Strict bans on mobile phones in schools have “close to zero” impact on student learning and show no evidence of improvements in attendance or online bullying, a study has found.
Researchers at US universities including Stanford and Duke looked at nearly 1,800 US schools where students’ phones were kept in locked pouches and found little or no differences in outcomes compared with similar schools without strict bans.
The report concluded that among schools instituting a ban: “For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero.”
The results will come as a disappointment to teaching unions and campaigners in England who backed the government’s recent move to restrict the use of mobile phones in schools. A ban is likely to come into force next year.
You’re misunderstanding my position.
Right now, schools are not learning institutions that are trying but struggling to enrich kids. They’re a penal institution, punishing kids for being non-productive members of society, funneling many of them directly into military or prison, and actively making their lives worse than if they were sitting at home or hanging out with friends outside.
Every kid thinks that when they’re in school, but in most places they’re not correct; here they often are.
I think you can draw a pretty direct and causal line from the prison-ification of schools and increasing school shootings, NCLB being the instigating national change, but Republican anti-education policies in general being heavy contributors (and Red states are far worse than Blue states in this).
Bear in mind this is not some “school is bad” stance: there are actually a lot of schools numerically which are wonderful places of learning. Expensive private schools and high-income-neighborhood-servicing public schools don’t allow that kind of disruptive policing and aren’t looking for every opportunity to punish children as a show of dominance and teaching forced-submission. But numerically high does not equate to high percentage, and they’re a minuscule percent of the overall count of schools in America (115,000+).
So this is not a “don’t fix small problem until we fix big problem” issue. This is a “don’t pretend that these are students and not prisoners, and take away one of the few remaining joys most of them have”.
Taking away phones isn’t fixing a small problem, it’s making the bigger problem worse.