10

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "WaPo: Students can’t get off their phones. Schools have had enough.". The thread was originally posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum, but since the thread is not specific to MCPS, I moved it to the "Schools and Education General Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to an article in The Washington Post discussing efforts by schools to combat the usage of mobile phones in school by students. Mobile phone usage has apparently increased dramatically following the pandemic. The article describes a $16 pouch in which some schools are requiring students to store their phones during school hours, provoking the original poster to criticize the article as an "advertisement" for spending money instead of setting and enforcing rules. However, the article also discusses schools that have forgone the pouches and set and enforced the rules that the orignal poster advocates. The first poster to respond suggests that an effective intervention that only costs $16 per kid would be the cheapest solution yet. My main takeaway from this thread is that, perhaps as a result of their own mobile phone addictions, participants in the thread had a difficult time staying on topic. Within the first four posts, the discussion was switched to talking about textbooks. Then posters turned to talking about the use of Chromebooks and on-line learning. Just to be clear, the Post article is about students using phones while they are supposed to be either studying or listening to their teachers. The phones are not being used as part of the learning process. They certainly are not replacing textbooks or school-issued Chromebooks for that matter. Those topics are interesting and worthy of their own threads, but not relevant to this one. Posters who oppose mobile phone use during class suggest that not only are students distracted themselves by their phones, but they distract others in the class as well. Moreover, the phone are frequently used to cheat. A surprising number of posters were in favor of kids having their phones in class. One poster argued that it was the teachers' fault for not making lessons interesting if kids were distracted by their phones. Quite a few posters joined the original poster in advocating for strictly-enforced policies about mobile phone usage, but others argued that it should not be part teachers' jobs to enforce this and that it could place them in legal or physical danger given that teachers have been either sued or beaten for taking mobile phone away. Another surprising theme of some replies was to claim that mobile phones are analogous to comic books or rock music as things that "the olds" thought were ruining the youth but weren't. I think those type of replies missed the point. To my knowledge, reading comic books or listening to rock music during class, much like using mobile phones, is not considered a problem because it is going to corrupt our youth, but because it is interfering with children's education.