[Michael G.]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

It going to be hard to cut the umbilical cords. Cell phones are like pacifier’s and are attached by umbilical cord to brain. The brain will not function without texting and being pacified by iPhone. People can not stay off for 5 seconds let along 5 minutes.

!00% agree.
Now let's work on getting those dam things out of 5000-pound vehicles going
down the road @ 70mph.

[bopat]

It’s not the phones they worry about, it’s the many cameras and microphones.

[Velvet]

Originally Posted by airstreamingypsy

My first thought was, how will they report a shooter in the school? How will they call their mom, for comfort and to maybe say goodbye. What a country.

How did they do it for the decades before the cell phone? Why are we raising such fearful children? How many will ever be kidnapped in their life time? But how many will worry about it?

[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

The next mass school shooting incident should be interesting.

Personally - I think students should have flip-phones, where the only thing they can do is text and call, nothing else. There's no need for them to have smartphones. But in the world we live in now where there are school shootings every year, some kind of communication with the world outside the classroom is imperative.

Perhaps there will be an unintended benefit, they will be getting rid of the cause of many school shootings, social media access. Think about it, guns have been around forever, but the frequency of school shootings is a relatively new thing that coincides with the youth getting hooked on social media? Call it a coincidence, I think not.

[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by tophcfa

Perhaps there will be an unintended benefit, they will be getting rid of the cause of many school shootings, social media access. Think about it, guns have been around forever, but the frequency of school shootings is a relatively new thing that coincides with the youth getting hooked on social media? Call it a coincidence, I think not.

It is usually the alienated teens and early twenty somethings who go on shooting sprees and not the well adjusted teens who are big on sharing stuff among their peers at school . Military weapons have not been accessible to teens all that long .

[Pugchief]

How did a thread on banned cell phones in schools devolve into a discussion of school shootings?

[macawlaw]

This is an overreaction. Students don’t need their phones in class, but any good teacher controls the phones in their room. When my kids were in school, many teaches had a shoe holder with pockets on the wall. Students were assigned a slot number. They put their phone in the slot on the way in and take it out on the way out.

[BillyGrown]

Originally Posted by macawlaw

This is an overreaction. Students don’t need their phones in class, but any good teacher controls the phones in their room. When my kids were in school, many teaches had a shoe holder with pockets on the wall. Students were assigned a slot number. They put their phone in the slot on the way in and take it out on the way out.

There are obstacles that remove the power from a teacher to control the issue. For instance they couldn’t just grab your phone and put it on their desk and wait for a parent to pick it up. They would be fired. Also, there is likely more than one phone in a classroom, just how many eyes is a teacher supposed to have? 30 kids likely means 30 phones. They should be focusing on teaching, not putting out fires of annoyance. There is no reason a kid needs a phone in class. The phones are not helpful for a students focus of being educated.

[bopat]

When I went to school, calculators were expensive, and they were banned.

Although it was fun doing thousands of math problems by hand, just a few hours with a calculator would suffice.

Same with a phone and a computer. Get with the program, they're tools that give us an edge.

And as an added bonus the kids can make videos and take pictures to keep the teachers honest and on task rather than whatever they're doing these days with all that political crap.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Normal

New York is finally attempting to correct the cell phone issue in schools. They are now banned in all public educational institutions from “Bell to Bell”. I guess that’s like “Saved by the Bell”?

Anyway, the permission of cell phones in classes has really caused problems. Social media posts and bullying, cheating via phone, unauthorized recording, distraction as well as all the other negatives will be curbed. Kudos NY!

NY school phones: Hochul'''s proposed '''bell to bell''' ban draws mixed reaction across New York districts - ABC7 New York

I think that it is a good idea. I just HOPE that they can enforce it. There are a lot of people trying DESPERATELY to "dumb- down" America.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by BillyGrown

Educational staff and administrators can have phones. I can’t think of an incident yet where a smart phone saved someone’s life in a school shooting. I guess it could happen someday.

The NEWEST smart phones are coming out with a BEAR SPRAY capability.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by BillyGrown

Educational staff and administrators can have phones. I can’t think of an incident yet where a smart phone saved someone’s life in a school shooting. I guess it could happen someday.

Letting your mom know that you're alive and uninjured is kinda, I dunno, a good idea. Or that the killer is dead, and you think your foot is broken. Or that the teacher is dead and her cell phone is under her dead body otherwise maybe she would've called the police instead of waiting for you to call your mom. Your mileage may vary.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by Pugchief

THIS is your concern? There's a rule of logic called "The 2% Rule", i.e., if there's less than a 2% chance of something happening, you shouldn't concern yourself with it. What is the likelihood of a school shooting? 1/1000th of 1%?

Primary focus should be keeping kids focused on schoolwork.

The likelihood of a school shooting is 100% for all schools where there have been a school shooting.

The likelihood has increased significantly since Columbine. In 2024 alone, there were 39 school shootings across the country. That's almost one in every contiguous state. So the odds of it happening in your state, in 2024, was over 80:1

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Gettingoutofdodge

There is a program/pouch (yondr) now being used in some NYC schools that locks the cell phone up while the student is in school and unlocks when the day is over. I’m not sure how it works but it does.

My son is a K-8 Principal and though all the above problems mentioned above are real, not having cell phones is beneficial in other ways. It cuts down on social media usage, bullying and going to the bathrooms to meet other students, rampant texting during lessons and so much more.

He has used this pouch for two years and it works.

Good for him. The good points of stopping cell phone use outweigh the bad points.

[biker1]

When I went to school, calculators were just starting to show up. I had a couple of friends with $400 HP35s. You could use them in exams but they weren't going to help when the questions were all of the form "show this" and "prove that". I suspect things haven't changed much in 50 years.

Originally Posted by bopat

When I went to school, calculators were expensive, and they were banned.

Although it was fun doing thousands of math problems by hand, just a few hours with a calculator would suffice.

Same with a phone and a computer. Get with the program, they're tools that give us an edge.

And as an added bonus the kids can make videos and take pictures to keep the teachers honest and on task rather than whatever they're doing these days with all that political crap.