You just went to where 99% of parents don't even know how to get to. Do you think it should be expected of parents to figure out how to use whatever "PiHole" is to protect their kids?
I admire your personal dedication to making it as hard as possible to be exploited, but we really can't expect non-tech people to go to the same lengths. And at one point, we might have to admit that parents who spend 99% of their time struggling to even get by and do the basics for their kids need schools and other resources to help out by doing things such as banning phones.
My point is - it's under my control, if I didn't know how to do this I'd either accept the ads, pay, or not allow phone usage. There are options. I don't need the government to do that for me, I can decide myself.
Here in Europe, phone is necessary for daily life - even as a kid. And it makes it so much easier, better - and interesting, if you teach your kids that. My kids use their phone like a Star Trek tricorder, using various apps and tools to learn about the world around them. Something I wished was possible when I was a kid but it was a pure scifi - now it's here and I'm not going to take that away from them just because some bureaucrat thinks parents can't control their kids enough.
> I don't need the government to do that for me, I can decide myself.
What frustrates me about these discussions is the same pro-libertine knee jerk individualist response is parroted for it, even though this choice is not impacting you, or at least, not only and for the purposes of the topic, any impact on you is ancillary. These decisions impact your children, and not just now, but for the rest of their lives. If all goes to plan, the ripple effects from these choices will be in motion still long after you are dead.
It's the same kind of irritated I get when parents are advocating for themselves having say over school curricula, testing standards, sports programs, what have you over trained professionals who's entire careers are centered on getting kids the best outcomes possible, but who must argue as though the opinions of Bernadette Peters, who has never left Blenheim, South Carolina in her 37 years on this planet, also has input to offer.
And like, this isn't a criticism of you, it sounds like you're doing it as close to right as one can manage. And also, what about all the kids at the school who's parents don't know what you know? What about all the ones who lack the knowledge to pass on, let alone the will to? What about ones who's kiddos struggle with tech in general, either because of ignorance, or because of neuro-divergence, or because of accessibility issues, or any number of other problems?
You're effectively arguing that because you've taught your kids how to consume alcohol in a healthy way that they should be able to carry booze to school. However true that might be for your kids, there are also other kids around too, and the school admin is responsible for all of them, not just yours.
I have a big problem with comparing a pocket supercomputer to booze. It's nothing like that. And I don't just think that because I can manage, everyone else can. I also think that this regulation will be counter productive.
You raised an interesting point while talking about the professionals at school vs some backwater person. I wish I had your trust in their good intentions and abilities, but where I live these supposed professionals don't even speak English, and they're pushing their conservative agendas. It isn't unusual that my kid googles some bullshit a teacher says and it's proven wrong by a fact checking organization. For example, if my kids couldn't fact check all the shit they said during covid, I would be very unhappy.
I'm going to go to an extreme, but if we had solid research that said banning phones at school resulted in some extreme, lets say 50%, improvement in their ability to learn, would you support the ban of phones during school time? Would you expect the school to _not_ implement a policy that would benefit learning that much?
What if we swapped this out for "not taking edibles during class", would that infringe on your kids personal freedom too much?
In a world where parents feed their children fast food all the time, and let them play mindless Ipad games from an early age, I have lower faith in every parent reading the relevant literature and implementing best practices than I have in academic institutions figuring out how to optimize learning (not that I have a huge amount of faith in that either, just more)
Do you have children? It sounds like you don't since you are talking like someone on the outside. I'm not saying that would change your position, but you'd be talking with more nuance if you did.
If I follow through what you said, paper has obvious positive impact in schools, or we can at least imagine that positive impact. And so banning paper would be very likely not to result in an improvement if studied. And like any smartphone ban, it _should_ be studied rigorously before implementing.
But lets say they do find that smart phones during class _are_ good, but just social media is bad, then it also sounds reasonable to me that a kids phone might be required to have some type of block on social media app during class time. Just like it sounds reasonable for a school to ban papers _with porn printed on them_ during class time. There's no issue besides on a practical level with getting more fine grained and isolating the impact.
Or do you also oppose that later, is your kid printing porn on paper and bringing it to school part of the personal freedom you want control over and which the school should not have to authority to ban?
My kids’ high school requires kids to have a phone. They want the kids using the calendar to track assignments. The ask the kids to use the camera to take a photo of the board which contains their homework assignment. They use some messaging app where they can communicate with the teacher and the teacher can talk to individuals or the entire class. They’ve had assignments where they need to shoot a short movie with their phones.
I’ve never heard anybody say this, but I think one of their goals is to teach appropriate use of phones.
I'm pretty fine with restrictions on usage during class time - but not by direct remote control of such personal devices. The goal is to improve education and prepare children for life in the modern world. That can't be done without a smartphone, the most important item of most people that they use to run their lives. Today, many normal people don't even have desktop computers, they do everything on phones. That has privacy implications on what is reasonable to do with a person's phone - even a child has right to their privacy (in reasonable limits of course).
