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‘Put learners first’: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

I personally think that responsible smartphone use should be learned and practiced, rather than outright banning them.

I think this shows that adults are terribly addicted to their devices and think if they can’t stop using them, children won’t either. They certainly can’t teach how to use phones responsibly if they can’t do it themselves. Unfortunately for children the result is an outright ban.

kokiriflute ,

Paper and pencils are ruining our children’s learning experience! We have to go back to stone tablets!1!!

6mementomori ,

clearly shows the tendency of people to ban things instead of finding a fix that isn’t lazy like, for instance, actually good digital education.

joelthelion , (edited )
@joelthelion@lemmy.world avatar

So, should guns be allowed in schools, along with “good gun education”?

Smartphones serve no real purpose in school. Why allow this very problematic device that is not conducive to learning and tends to cause problems outside the class, too?

6mementomori ,

that’s a really moronic comparison ain’t no way you’re equating smartphones to guns. we use phones for class pretty often

joelthelion ,
@joelthelion@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not equating guns to phones. I’m showing that the argument about “digital education” holds no water.

6mementomori ,

you aren’t showing anything at all

CoderKat ,

But smart phones serve a purpose in schools and guns don’t. Some school work can be done on phones. They’re a reasonable thing to have between classes or when you’ve finished an in class assignment early. When I was in university, I frequently used my phone for further research of what the prof was talking about. I also used it for the calendar and reminders, which were so critical to me with ADHD fueled forgetfulness.

They’re sometimes useful for accessibility. eg, I’m hearing impaired and my phone is the remote control for my cochlear implant. If live transcribe was a thing when I was a student, it would have been a major help. I’m sure plenty of other medical devices are using phones for that, too (I’m pretty sure glucose gauges for diabetics do this these days).

What purpose would a gun in school serve? It wouldn’t even save lives like the American conservatives claim, cause it’d be way more common for students to kill each other over disagreements than to stop a school shooter.

AnonymousLlama ,
@AnonymousLlama@kbin.social avatar

These types of changes feel like they're a decade too late. We've had a solid 10-15 years of smartphone mainstream usage and it's crazy that they haven't been banned in schools until now

Olap ,

Mobiles should not be in a classroom.

They are distracting, rarely help with actual learning, and are a source of anxiety. Children do not need to be contactable 24/7. The supposed pros are all bs too. Learn to use a computer, sure, laptops are a different matter. Much easier to police, much easier to manage, much more helpful to learning, and most skills transferrable to a mobile too. Have online courses, excellent! But rarely at primary and secondary level education will a phone actually be beneficial. Long overdue for a ban.

Long overdue for a digital overhaul too. Paperless offices are here, where’s the paperless schools? (Paperless offices are never paperless either btw, plenty of stuff still printed, physical books read, and things written down)

xiao ,

How to teach a bullyer responsible smartphone use ? 😑

In my opinion, the whole school system needs a serious update.

But that will never happen because the function of the school is not to learn.

n3cr0 ,

Taking away the most versatile and most commonly used tool shouldn’t be the way to go.

If we keep up these obsolete paradigms, students will be forced to stick with ineffective handwritings off whiteboards. Their documents go to the trash after school since the serve no purpose anymore and they use up far too much space.

Instead, students should make excessive use of their digital helpers - as we already do at work or for all the other daily tasks.

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

If I need to write fast I can’t even read my handwriting. Currently teachers send us notes electronically which also gives us more time for discussion. Well, guess how we view the notes.

n3cr0 ,

I bet some teachers print it all out for reading. 🙈

thehatfox ,
@thehatfox@lemmy.world avatar

Like it or not, smartphones and the internet are now a part of everyday life. Digital literacy is now as important as traditional literacy. Pretending that this shift has not happened, because education systems cannot adapt to it, is absurd.

The problems that are claimed to be caused by smartphones in class seem to be more down to to a lack of discipline and engagement. I went to school before any kind of mobile phone was a thing. There were still plenty of potential ways for students to goof off, yet teachers by and large managed to keep us focused and behaving.

joelthelion ,
@joelthelion@lemmy.world avatar

Smartphones are orders of magnitude more distracting than whatever existed before. Also, you can teach digital literacy all the while forbidding smartphone use outside of class, there is no real opposition there.

520 ,

Smartphones are a different league of distracting. Apps like social media are literally tuned to be as psychologically distracting as possible.

confused_cvnt ,
@confused_cvnt@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, but outright banning them will hurt more than it would ever help. Has banning drugs ever helped stopping people from dealing and using them? Spoiler alert: No, it hasn‘t.

Responsible usage of smartphones should be taught instead of telling kids: ‘‘This is bad. Don‘t!“

520 , (edited )

You do have a point in that smartphones can be useful constructively. It would be more constructive to make them connect to a WiFi point that blocks known social media app endpoints

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

It would be infinitely more doable to simply ban students from having phones out in class than to somehow prevent them from using their own cellular data connection.

maxprime ,

Pretty much every school is equipped with a firewall that blocks pornography, social media, and now in some cases GPT. But the thing about that is that by my estimate about 95% of students’ phones use cellular data which nullifies any school board’s attempt to block content.

I’m a teacher and have a no phone policy in my classroom, but during work periods they have a way of appearing. So stand behind them, take a rubber band and shoot it at the screen. They tend to find it pretty funny and surprising, and I reckon the surprise breaks the dopamine flow. Almost always they’ll stow the phone back in their bag without protest.

Even then, though, unhealthy phone use among teenagers is a huge problem. I know that an outright school ban might not be the correct solution, and that encouraging digital literacy is necessary (by the way this is something many teachers have already been doing for decades) but seeing first hand the effect that a dopamine addiction has on an adolescent brain is extremely distressing. It’s kind of like trying to encourage a person — nay, a teenager — to have a healthy relationship with cocaine. It’s impossible. And even outside of school, so many of my students are up during all hours of the night on TikTok, or YouTube Shorts, then showing up to school exhausted. Throw in the effect of social media, and it’s a recipe for disaster. IMO it’s one of the major contributing factors of teen mental health and ultimately suicide.

Pelicanen ,

There are plenty of spaces where alcohol use or being drunk are not allowed, does that mean that alcohol usage in these spaces is running rampant? No. Because there’s a difference between a complete societal ban and restrictions in certain areas.

You could easily ban phone usage during classes and allow kids to use their phones during breaks, with the punishment for using them during class being confiscation until the end of the school day. You can teach digital literacy and responsible usage of technology and/or the internet without kids having their phones in their hands when you teach it.

Apps are made to be addictive, it’s understandable that kids could have issues concentrating on things that seem less interesting when an entertaining distraction is right at their fingertips.

BraveSirZaphod ,
@BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social avatar

There are plenty of hours outside of classroom instruction in a day where kids can (and already do) build all the digital literacy they like, so I don't really see how that's a meaningful argument.

CoderKat ,

Anyone else remember doodling, passing notes, or talking in class? I grew up with smartphones becoming popular and such things were extremely common both before and after smart phones. If anything, some of them were more common. Teachers would take away phones but they didn’t do anything about doodling and couldn’t do much against talking in class.

nivenkos ,

How would this work? What about people that need to contact their parents?

We need to move away from schools just being prisons for children while parents are at work, and encourage learning and more autonomy over what to study. Imagine having full access to Coursera and EdX and being able to choose what you wanted to study and collect credits like that - building your own syllabus from some of the best educators in the world.

Let kids program video games together at school, build sensors and robots, do basic genetic engineering (e.g. plant patterns), simulate and build model bridges, etc. like stuff that is actually fun but requires basic skills. So you’re not just memorising the trigonometry equations but really learning it because you need it in your projects.

And have zero tolerance for disruption and bullying with cameras, etc. It should be a place for collaborative learning, not a prison. It should feel like a much better place to learn than anywhere else.

DragonAce ,

This was exactly my thought. Every student with access to a smartphone has almost the entirety of human knowledge in their pocket. Yet our education system is still using printed books and standardized tests written by for profit corporations. US students spend more time taking standardized tests than they do actually learning subjects and engaging with their teachers.

Our entire education system, like many current systems in place in our society, are antiquated and in dire need to be reimagined/redesigned for the 21st century. Trying to make school more about babysitting and less about education is not the way to go.

FantasticFox ,
@FantasticFox@lemmy.world avatar

I agree completely.

We are already in an age where much menial work can be automated and AI seems to be well on the way to automating a lot of menial information work too. We need to focus on creating a growth mindset and a sense of wonder and curiosity that will serve the children whatever the future may hold - not just creating a holding pen so their parents can go to work.

CoderKat ,

I’m of the opinion that if something is distracting a student, they shouldn’t use it in class (without a very good reason). Which means if a student brings their phone into class, they better make sure it won’t distract them. If they play with it when they shouldn’t be or it rings, by all means, punish them just like you would punish talking in class.

But stuff like using it right up until the teacher actually starts teaching? That’s not a problem. Or if it rings for a legit emergency (do not disturb mode can allow this), that’s totally fine. If some assignment actually benefits from a phone, great! If you finished an assignment early, go ahead and use it so long as you aren’t disruptive.

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