A couple of days ago, a YouTuber published a video discussing a recent protest where high school students walked out over a new rule supposing to ban smartphones from campus. Let’s talk about the situation, and my response to his thoughts. Episode Notes
Oct 11, 2022·edited Oct 11, 2022Liked by Dan Scott
This is a heavy topic. I remember as a kid that the walkman and pagers were problems. I would put smartphones into this category as well. Nepsis was somewhat correct for older students, but I would argue that this not true for youngsters. Young people are easily distracted and lack self discipline as a side-effect of not being done developing biologically. If we wish them to learn, we need them to focus. To get them to focus, we must eliminate distractions. Additionally, we know that smartphones, social media, loot box games, and many more categories of products/services are designed to be addictive and have negative effects on the well-being of many people young and old.
For these reasons and more, I have to say that smartphones should not be allowed in a grade school. For emergency contact, a smartwatch is plenty for sending/receiving calls/texts.
As a side note, I have tried to live without a smartphone and it is insanely difficult (due to employer expectations as well as like... paying for parking in major cities and so on). I would absolutely love it if our society walked-back the constant-contact expectation via 50 different apps/sites/whatever. Of course, I also think that we peaked technologically in the 90s as far as usability and aesthetics... so... you know, I suppose everything is a matter of taste.
I'm with you, and after discussing this further with Nepsis over on Locals he and I agreed that we were having the same conversation from two different approaches. My first smartphone was a Blackberry Curve from 2007-2008 and that was great. It was a nice mix between smartphone and PDA and honestly I feel like the classic Blackberry was probably peak cell phone tech. I know some people got addicted to them, but for a lowly college student it was perfect. I've jumped back and forth between smartphones and flip phones since then, but am finding it increasingly difficult to go back to the old ways -- and I don't like that.
Thanks for pointing it out Bradford. On this subject, my last thought was that I actually didn't explain where I draw the line, and thank you for bringing up the subject: this is it, to teach is to serve. A teacher should serve not only with knowledge, but also with authority. In the classroom, normally what I tell is usually well took by the students, I guess is that they understand that it's in their best interest to do so -- I'm 0 involved in that "their best interest", that's something between them and their personal ambitions. My job is to show them that: it's incredibly hard to teach them that until they're 18, because of the reasons you so well pointed out. It's a self destructive phase in everybody lifes.
And that's where my authority in classroom prevails. Usually, if the student wants to make or receive a call, sure! My strategy is: they ask me to go to the bathroom, and nobody has got nothing to do with what's done there. There; problem solved. They ask politely, they go to the bathroom, they make their calls, no one was disturbed, and I preserved the authority over the situation.
There are times where I recommend them to try to solve the exercise, and I'll go to their place to help them -- believe me that a lot of times they get distracted is just because they're feeling frustrate with some exercise. What happens a lot is that when they finally understand what was missing, they forgot they asked me to go outside.
Being a teacher nowadays: tutor, mentor, psychologist, social security worker, and in some cases, a friend.
As a professional trainer, teacher and a parent, this topic is quite dear to me, so this deserves a comment.
DT got it wrong: of course they should be allowed!
I always allow! Its in their responsibility how they use their time. There's one rule: "not to disturb anyone", and this is somehow what I tell them: «want to play? Fine. Want to look to social network? Ok. Probably you're going to miss what I'm lecturing, and therefore fail in the exercises, tests and exams? Of course! Your time, your grades, your problem. Or you can be a grown man and make something better with your time and brains. I promise it's the best choice ;-)»
Somehow, after dozens of students and classes, I had 0 problems with mobile phones. And I allow them! Is it possible that students, when given the choice, they actually chose to participate in class? They do! It's my job to make classes challenging and compelling. And that's what regular teachers are not aiming to.
You see, I don't like teachers. Since my high school; and I went all the way into engineering college: Teachers are lazy. When teaching computer science, you're either on the edge of it, what takes a lot of energy because there are a gazillion new technologies appearing each day; or you're left behind and, when you realize, you are teaching something that was already deprecated.
How do I try to stay upfront? For about ten years, I actually try to sustain two jobs: my mobile app development/software making business; and I lecture. It's really hard and takes a toll in family time, but I can't figure out a better way to earn the bucks that lecturing doesn't give you, and be the best updated teacher your students deserve.
Most teachers just don't take the effort to make their classes compelling! It's always easier to DICTATE how students should behave. Of course, a lazy teachers expects them to be like robots, so they force them rules, unfortunately not in the student's best interest. My students always do the project they see fit, as long as they use the technologies and techniques I teach them: want to do a social network, fine; want to build a management system for your dad's car shop? Great! want to do a management system for your aunt's vet clinic? That's awesome. It's harder for we to access different projects and stuff, but it's so cool when your students can get a job even before they finish their official training.
The way I see it, my challenge as a teacher is greater than prohibit mobile phones in classes: I try to create and environment more or less like the real world, where they feel such a pressure, that they don't even have the time to do dumb stuff with their smartphones. They can do it! Most of the time, they actually chose not to.
How I can be so sure about the stuff I'm writing -- and I hope this doesn't fall in the wrong hands! --: I teach teachers as well, for the first Mobile Development Training Course for National High school teachers in this part of Europe was created by me. And they're my worst students.
There's a lot of stuff to talk about teaching nowadays. It just can't fit in a post, or a comment, but I'm happy to talk about it :-)
Oct 16, 2022·edited Oct 17, 2022Liked by Dan Scott
Wish I had you as a teacher, or even as the school principal for some of the places I had to suffer through.
It's like you said. Teachers are lazy (or at least a lot of the ones I suffered were.) But it's worse, even if people don't want to accept the truth. Many of the teachers I had to suffer through didn't even know the subject matters they were teaching properly. I had to correct one of my science teachers on the proper positions of the planets when I was in grade 6! That same teacher would show up to class dressed like she was going out to the dance club. When I brought the fact up with her, saying that maybe if she took less time trying to dress up to impress the teen boys in my class, she would know the correct information she is SUPPOSED to be teaching.
Got sent to the principals office, where I pled my case; and then she got reprimanded and told to dress appropriately. This, after the school just had some big thing about no spaghetti string tops for the girls only to cave on the matter. (Edit: Or I should say I think that's what occurred, because she started dressing more appropriately afterwards. So she must have been reprimanded somehow, cause she was not pleased with me for a good month or so afterwards.)
I bring that up, because it's just like with cellphones and everything else that the majority of inept teachers try to ban, whether it be pokemon cards, gameboys, smartphones or etc. You try to ban something, you make it more desirable. Always.
Pokemon cards? The girls in school didn't really care for them much where I went to school, until us boys were having to deal with them being banned. This got their attention, because now they wanted to know what they were. They LOVED pokemon. "So cute" they would say.
School lost.
Game Boys. Same deal.
Heck, even calculators got flak once upon a time ago. Now you can't go to school without having a Ti-83 or whatever iteration they are on now.
Ha, that's awesome. I had a similar experience with a teacher in high school. He and I got into it one class in my junior year (11th grade) about the timeline of the pacific theater of World War 2. I've always been a bit of a history buff so I knew I was right and in the end he conceded. Good guy, and he did a good job overall. He was probably one of my favorite teachers in high school, but that one day felt great to come out on top!
Heh, sounds about right. One of my classmates was a huge WW buff, so he would have been right their with ya on correcting that teacher till teach was blue in the face.
Meanwhile, these teachers resort to consulting the back of text books and such for things we know already because we are listening to our grandparents or reading about it, or watching the tv documentaries. lol.
All the while, these same teachers are saying things like "you can't trust documentaries or everything you read." Then goes on to put on a documentary for the class for the topic being learned about...
But you give a good example: Pokemon cards and stuff. I know zip about that phenomenon. But, I had to learn it, in order to do projects on the Pokemon subject, so they could find OOP more interesting. I dare to say that the first Pokedex Rest Api was made in a class of mine; and I know nada on the subject. But they did. I was their interest; they helped me learning it, and while they were doing it, they were creating a nice UML Class diagram ;-) and that's what counts. Not how I teach, but what they learn.
It's harder you know? It takes a toll. A price not everyone in interested in paying; and no one of us can judge. It's not needed. A bad thing about our public system is that you get paid either you put real effort in your job or you do not.
BTW, let the teachers walk around nicely dressed; it's so boring all the school environment, colleagues that dress like that lift the spirits up! :-D
Well, I get what you intend to mean, but I think you missed my point about the teacher and dress code. My point is that her dressing the way she was was hypocritical because she was part of the faculty stating that the girls in school couldn't wear a certain kind of shirt, but then she would dress like she belonged in the red-light district. I was trying to be nice about it in saying it the way I did, but I guess I need to be a bit blunter about it. (I was totally not this nice about it that day. She was dressing in a manner you would expect to see in "that kind" of bar. Not "go out for a nice day on the town" kind of way.) I don't much appreciate hypocrisy. Appreciated it much less as a kid. That said, I understand the point you are trying to make. I just think you missed mine. There was a dress code, and she was not following it, while trying to enforce it on other people. So I gave her a taste of logic, and she didn't like it. This was the same teacher who couldn't get the order of planets in the correct sequence and had to resort to looking at the text book. I normally wouldn't hold that against all teachers, having to use the text book at times. But she majored in the sciences. Specifically astronomy...
So yeah, me and her didn't get along that month.
As for things being harder the way you do it. That's fine. Thing is, I expect teachers to do what they are paid for. If they aren't, then I expect them to listen when people are telling them to do their job. If they aren't doing that, then I expect someone to replace them.
I.E. I appreciate your method, because you are actually doing what I see as "your job". Make sense? Teaching isn't supposed to be easy. Sure, you can make it easier on yourself in some ways, but if its getting to a point where a person can call teachers lazy without batting an eye, there is a problem with that situation. One I don't think is allowable to be continued.
And on the pokemon subject. That's really cool. The thing about all of that is that it first came out when I was like... 7 years old while it was still over in Japan, and came over to Canada and America when I was like 8 years old. So when us kids had our trading cards and game boy games to play with each other, we were having all sorts of fun with it. Of course it took our attention away from class at times. But as one teacher noticed during my grade 4 year, some of us were able to pay attention just fine while going through our deck of cards. Much like how you said with kids with cellphones these days. I would play my gameboy in class, with it inside my desk cavity while making it look like I was listening to the teacher. And I would still get good enough marks in class.
That said, parent teacher interviews always had some comment about how "If Johnny would just apply himself more". Sure, yeah, I could have. But other kids hate smarter kids, and one of the nice things about getting just barely better marks than the rest of the kids instead of getting straight A's through elementary (which doesn't matter in the long run) is that kids don't pick on you as much for being a nerd, etc. So, having something help me pass the time while I went through the paces of pretending to give a flying hoot about what was being taught to me during those years was a god send. Especially after they tried to put me ahead of my peers in a older grade due to my advanced capabilities found out that year, and then put me back because they found out that even older kids hate it when a younger kid is smarter than them...
School is rough for some of us, yo. This is why I would have liked you as a teacher. You would have been fine with me doing what I needed to, to get through the day, so long as I was learning and cooperating for the most part. Which I normally did. Other teachers though, like that one in my grade 6 year or so... she was always making it her business to correct everyone even though she was often wrong.
So yeah, I laid into her. She was making the girls in class feel bad about dressing in a way that she her self would normally dress; and then one day she dressed even skimpier and was constantly walking around us boys in class; especially Dylan and Kevin. (Taller, and not bad looking either.)
I don't think it would be unfair to say she had some questionable thoughts going on in her head.
This is a heavy topic. I remember as a kid that the walkman and pagers were problems. I would put smartphones into this category as well. Nepsis was somewhat correct for older students, but I would argue that this not true for youngsters. Young people are easily distracted and lack self discipline as a side-effect of not being done developing biologically. If we wish them to learn, we need them to focus. To get them to focus, we must eliminate distractions. Additionally, we know that smartphones, social media, loot box games, and many more categories of products/services are designed to be addictive and have negative effects on the well-being of many people young and old.
For these reasons and more, I have to say that smartphones should not be allowed in a grade school. For emergency contact, a smartwatch is plenty for sending/receiving calls/texts.
As a side note, I have tried to live without a smartphone and it is insanely difficult (due to employer expectations as well as like... paying for parking in major cities and so on). I would absolutely love it if our society walked-back the constant-contact expectation via 50 different apps/sites/whatever. Of course, I also think that we peaked technologically in the 90s as far as usability and aesthetics... so... you know, I suppose everything is a matter of taste.
I'm with you, and after discussing this further with Nepsis over on Locals he and I agreed that we were having the same conversation from two different approaches. My first smartphone was a Blackberry Curve from 2007-2008 and that was great. It was a nice mix between smartphone and PDA and honestly I feel like the classic Blackberry was probably peak cell phone tech. I know some people got addicted to them, but for a lowly college student it was perfect. I've jumped back and forth between smartphones and flip phones since then, but am finding it increasingly difficult to go back to the old ways -- and I don't like that.
As for the kiddos, you're spot on.
Have to say, crackberry wasn’t my jam. Palm Treo forever.
Thanks for pointing it out Bradford. On this subject, my last thought was that I actually didn't explain where I draw the line, and thank you for bringing up the subject: this is it, to teach is to serve. A teacher should serve not only with knowledge, but also with authority. In the classroom, normally what I tell is usually well took by the students, I guess is that they understand that it's in their best interest to do so -- I'm 0 involved in that "their best interest", that's something between them and their personal ambitions. My job is to show them that: it's incredibly hard to teach them that until they're 18, because of the reasons you so well pointed out. It's a self destructive phase in everybody lifes.
And that's where my authority in classroom prevails. Usually, if the student wants to make or receive a call, sure! My strategy is: they ask me to go to the bathroom, and nobody has got nothing to do with what's done there. There; problem solved. They ask politely, they go to the bathroom, they make their calls, no one was disturbed, and I preserved the authority over the situation.
There are times where I recommend them to try to solve the exercise, and I'll go to their place to help them -- believe me that a lot of times they get distracted is just because they're feeling frustrate with some exercise. What happens a lot is that when they finally understand what was missing, they forgot they asked me to go outside.
Being a teacher nowadays: tutor, mentor, psychologist, social security worker, and in some cases, a friend.
As a professional trainer, teacher and a parent, this topic is quite dear to me, so this deserves a comment.
DT got it wrong: of course they should be allowed!
I always allow! Its in their responsibility how they use their time. There's one rule: "not to disturb anyone", and this is somehow what I tell them: «want to play? Fine. Want to look to social network? Ok. Probably you're going to miss what I'm lecturing, and therefore fail in the exercises, tests and exams? Of course! Your time, your grades, your problem. Or you can be a grown man and make something better with your time and brains. I promise it's the best choice ;-)»
Somehow, after dozens of students and classes, I had 0 problems with mobile phones. And I allow them! Is it possible that students, when given the choice, they actually chose to participate in class? They do! It's my job to make classes challenging and compelling. And that's what regular teachers are not aiming to.
You see, I don't like teachers. Since my high school; and I went all the way into engineering college: Teachers are lazy. When teaching computer science, you're either on the edge of it, what takes a lot of energy because there are a gazillion new technologies appearing each day; or you're left behind and, when you realize, you are teaching something that was already deprecated.
How do I try to stay upfront? For about ten years, I actually try to sustain two jobs: my mobile app development/software making business; and I lecture. It's really hard and takes a toll in family time, but I can't figure out a better way to earn the bucks that lecturing doesn't give you, and be the best updated teacher your students deserve.
Most teachers just don't take the effort to make their classes compelling! It's always easier to DICTATE how students should behave. Of course, a lazy teachers expects them to be like robots, so they force them rules, unfortunately not in the student's best interest. My students always do the project they see fit, as long as they use the technologies and techniques I teach them: want to do a social network, fine; want to build a management system for your dad's car shop? Great! want to do a management system for your aunt's vet clinic? That's awesome. It's harder for we to access different projects and stuff, but it's so cool when your students can get a job even before they finish their official training.
The way I see it, my challenge as a teacher is greater than prohibit mobile phones in classes: I try to create and environment more or less like the real world, where they feel such a pressure, that they don't even have the time to do dumb stuff with their smartphones. They can do it! Most of the time, they actually chose not to.
How I can be so sure about the stuff I'm writing -- and I hope this doesn't fall in the wrong hands! --: I teach teachers as well, for the first Mobile Development Training Course for National High school teachers in this part of Europe was created by me. And they're my worst students.
There's a lot of stuff to talk about teaching nowadays. It just can't fit in a post, or a comment, but I'm happy to talk about it :-)
Wish I had you as a teacher, or even as the school principal for some of the places I had to suffer through.
It's like you said. Teachers are lazy (or at least a lot of the ones I suffered were.) But it's worse, even if people don't want to accept the truth. Many of the teachers I had to suffer through didn't even know the subject matters they were teaching properly. I had to correct one of my science teachers on the proper positions of the planets when I was in grade 6! That same teacher would show up to class dressed like she was going out to the dance club. When I brought the fact up with her, saying that maybe if she took less time trying to dress up to impress the teen boys in my class, she would know the correct information she is SUPPOSED to be teaching.
Got sent to the principals office, where I pled my case; and then she got reprimanded and told to dress appropriately. This, after the school just had some big thing about no spaghetti string tops for the girls only to cave on the matter. (Edit: Or I should say I think that's what occurred, because she started dressing more appropriately afterwards. So she must have been reprimanded somehow, cause she was not pleased with me for a good month or so afterwards.)
I bring that up, because it's just like with cellphones and everything else that the majority of inept teachers try to ban, whether it be pokemon cards, gameboys, smartphones or etc. You try to ban something, you make it more desirable. Always.
Pokemon cards? The girls in school didn't really care for them much where I went to school, until us boys were having to deal with them being banned. This got their attention, because now they wanted to know what they were. They LOVED pokemon. "So cute" they would say.
School lost.
Game Boys. Same deal.
Heck, even calculators got flak once upon a time ago. Now you can't go to school without having a Ti-83 or whatever iteration they are on now.
Ha, that's awesome. I had a similar experience with a teacher in high school. He and I got into it one class in my junior year (11th grade) about the timeline of the pacific theater of World War 2. I've always been a bit of a history buff so I knew I was right and in the end he conceded. Good guy, and he did a good job overall. He was probably one of my favorite teachers in high school, but that one day felt great to come out on top!
Heh, sounds about right. One of my classmates was a huge WW buff, so he would have been right their with ya on correcting that teacher till teach was blue in the face.
Meanwhile, these teachers resort to consulting the back of text books and such for things we know already because we are listening to our grandparents or reading about it, or watching the tv documentaries. lol.
All the while, these same teachers are saying things like "you can't trust documentaries or everything you read." Then goes on to put on a documentary for the class for the topic being learned about...
And they wonder why we didn't respect them.
humm... There's a lot to say on that.
But you give a good example: Pokemon cards and stuff. I know zip about that phenomenon. But, I had to learn it, in order to do projects on the Pokemon subject, so they could find OOP more interesting. I dare to say that the first Pokedex Rest Api was made in a class of mine; and I know nada on the subject. But they did. I was their interest; they helped me learning it, and while they were doing it, they were creating a nice UML Class diagram ;-) and that's what counts. Not how I teach, but what they learn.
It's harder you know? It takes a toll. A price not everyone in interested in paying; and no one of us can judge. It's not needed. A bad thing about our public system is that you get paid either you put real effort in your job or you do not.
BTW, let the teachers walk around nicely dressed; it's so boring all the school environment, colleagues that dress like that lift the spirits up! :-D
Well, I get what you intend to mean, but I think you missed my point about the teacher and dress code. My point is that her dressing the way she was was hypocritical because she was part of the faculty stating that the girls in school couldn't wear a certain kind of shirt, but then she would dress like she belonged in the red-light district. I was trying to be nice about it in saying it the way I did, but I guess I need to be a bit blunter about it. (I was totally not this nice about it that day. She was dressing in a manner you would expect to see in "that kind" of bar. Not "go out for a nice day on the town" kind of way.) I don't much appreciate hypocrisy. Appreciated it much less as a kid. That said, I understand the point you are trying to make. I just think you missed mine. There was a dress code, and she was not following it, while trying to enforce it on other people. So I gave her a taste of logic, and she didn't like it. This was the same teacher who couldn't get the order of planets in the correct sequence and had to resort to looking at the text book. I normally wouldn't hold that against all teachers, having to use the text book at times. But she majored in the sciences. Specifically astronomy...
So yeah, me and her didn't get along that month.
As for things being harder the way you do it. That's fine. Thing is, I expect teachers to do what they are paid for. If they aren't, then I expect them to listen when people are telling them to do their job. If they aren't doing that, then I expect someone to replace them.
I.E. I appreciate your method, because you are actually doing what I see as "your job". Make sense? Teaching isn't supposed to be easy. Sure, you can make it easier on yourself in some ways, but if its getting to a point where a person can call teachers lazy without batting an eye, there is a problem with that situation. One I don't think is allowable to be continued.
And on the pokemon subject. That's really cool. The thing about all of that is that it first came out when I was like... 7 years old while it was still over in Japan, and came over to Canada and America when I was like 8 years old. So when us kids had our trading cards and game boy games to play with each other, we were having all sorts of fun with it. Of course it took our attention away from class at times. But as one teacher noticed during my grade 4 year, some of us were able to pay attention just fine while going through our deck of cards. Much like how you said with kids with cellphones these days. I would play my gameboy in class, with it inside my desk cavity while making it look like I was listening to the teacher. And I would still get good enough marks in class.
That said, parent teacher interviews always had some comment about how "If Johnny would just apply himself more". Sure, yeah, I could have. But other kids hate smarter kids, and one of the nice things about getting just barely better marks than the rest of the kids instead of getting straight A's through elementary (which doesn't matter in the long run) is that kids don't pick on you as much for being a nerd, etc. So, having something help me pass the time while I went through the paces of pretending to give a flying hoot about what was being taught to me during those years was a god send. Especially after they tried to put me ahead of my peers in a older grade due to my advanced capabilities found out that year, and then put me back because they found out that even older kids hate it when a younger kid is smarter than them...
School is rough for some of us, yo. This is why I would have liked you as a teacher. You would have been fine with me doing what I needed to, to get through the day, so long as I was learning and cooperating for the most part. Which I normally did. Other teachers though, like that one in my grade 6 year or so... she was always making it her business to correct everyone even though she was often wrong.
So yeah, I laid into her. She was making the girls in class feel bad about dressing in a way that she her self would normally dress; and then one day she dressed even skimpier and was constantly walking around us boys in class; especially Dylan and Kevin. (Taller, and not bad looking either.)
I don't think it would be unfair to say she had some questionable thoughts going on in her head.
This is a good conversation fellas, but do me a favor and try to keep the language family friendly por favor.
Oh, ya... sorry eh'.
I'll see about fixing some of that for ya.
Edit: Okay, I think I found the offending vernacular, and altered it. If there is anything else, just let me know.
Thanks! I appreciate it.
Hi Dan,
How can you be reached? Got a project in mind and maybe you can help.
Thanks
Sure thing. Telegram: @rebornjumpman
Thanks! I've added you.