully digital realm" — and that Yondr now has school partners in all 50 U.S. states, and in 45 different countries: The cost of buying the pouches — roughly $25-30 per student — has set off debates around how schools should be spending their limited budgets. It's a particular issue for districts struggling with crumbling infrastructure, limited textbooks and access to other technology needed to learn...Districts in various states have reported spending from $26,000 to over $370,000, with Cincinnati Schools saying they spent $500,000 to provide pouches for students in grades 7-12.
Do they search the kids? (Score:2)
Spare phones (perhaps an old one) and/or strong magnets seem like an easy workaround.
Re:Do they search the kids? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Do they search the kids? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Do they search the kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in adult society you're allowed to use your phone, provided you do so in a responsible manner. Locking it up in a plastic bag for the entire day does not teach that lesson. This is more about that schools simply don't want to deal with the issue of teaching responsibility at all and just went nuclear.
I taught high school math for years. Toward the end, my students consistently outperformed everyone else in my school district. Basically what I'm saying is I've actually taught, extensively, and successfully.
The fact of the matter is, you're dead wrong. A huge room of 25 teens is just not going to behave how you think or want them to. Until you've spent a few years in a classroom, you just don't have a clear mental picture of how managing teens works.
Locking the phones up is exactly what needs to happen. The next thing that needs to happen is for people like you to shut the hell up.
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When I was in high school 20 years ago, there were definitely kids with Razors and Sidekicks pulling them out to check Myspace, LJ, text, listen to music. The issue was addressed like this: Teacher sees a phone, teacher takes the phone. Parents have to retrieve the phone, at a cost of $20, after school.
I spent 4 years in those classrooms, and the system did work. Kids knew not to pull out the phone, at least where a teacher could see.
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A huge room of 25 teens is just not going to behave how you think or want them to.
Then between when I went to school and now, something has gone wrong with how discipline is enforced. I'm surprised your view from the trenches doesn't reflect that. Teens have always brought shit with them to school that they're not supposed to have, but generally had enough sense to keep it in their backpacks until the bell rang.
Also, as an aside, I never got along with most of my math teachers back when I was in school. Funny how some things don't change.
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Check your own reading comprehension. You're the one failing to grasp the concept that locking up phones in a bag for the entire day isn't teaching kids responsibility. I didn't say kids should be allowed to play with their phones throughout the entire fucking school day, I said the plastic bag is a nuclear option for schools who simply don't want to deal at all with teaching the lesson of responsible (meaning it stays on silent and in your bag during class time - are we clear on that now?) phone use.
Let'
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Let the teachers enforce it. 1st offense, take away the phone for the period. 2nd offense, call the parents, take away the phone. 3rd offense, kick them out. Teachers see it. Back them up!
More like
Of course, even step 1 won't happen because the school district doesn't want 'problems' and tells teachers not to do anything, and by the way you can't fail anyone either.
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Let the teachers enforce it. 1st offense, take away the phone for the period. 2nd offense, call the parents, take away the phone. 3rd offense, kick them out. Teachers see it. Back them up!
The problem you have is for years you've been stripping the ability to do so away from teachers... so now they cant.
Reactionary parents who see schools as publicly funded day care backed by reactionary (usually right wing) politicians who see schools as evil, liberal, wokey-day, whatever they hate today, are happy to interfere because it makes them look tough picking on the teachers. The minute a teacher tries to take a phone the parent will be barrelling into the principals office demanding to know why
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Re:Do they search the kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Spare phones (perhaps an old one) and/or strong magnets seem like an easy workaround.
A teenager being seen with an “old” phone, is probably more embarrassing than having no phone.
Narcissism is a helluva drug.
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A teenager being seen with an “old” phone, is probably more embarrassing than having no phone.
In the land of the phoneless, the old-phoned student is king!
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Put the old phone in pouch. Duh!!!
Great way to Encourage Thinking (Score:2)
A teenager being seen with an “old” phone, is probably more embarrassing than having no phone.
That's fine: it will teach them to think. Those who do will be the ones who put their old phone in the bag and keep their new one.
Great way to Create Criminals (Score:2)
A teenager being seen with an “old” phone, is probably more embarrassing than having no phone.
That's fine: it will teach them to think. Those who do will be the ones who put their old phone in the bag and keep their new one.
The education they’re clearly not getting, should be teaching them how to actually think.
You know, like think about the consequences of normalizing lying and deceiving to support a scam to get around smartphone rules put in place for valid reason in a teaching environment. Also known as the kind of thing real parents should also be teaching.
If we wonder how we got to a world where nothing and no one can be trusted, perhaps we look closer at our own shitty advice. There are far better ways to teach c
Re: Great way to Create Criminals (Score:3)
If we wonder how we got to a world where nothing and no one can be trusted, perhaps we look closer at our own shitty advice. There are far better ways to teach critical thinking.
We tried trust, it didn't work.
When parents insist their child bring a self-powered, internet-based distraction to school every day (because "what if I need to reach my kid!"), and kids are struggling with self-control issues, this is about the best possible answer.
Banning alone doesn't work.
The school holding the phones for the kids during school doesn't work.
Making the phones mostly inoperable during school is about the only option left.
The next stop is for schools to install one of those 'fake' micro cel
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Banning alone doesn't work.
It does if there are consequences when you are caught breaking the ban but I know in today's world that's just crazy talk. As my dad used to say "if you won't learn it the easy way you'll have to learn it the hard way" and we all occasionally need to learn the "hard way"...but in today's society that's not possible and so we just don't learn.
Re:Great way to Create Criminals (Score:4, Insightful)
The education they’re clearly not getting, should be teaching them how to actually think.
I know - I've taught first-year university courses where I see the results of our education system. My comment was intended to be a joke because of that but I suppose I should not have been surprised that it was taken seriously given where we are!
You know, like think about the consequences of normalizing lying and deceiving
That's the exact problem though: kids are not stupid and they do see the consequences for lying and deceiving which in today's society are practically none. It used to be that politicians caught lying and cheating found their careers either over or at least severely damaged but now we see them shrug it off and carry on with even bigger lies...and not just in the US. In Canada we had Trudeau (who was on the left, not right) and the UK had Boris.
There are far better ways to teach critical thinking.
I agree but any teaching requires negative consequences, in the form of failing grades if students do not master the material sufficiently. Thanks to crazy policies like "no zeroes" in some schools the first time some students encounter this is at university and it comes as a massive shock. Even there we are under constant pressure to remove or reduce any negative consequences and if you remove consequences the lesson you effectively teach is that nothing matters.
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Tenure is not entirely a bad thing, but nobody should be able to keep tenure who is a failure as a teacher.
That's generally exactly how tenure works now. We get regularly reviewed on an annual basis and, if there are consistent serious problems with teaching we can lose tenure.
I suggest having two types of PhD in the future: one for teaching, the other for research.
A PhD is based on research published in a thesis, not on learning in a course. There are already PhD's in education but to get one you have to do research on education. The current trend in higher-ed is to have "teaching professors" these are faculty members whose primary responsibility is to teach as well as to research new, discipline
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How would you even tell what phone is old now? For the past 5-8 years they look pretty much identical. I observe a large number of people's phones in the wild due to my job. Occasionally I'll see an iPhone SE that can be identified by the separate home button and huge bezels - and I think those are going out of support imminently, if not already.
You've been able to get $40 Android phones for years that look indistinguishable from whatever flagship after you throw a case on it. You'd have to dig through dump
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Spare phones (perhaps an old one) and/or strong magnets seem like an easy workaround.
A teenager being seen with an “old” phone, is probably more embarrassing than having no phone.
Narcissism is a helluva drug.
There are plenty of ways to get around the restrictions - including putting fake phones inside the pouches. However, when faced with a warning for the first violation, in school suspension for the second violation, and finally out of school suspension for a third violation - most students choose not to do so.
Lets see how the social media junkie smartphone zombie parents work the appeals process over for a month or six before you go assuming. That smartphone policy might just find itself chained to the bottom drawer of a file cabinet locked in a basement closet with a sign on the door that says “Beware of Karens”.
We won't have a society anymore.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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an objective Biology that can be taught
We used to have objective biology. It appears to be coming back though.
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Day dream believer (Score:1)
Re:We won't have a society anymore.. (Score:4, Funny)
Do you really live in fear every day?
Re:We won't have a society anymore.. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's generally a much better solution.
Re:We won't have a society anymore.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would sure suck to be fucked off in some nutcase's mass shooting with no access to my phone to report out or tell my mother I love her one last time.
You are arguing that you should be able to have your phone so that in the case of a school shooting, during the last few seconds to minutes of your life you can feel better because you can call your mom? A quick search puts the chances of dying in a school shooting at about 1 in 5 million per year. Let’s say you are the unlucky one but do get a whole 10 minutes between the time you use your phone to call mom and when you die. The statistically expected outcome duration of a "better life" would be 0.00144 seconds (10 minutes times 60 seconds times 12 years of school divided by 5 million). I would argue that in the way more probable case that you don’t die in a school shooting, having your phone locked away will make the remaining length of your life better (due to a better education) for something like 60 years (life expectancy minus time in school fretting about no phone times nearly 100% probability). Expected time of a better remaining life is about 14 order magnitude longer with the phone being locked away. Even if you are the unlucky one that gets shot, you could have been telling your mother you love her every morning when you leave home – reducing the need for that "last call".
I am personally not that crass in real life and of course being a bit facetious, but since you have a six digit slashdot ID, you are not a kid in school and are making up a scenario. It’s the tired "think of the children" argument. I am countering with what would in the big picture be statistically “better for the children” with specific respect to cellphone access in school.
School gun (and other forms of school) violence do need to be addressed and the cloud of its possibility do weigh on children – even those who never see a shooting. It’s a serious issue. Let’s not dilute the issue by suggesting that cell phone access is some sort of compensating factor.
New School Uniforms (Score:2)
the chances of dying in a school shooting at about 1 in 5 million per year.
If that is correct then since kids go to school from 4 to 18 that's 14 years so the odds are now 1 in 357k chance of dying in a school shooting while a school kid. Since the number of injuries are anywhere from 2-5 times the number of fatalities your odds of getting injured is possibly as high as 1 in 70k and your chance of being at a school when a shooting takes place will likely be over one in a thousand. Those are pretty concerning odds.
A phone is unlikely to save you in a shooting but if those are t
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If the thoughts of a school shooting concerns you then I have a few ideas to reduce those fears.
First, lock the doors. This isn't foolproof, perhaps not bulletproof either unless going to great expense. It will buy time to alert police.
Second, buy a sign like this: https://www.safetysign.com/pro... [safetysign.com]
Third, put some meaning behind that sign by actually having armed personnel at the schools. This likely doesn't even have to cost extra money, simply have it so parents can volunteer to be armed guards. If the
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>"Off the top of my head, one difference was automatic weapons were not common."
And they are still not common. As far as I know, I am pretty sure no "mass shooting event" has been carried out with an actual automatic firearm in the USA, ever. Semi-automatic handguns are used twice as often as rifles (which are usually semi-automatic), which are used twice as often as shotguns (which are often semi-automatic).
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>"I am not a gun guy, so I don't even know the diff between semi/fully."
It is fairly simple. A semi-automatic will fire a round each time the trigger is pulled. A full-automatic (or just "automatic") will continuously fire rounds, as fast as possible, as long as the trigger is held in. A "select fire" is [almost always] a rifle, and can be changed between semi-automatic and automatic (and sometimes "burst") modes with a selector on the weapon.
>"What I do know is rifles semi/full are the ones respon
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So I think I'd say yes, there has been at least one mass shooting in the US with fully automatic weapons. And given he killed 60 and wounded 400+, I'd call it a part
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That is a "bump stock", which is different than an automatic weapon. It does increase the speed of fire more than repeatedly pulling the trigger. But it is much slower than a true automatic and less precise, as well. An M16 fires twice as fast as an AR-15 with a bump stock. The Supreme Court ruled a bump stock does not make a rifle an "automatic", ending Trump's ban of them.
https://www.krgv.com/news/gun-... [krgv.com]
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If you are a student, respect for your opinion, and I don't want to force my opinion on you. Personally I think we should have some common sense gun control, like limit the number of bullets that a gun can fire in a second, or be purchased in a time frame.
You do realize that the US is the only nation in the nominally-free, nominally-first world wherein students are put through active-shooter drills alongside the fire drills that all of us have, right?
Maybe "limit the number of guns available to the general population" instead? I get the whole "muh freedumbs" thing; but it didn't stop the States from being taken over in what was effectively a Thiel-led Fascist coup in the guise of an election.
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Mod parent "More visible". Also needs some sadly Funny. Only spotted it by accident.
I don't think the YOB will last the four years. Physical implosion? Mental explosion? Or the 25th? So the real question is how much worse a less incompetent moron will be in the White House? I don't even think "better" is still an option.
And roughly half the Americans are fine with it. Mod self-post Sadness.
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Why call them "school shooting drills" other than to promote anti-gun bullshit?
The same reason they call a "fire drill" a "fire drill". You drill for what is most likely to happen. I could list a dozen different reasons you'd want to get the kids out of the building as soon as possible. The most common of them would be a fire. Is calling an "evacuation drill" a "fire drill" just more "anti-fire bullshit", or just calling something what it makes sense to call it? The number one reason you'd lock down a classroom and barricade the door is because of an active shooter, period. I'm not
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I reject the notion that there is any equivalency - or any logical connection - between school bus accidents and shootings at schools. Any argument based on it is a red herring with weak sauce on top. I also reject the contention - implicit in your argument - that school shootings should be accepted as a normal, reasonable trade for easy access to guns and for pervasive gun ownership. Other countries do very well without these things, and have done for quite a long time.
School bus accidents are a phenomenon
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Thank you. I was at a loss as to where to begin pulling down that mountain of red herrings, but you did it succinctly and well.
I would just add that so much of what masquerades as philosophical and moral principles is in fact romanticism, esthetics, and fantasies.
I'll readily admit that applies to folks on both sides of the debate; but in a country where manifest destiny and exceptionalism are still a strong part of the zeitgeist, bogeymen and sentimental attachments seem more likely to triumph over logic a
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Then post a link to one of the letters that says (1) gun ownership should be an individual right rather than a collective right, and (2) that whether it's an individual or collective right should not be left to the states to decide.
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Have to remember that in those days there was basically no law enforcement so being armed was more important. Even the British Bill of Rights of 1689 included arms rights for self defence. It was also considered bad to have a standing army as it led to tyranny, like soldiers enforcing the law and worse. Why militias were considered important. At that going back a few centuries more, being proficient with arms as well as owning some was considered a requirement for freemen. No standing army, rather militias
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I took a look at a couple of your links and they don't meet the requirements I laid out. I thought you would fail, and you did.
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I didn't ask for SCOTUS' opinion.
Re: We won't have a society anymore.. (Score:2)
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If you are a student, respect for your opinion, and I don't want to force my opinion on you. Personally I think we should have some common sense gun control, like limit the number of bullets that a gun can fire in a second, or be purchased in a time frame.
You do realize that the US is the only nation in the nominally-free, nominally-first world wherein students are put through active-shooter drills alongside the fire drills that all of us have, right?
Maybe "limit the number of guns available to the general population" instead? I get the whole "muh freedumbs" thing; but it didn't stop the States from being taken over in what was effectively a Thiel-led Fascist coup in the guise of an election.
The democrats ran the election...try another explanation.
I don't need "another" explanation, just a more complete one. It involves - among many other factors - the role of big money, 'dark money', and PACs in US elections. It also involves the abuse of Jim Crow-era laws - which should never have been on the books in the first place, never mind being allowed to stand in this day and age - to suppress a HUGE number of votes: https://truthout.org/articles/... [truthout.org]
Trump didn't win honestly, he won partly by fuckery, partly because there was more money behind him, and par
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"thing that Musk changed at Twitter was he stopped suppressing non-liberal content, which the previous owners did (suppress conservative content)"
what exactly made the content "liberal" or "non-liberal"?
Re: We won't have a society anymore.. (Score:2)
I'm curious if you're asking this "how is water wet, EXACTLY?" question in good faith, but lacking clear evidence that you're not, I'll play along.
Twitter pre Musk was - like Reddit today - a public forum being aggressively policed for Wrongthink as defined by Leftist activists ultimately working (as we now know) for various elements of the Biden administration.
Ideological deviations on subjects such as the Hunter Biden laptop (critically affecting the election results, which was the point), black lives mat
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Elon made a big show of restoring "suppressed voices" like Kanye, Nick Fuentes etc and nearly all were banned again by the self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" within at most a few days.
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I wouldn't disagree with you. I think Elon came in under the mantra of free speech but quickly decided he was going to put his own thumb on the scales. Sure, it probably had a lot to do with the CEASELESS attacks he was getting from the Left for fucking up one of their echo chambers but that's not an excuse in my book.
Nate Silver (another quasi-cancelled leftist but who himself never lost Faith) has a great recent essay on Bluskyism. His focus is the left, but it ABSOLUTELY applies to rightwingers that w
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From the very start, Elon had his own agenda and "free speech for all" was only the cover story.
What I believed he wanted was control of the narrative and access to Twitter's data which is the only reason that makes sense for him to pay so much for a social media site that was hemorrhaging cash when he could have built his own in a few months for maybe a few million bucks.
And even used Twitter's own code to do it - https://opensource.twitter.dev... [twitter.dev]
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So your assertion based on ... your insight I guess?... was that him
a) recognizing that Twitter had turned into a leftist echo chamber ...none of that was honest?
b) noting that they had the ability to at whim silence the main opposition candidate
c) suspecting - later proved conclusively - that they were directly serving the mandate of the highly-politicized whims of the government in power in ways that would have made Pravda & the KGB jealous
It's impossible to believe he was genuinely offended by the hy
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Twitter often pushed back against the government without seeking to suborn or dismantle it.
"He was the quirky darling of the left with his tech, his electric cars, his climate change advocacy...*poof* he's now an alt-right Shylock hovering at Hitler/Trump's elbow.
How'd that happen?"
Gradually he began to expose his true self.
Some of us were cluing in as early as the Solar City acquisition and that obviously ginned-up dog & pony he put together on the Desparate Housewives set to sell the idea as some magi
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I bet Thiel & Vance are hoping that Trump kicks the bucket of fried chicken very soon, which seems at least somewhat likely.
by the way what does your username mean?
Should have been banned years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
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The most elite private high schools in the USA banned cell phones over 10 years ago. The difference between those schools and the public ones was very obvious. Kids were playing more and having longer conversations. Maybe we didn't notice because the phones came in slowly? Economically the rich kids already had an advantage, taking away the cell phones further gave them an advantage in social skills and attention span.
Huh. You would think society would have seen some of these rich intelligent kids grow into responsible adults championing the benefits of limited smartphone use.
Instead, we find the end result of this creating the worlds worst narcissists online. Attention whores banking big on attention whoring.
If I’m wrong, prove it. I’d love to be wrong. For the sake of all.
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Re: Should have been banned years ago (Score:2)
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Oooh, flip phone (Score:2)
>"Yondr CEO Graham Dugoni uses a flip phone, the article points out"
So? I just read that as a person who has zero self-control. I have a full-featured smartphone with me almost everywhere when not at home (where it sits on the desk with a charger). I have maybe one notification during the workday, or less. At lunch I might play a game for 15 minutes if sitting alone. You don't have to use a "flip phone" to accomplish that:
1) You don't have to install social media apps, or log into them.
2) You have c
Unlocked using magnets (Score:2)
Thank goodness magnets are not a technology that children have mastered [twistedsifter.com].
Surely they can figure it out. (Score:4, Informative)
Just make the students pay for the pouches. If they can afford a phone, they can afford the pouch. They don't want to pay, fine, they can leave their phone at home or have it confiscated.
Dave Chappelle is stealing from public schools. (Score:2)
This is pure blackhat villainy.
BTW I work in entertainment and these things literally don't work. Anyone who cares enough will simply buy a secondary device and offer that up to the Yondr'er. And beyond that, they lose strength over time and can simply be cut open with a scissor or pulled apart. Thi
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>"This is a product that doesn't solve the problem it's aimed at. This is a massive grift and blatant theft of public funds. FUCKING YUCK."
So what is your alternative suggestion/solution? They don't have to be 100% effective/tamper-proof/fool-proof. They are setting a culture of "it is not appropriate to use phones/devices during classes, ever." And that is not only good, but necessary.
My suggestion would be to mandate leaving them in lockers on silent. And if caught with one in a classroom (and it w
Re:Dave Chappelle is stealing from public schools. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see how having more "staff" while allowing students to carry phones into classroom is helpful or solves anything. I will also note that many districts pour more and more money into their systems and yet the educational outcomes continue to decline. The problems has not been funding, it has been the lack of firm principles and discipline. Not holding students accountable for their actions, not holding teachers accountable for their actions, not holding management responsible for their actions. There is a minority of students that are terrorizing the schools and making it impossible for the others to be safe, learn, and succeed. Discipline *is* compassion.
I also think parents have been part of the problem as well- also a lack of support, high expectations, and discipline. They would rather go into a school and immediately argue with management about how their child deserves special treatment or whatever excuses. Of course, we can't do that much about those issues (fixing parents) from a policy standpoint, I just want to express there is blame all around.
In my day, none of the students would DREAM of talking back to a teacher, much less defying them or assaulting them! We had strict but fair rules which were enforced regardless of who the student or parents were, and yet students were also treated with respect and dignity. Nothing even remotely as disruptive and distracting as a smart phones (had they existed) would ever have been tolerated in schools. Everyone should be asking themselves "how did we get here???"
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There's a reason why the single most important metric when choose schools is the student to the teacher ratio. We already know how to improve public education and increase the number of positive outcomes. A magnetic pouch isn't even on the table. It can't possibly so
Outside the Faraday Cage (Score:2)
No phones and no pouches at my school in Australia (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a high school maths/physics teacher at a state high school in Australia. The school has had a 'no phones' policy for the ten years I have taught there. Student phones are turned off (or at least on silent0 when on school property. If a teacher sees a student using a phone, it is confiscated under the school behaviour policy. The consequences increase for each phone confiscation. Ultimately. the parent has to come and collect the phone. Occasionally, a student refuses to hand over the phone and that is also dealt with under the behaviour policy.
We did consider the pouches a couple of years ago - but the staff voted against using them. The current system works well enough - we don't have a phone problem.
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I distinctly remember 1 study showed having the phone near the student and turned OFF still lowered their IQ! The only way to stop the impact is to have their "system 1" believe it's out of hearing range and it was clearly not smart enough to realize what OFF meant.
American parents are spoiled brats and many are no more mature than their teenagers (aka morons.) I come from a large family of educators; they always had a couple trouble parents but now there are many more.
When I was a child in the USA, student
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Do you have a link to the study you quoted? I'd like to read it.
Tks
High School Kids bypass Yondr with ease (Score:5, Interesting)
My kid's high school just implemented Yondr (after successful trials at other local schools.) It's a joke; collecting phones at the beginning of class in a cardbox box is more effective.
Kids have bought the unlocker online. Kids have figured out how to "close" the bag without it actually locking. Initially the bags were unassigned (you just picked up one at the entrance to the school) but kids would cut open the bags and/or never return them. So the school had to assign everyone a bag in order to charge for damage or loss. Even then kids cut the stitches and use tape to make the bag appear sealed. Burner/decoy phones are common. And so on.
Not having phones between classes means kids cannot coordinate clubs, e.g. notify of time updates, if someone can't make it, communicate issues, can only communicate after school gets out, etc.
Another fun problem is that a lot of kids use their phones to pay for things at the school's cafe. Because the phones are locked up when they enter school, the cafe has seen a drop off in morning customers.
Overall my high schooler says the "collect phones in a box at the start of class" is far cheaper, more convenient, faster, and more effective than Yondr.
Re:High School Kids bypass Yondr with ease (Score:4, Interesting)
Overall my high schooler says the "collect phones in a box at the start of class" is far cheaper, more convenient, faster, and more effective than Yondr.
While I agree with that, the first time a phone gets stolen or broken, the parents will demand the school pay for it since it was in their custody when it happened. My philosophy is if a kid doesn't want to learn, as long as they don't disrupt the class and impact others, fine. They'll eventually get hit with a clue by four...
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My philosophy is if a kid doesn't want to learn, as long as they don't disrupt the class and impact others, fine. They'll eventually get hit with a clue by four...
We're all better off if they're learning, as we're ostensibly paying for them to be able to do, themselves included.
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My philosophy is if a kid doesn't want to learn, as long as they don't disrupt the class and impact others, fine. They'll eventually get hit with a clue by four...
We're all better off if they're learning, as we're ostensibly paying for them to be able to do, themselves included.
I agree, but expecting teachers to enforce rules that will just put them between parents and administration I they do then at some point you just have to say "Not my problem."
Yondr pouches are worthless (Score:2)
A waste of money. The locking mechanism is embarrassingly easy to defeat. The success of the pouch is the slick marketing that schools increasingly buy into.
https://www.wikihow.com/Open-a... [wikihow.com]
No brainer (Score:4, Informative)
We had plenty of distracting possessions when I was a kid. We generally were not allowed to use them in the classroom though ... because they were distracting.
As we used to put it, it's not rocket science.
Can they keep the iWatches? (Score:2)
Y'now, for health purposes, obviously.:-)
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I stuck my phone in your mom's pouch.
Re:I'll take my phone (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, because you're an adult.
He does not sound like an adult, actually.
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but he still could be POTUS
Limits of Funny on Slashdot? (Score:2)
Funny deserved but was propagating the sock puppet's Subject necessary to sustain the joke? (Probably in this situation.)
I wonder how far down the discussion it went?
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Incorrect. They are requred by law to be educated, but it does not require them to do so in a school, either parochial, public or otherwise.
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Simplest way I thought of was to simply buy or obtain your own magnet to unlock it.
Disassembling an old spinning disk hard drive should give one powerful enough to do it.
Re: Breaking the pouch? (Re:I'll take my phone) (Score:2)
Is this a rule on all schools? I have doubts this applies to private schools.
No, it can't, since private schools are not publicly funded, the cell phone rules created by public school districts don't apply.
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that doesn't mean that private schools don't have similar or even more restrictive rules.
i went to one a very long time ago and there were rules for so many things that my public school friends thought were hilarious when I told them
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Re:Yondr's webcite (Score:4, Interesting)
Yondr's webcite is the most generic Squarespace-looking design I have seen in a while. Wew. They didn't even try to hide it.
Its a pouch designed to do one thing. Not a mystical Bag of Holding leaving us bewildered every time. I’d imagine the website needing to be about as complicated as one selling horoscopes. Or pet rocks.
Teenage smartphone junkies being forced to use a product, hardly requires a Wow factor at checkout. They’re already pissed about being “oppressed”. An amazing website isn’t going to make any “victim” feel better.
Time for China to do its duty (Score:2)
Re: Time for China to do its duty (Score:2)
Right, because the treatment for addiction to heroine is to make the world around you so fantastic you dont feel like doing heroine anymore. Totally works. Honest.
At this point, given how terrible social media and mobile games have been found to be for childhood development, id almost rather my kid got addicted to a chemical than a phone. At least that has practical solutions. Very difficult to remove kids from a digitally saturated society. Giving a pre-teen a smart phone should be flat out illegal.
Re: Yondr's webcite (Score:2)
What's to market? It's a freaking bag, and they are sold in batches of 1,000s to public school districts - why waste money when politicians mandate your product's purchase?
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A phone (band) radio-scanner solves both problems: Make some lowly paper-pusher walk around with it, 4 or 5 times a day. It cost much less over 1 year than $25/student. Which is probably the lifespan of these pouches.
By 'gifting' pouches to students the school is really avoiding a lawsuit where a judge, once again, decides the parents have no responsibility to protect children, their own or others.
Not every state, but
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Most schools nowadays have metal detectors at the entrances.
And here I thought it felt dystopian just having to go through security once in a while when going to the theme parks, a concert, or to the airport, but every fucking school day? No wonder today's kids are so messed up.
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