Background:
“Millions of children who head back to school this fall will find their phones are now gadgets non grata. Chancellor of New York City public schools David Banks has said that he is considering a ban on classroom phone access that would affect 1.1 million students, though the ban will not be in place at the start of the school year. In June his counterparts in Los Angeles approved a similar crackdown, affecting more than 400,000 students and starting in January 2025. More than a dozen states have now enacted school phone restrictions in the U.S. And the U.K. issued new guidelines for schools on phone bans this past February.”
We summarize what the evidence shows about how these phone bans impact student performance and mental health. Read more at the link.
Is your district considering a similar ban? Is there already one in place? If so, how is it going?
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Incoming anecdotal evidence: phones are the worst thing to happen to education in my 20 years of public HS ed.
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Probably the worst thing to happen to humanity in my lifetime of being a human.
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Yes, it is absolutely beneficial to remove them from the students during instruction.
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Honestly, I understand the parental concern and need for the child to have a phone, just get them a flip phone not a smart phone. There is no reason for students to have a phone that can access internet, record, play games, have social media accounts, etc while in school.
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The practical effect is that parents get the kids smart phones anyways and the students suffer for it educationally and socially.
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I teach at a middle school. Students aren’t allowed to use phones or other personal electronic devices anywhere on campus. They can have their phone on them (in their pocket or backpack); they just aren’t allowed to access them on campus.
I switched from a school that didn’t allow phones during instructional time (bell-to-bell) but still allowed them before and after school, during passing periods, and at lunch. This was helpful, but we still had a lot of drama related to phones and a lot of socially checked out students who relied on their phone every moment outside of the classroom.
This new setting, with no phone use on campus, is a magical positive difference. Students engage with each other socially in the halls and at lunch and share real experiences with each other. As a result, classroom discussion is so much better as well. The students know each other. They trust each other. They know how to talk to each other.
I absolutely appreciate that students can keep their phones on them versus locking them up or otherwise. I hope that we never have a violent incident at our school or a natural disaster or other reason we might be locked down on campus, but if we do, I’d be glad that students would have access to a phone connection to their loved ones.
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I like how everyone who actually deals with this is on the same page: phones are a problem in education. And yet there’s some parents who are going to show up at school board meetings and flip out that their kid can’t possibly be without one for the duration of a class with a trained professional. And they very well may get their way because nut jobs are always loud.
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Works great at my school. Phones have been a major contributor to kids being unable to hold a coherent thought for more than 3 seconds or think critically. They’ve convinced kids they can just look everything up on google, so they have zero motivation to LEARN anything.
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I cannot imagine what future generations of absolute dullards are coming over the horizon.
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I think a lot of them will be fine honestly. I’ve got some good kids in my classes. But a shockingly large number of them just don’t care about anything at all. They have zero natural curiosity.