Should students have cellphones in class? Indiana just said no — with a few exceptions

MachineFab812, 2 months ago

Voters/Teachers: Teachers should have the right to make students shut off their ringers and put away or even turn their phones in at the start of class.

These bozos: Let’s mandate that schools and teachers deal with this issue in the most asinine way possible.

Mind you, in Indiana, there is no checking that your homeschooling is actually teaching your child anything. It’s one of the best states for Un-schooling, if that’s how you want to educate them. We’re also swimming in private/religious school vouchers and charter schools.

I can’t wait to see how this joke plays out.

redfox, 2 months ago

most asinine way possible.

Why do you think not having phones during school is this extreme? How should it be then? I imagine if the schools would have dealt with this issue on their own, there wouldn’t have been lobbying by teacher groups to legislate this? I can’t imagine law makers being interested in this on it’s own, but who knows…

in Indiana, there is no checking that your homeschooling is actually teaching your child anything

There’s a ton of states like that, and it blows my mind. I have relatives in Texas this statement applies to, and it’s outrageous. You can certainly email your legislative representatives and tell them how uneducated people have a harder time contributing to society…

I feel like the voucher thing is another one of those governmental half effort things that was not necessarily a bad idea, but was implemented in a really poor way. I feel like that’s a bit like not putting a break pedal on a car and then saying cars are stupid and unsafe.

rekabis, 2 months ago

I have relatives in Texas this statement applies to, and it’s outrageous. You can certainly email your legislative representatives and tell them how uneducated people have a harder time contributing to society…

But don’t you see? When these kinds of people make the most ideal Republican electorate possible, this outcome is their objective!!

redfox, 2 months ago

Well, I believe in the idea of home schooling isn’t flawed, but if there’s no schooling part, that’s a problem. There should probably be some testing checks along the way.to ensure they at least meet the public school levels of STEM.

MachineFab812, 2 months ago

Un-schoolers already have better outcomes than public school kids. Leave them alone.

MachineFab812, 2 months ago

Un-schoolers typically have better outcomes than public-school kids, and you are confusing them for the products of religious schools. No one who thinks as you are inferring is going to give their kids any intellectual freedom.

rekabis, 2 months ago

Homeschooled children are consistently the least educated and least prepared for the modern world, including our capitalist-slavery system of indentured (be profitable to someone else or die) employment. The vast majority of them will either slide into extreme poverty or will never be able to extricate themselves from it.

MachineFab812, 2 months ago

“Consistently” … show your homework. Everything I’m seeing shows the opposite.

MachineFab812, 2 months ago

The schools and teachers have dealt with this on their own. Its asinine because they figured this out decades ago, yet here come the congress-critters to tell them how to do it “better”. Bet you $5 the final bill includes some mandate to use lock-boxes or “charging stations” from a specific vendor. 🤑

Its a “solution” looking to solve a problem long past, and probably just a trojan horse for some new graft and top-down meddling.

I mentioned the other stuff to highlight that this state knows how to be hands-off, until some new opportunity comes along to sabotage public schools and make working as a teacher in them even more insufferable.

I am not opposed to “un-schooling”, but this state’s implimentation is not so much acceptance of un-schooling as it is failing to enforce the standards it has laid out. The law on the matter is just vague enough for parents who can afford a lawyer to do whatever while still charging poor parents/students with truancy whenever some bureaucrat gets a wild hair up their ass.

redfox, 2 months ago

I’m completely in agreement with a lack of enforcement of standards. I haven’t read Indiana’s, but I’ve seen instances of a child’s learning not being checked in anyway, which led to them growing up without even the GED equivalent of knowledge.

Where are you getting vender solutions?

Also, where are you getting it’s not a problem or already been solved?

I ask because the three teachers I’ve talked to from three different districts all day it’s a huge problem.

When I asked them if this would solve it however, they said no because smart watches and the school isn’t allowed to discipline kids in anyway. By that, they meant detention or something, not hitting them or something crazy.

To me, this doesn’t seem like a false problem.

MachineFab812, 2 months ago

I have three teenagers in Highschool in Indiana. Students in their classes might get their phones out when they are not supposed to, but they put them away when called on it and are sent to the office if they distract others. In our school district at least, teachers have plenty of means to discipline students, or at least remove distractions when they occur. Every highschool here has a Police Liason Officer, and refusing to follow teacher’s orders(especially to leave the classroom) is treated as a crime or … a “crowd management” issue.

As for cell phones specifically, shoe organizer on the back of the classroom door, or cubbies(cub-bee) in a locked cabinet, ringers off and stashed like so at the beginning of class, done. There’s no shortage of (cheap)options available options for teachers nor of administrators willing to back teachers conventional(and long-established) plays on (somehow 🙄)high-profile issues.

Vendors? Look at private prisons and charter schools(both of which Democrats in office have been all-to-happy to facilitate, and Republicans love). Someone with a “solution”, or just planning to have a solution greases some palms, and suddenly the state is buying “the solution” from “the lowest bidder”, who just so happens to be the only bidder until their name is synonymous with “the solution” statewide, for decades.

If you were not aware, Indiana is a Republican state. Such things are very much out in the open here. Wouldn’t surprise me if this law passed, and suddenly there’s a re-branded Pyxis Medstation(a $32,000 machine) with Cubie(kew-bee) Drawers(an expensive add-on) in every classroom, with an expensive mainenance contract to boot.

Hyperbole, hopefully - that was the worst possibility I could come up with, but that product actually exists, and you get the idea. No way in hell the state is coming up with a better(or cheaper) solution than the teachers already use. That’s like assuming California Governor Newsome’s “bread exemption” to the $20hr Fast-Food Worker Minimum Wage serves a useful purpose besides doing a favor to the Owner of Panera, a close personal friend of his. Newsome is a Democrat, by the way.

redfox, 2 months ago

This is interesting. I’ve got some time before I start needing to be at school meetings and such. I’ll see how these things go before then.

raoulraoul, 2 months ago

What would you do in that emergency they mentioned?

Gosh. Call the school, maybe? Or one of the hundred other methods via your smartphone (and not).

Why should kids not be able to use them at lunch?

Why should they? Can’t kids, who have less self-control than you do—I’m assuming WAYYY more than I should here—have a chance to develop without a smartphone during what’s normally a social moment with peer interaction? Are you that bonded socially to your cell?

If you want to control your kid’s phone time, there’s already apps for that.

Yes, there are. Apparently they’re not being utilized in a effective manner. Parents won’t do anything about it. The school try to educate but incessant attention robbery, be it on an individual level or class-wide, prohibits that. I think the Great State of Indiana has every right in protecting and maintaining a social promise to educate their minor-age children and help them develop in a healthy manner, mentally and physically.

After 18 years old, you can fuck off.

!detroit ☆ !michigan

redfox, 2 months ago

Why are you so angry? This isn’t a post or news story condemning your favorite political view, or talking shit about your mom.

Gosh. Call the school.

Have you ever gone through something like a shooting, fire, tornado?

I ask because if the average school has kids in the high hundreds or low thousands, you’re not getting through during an emergency to the couple of office staff to ask if the information is real, etc. You’d have sit sit losing your mind waiting for the schools mass notification system to send you something.

Assuming way more…

It seems you’re suggesting that me or average parents have the self control of a child? Not sure how this contributes.

The point about kids having less self control is valid. There’s clearly a different approach to electronics for an elementary school aged kid and a teenager, plus different concerns with negative affects of social media.

raoulraoul, 2 months ago

Why are you so angry?

Not angry at all. That’s too bad you read it that way. Loquacious, perhaps…nobody’s perfect. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I ask because if the average school has kids in the high hundreds or low thousands, you’re not getting through during an emergency to the couple of office staff to ask if the information is real, etc. You’d have sit sit losing your mind waiting for the schools mass notification system to send you something.

No. No, you wouldn’t. You’d most likely be going on about your day, like most days, ringing up some customer or finishing some spreadsheet, blissfully ignorant about the exact details of your kid’s exact moments in school…until that notification from the school comes in. But you insist a call from your child in the midst of a crisis, hiding from your hypothetical sniper or in the middle of a tornado warning, would be more effective and less panic-inducing.

I find it interesting that instead of saying something about smartphones and aiding in-school research/studies, you immediately jump to “red alert emergency!”

It seems you’re suggesting <snip>

I’m suggesting that something with the status quo regarding kids’ education and smartphones is not working. I’m suggesting since the good people of Indiana apparently insist on giving their K-12 children smartphones yet can’t teach them responsible usage, that you think that it’s better your children “interact” via TikTok or Instagram or crush candy instead of during Algebra 101, Social Studies or during lunch period, the good state of Indiana and its educators should restrict children’s smartphone usage during school hours. It’s not unreasonable.

Better yet, teach your kids to leave the phones at home, Mom and Dad. But since you didn’t teach 'em that, well…here we are. Peace.

!detroit ☆ !michigan

redfox, 2 months ago

Yeah I don’t think it’s very reasonable to get a call in the middle of something traumatic, for a moment by moment update, more like this just happened and I’m out or safe or what ever.

I don’t support phones in class either, I just don’t think they need to lock them up. Maybe just put them up?

I feel like kids have tons of access to tools for learning and Chromebooks now,.not super worried about needing a phone in class for research.

mysoulishome, 2 months ago

I’d be more than fine if the school makes kids put their phones away but I am definitely 100% against the state mandating anything like this. After they did the whole pronouns need parental permission bill I want the state to stay the fuck away from school policy setting…

redfox, 2 months ago

Yeah, I think I’m going to have a much bigger issue with school related legislation in a couple of years when my son gets there.

I agree from the standpoint of bringing political/social issues into an environment where it should be primarily focused on learning. I’d also appreciate legislation regarding schools to be very limited.

parpol, 2 months ago

It’s not your own kid that is the problem, but rather that every other parent is shitty and let’s their kid be on the phone all day long, which in turn forces your kid to follow suit or be ostracized. If phones are banned altogether from school, kids get to have healthy activities during recess, rather than being glued to the phone. The shitty parents can let their kids get phone neck after school.

raoulraoul, 2 months ago

It’s not your own kid that is the problem, but rather that every other parent is shitty

…said every parent.

!detroit ☆ !michigan

redfox, 2 months ago

I think the idea that having the school day be electronics free for the reason you mentioned is logical.

I think there’s a different scenario between elementary, middle, and high school, but regardless of their age, an electronics break is an attempt to do something positive. I counter this in my mind by asking how much worse the current situation with electronics and kids differs from previous generation that didn’t have cell phones in school, but still managed to bully each other and have all kinds of issues.

The article implies that the broad/general mental health of the current kid generations as a whole are worse off than previous without all the constant social media. I wonder if that’s true or if it’s made worse by additional factors.

Do you have school aged kids?