As a millennial I never understood any time I hear about this sort of thing since I remember phones were strictly forbidden and teachers would take them from you. Not sure if California was different from Florida, but I could have sworn Florida passed similar legislation if I am not mistaken.
Only after school were teachers laxe for obvious reasons. During lunch time we were not expected to use phones.
Yes, at some point, "the experts" seem to have decided that it was very important children must be allowed to have their smartphones in class. Totally ridiculous. I guess that marks my ascension to curmudgeonhood.
No, I've certainly seen a lot of education sector academics argue for allowing them. I don't know about the teachers at the coalface, I can imagine their word carries about as much weight as any pleb worker in a bloated bureaucracy like education. I have seen stories about teachers being assaulted bullied and attacked by child and parent when trying to enforce these bans though, so I would be surprised if even those are unanimous on the issue.
midwest of United States, 2007(7th)[12-13yo]-2012(12th)[17-18]
- 2007(7th): The mosquito ring tone was a popular notification ring tone. I recall a friend testing it with my math teacher during class. He could not hear it.
- 2010(10th): The last time I recall passing notes in class... I got caught. Apologies to my Geometry teacher. He was one of the best teachers I had.
- 2012(12th): I(late to the party) bought my first phone... The only time I recalll using my phone was when went to the bathroom and accidently dropped it in in the toilet. :'( ... 3 days in a bag of rice and it worked just fine. I'm sure I must have used it in the toilet too many times for that to have happened, but I don't recall ever using it in class, as the punishment was confiscation of the phone and it wouldn't be returned until a parent signed off in person.
Lots of people in the comments supporting cellphone bans in school. To play the devil's advocate: the role of high school is to transition students between childhood and adulthood. In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone. You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care. So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense? "ok 17 year olds! lets put our phones away in our numbered phone cubbies!!"
Redirect them, sure. Teach about tech literacy. Find the middleground between these two stages of life. But at this point, it should be ultimately the student's choice.
It says each school district is required to come up with a policy to prohibit or limit smartphone use. The policy has to allow teachers to grant permission for phones, and it says:
> The goal of the policy shall be to promote evidence-based use of smartphone practices to support pupil learning and well-being.
That sounds like the middle ground you're talking about. Kids will have plenty of time to pick up tech skills at home, and they can still be taught tech literacy in class. But that doesn't mean they have to be allowed arbitrary use of phones to disrupt their own learning or their peers', just like they don't have to be allowed to skip as many classes as they want.
> Lots of people in the comments supporting cellphone bans in school. To play the devil's advocate: the role of high school is to transition students between childhood and adulthood. In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone.
You can get fired or people can stop associating with you though. Not allowed to do that to students.
> You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care. So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?
Because it disturbs and distracts other students, mostly.
> Redirect them, sure. Teach about tech literacy.
Nobody does that for you in adulthood either though, so that's not a good argument when it's used selectively like that. School is not adulthood, it's totally different, and phones are a pretty insignificant part of that.
Short of jail, nowhere in adulthood are you required to stay somewhere by law.
On top of that, I don’t think the kid quietly using their phone and ignoring class is the main issue here… it’s causing issues with the other kids and making the experience worse for a lot of kids.
Actually I'm of the opinion that highschool students needs to be sheltered, and the focus should be on academics and not necessarily trying to be an adult. There's always time to become an adult later, even if it hits you in the face in your 20s. But there's only a small window to get your academics in order while you're still in highschool.
While I'd love to agree with your opinion, it is unrealistic. 40% of high schoolers will not enroll in college. A further 20% will drop out of college before they graduate. The students that do end up completing college are likely not the students this policy is worried about anyway.
While I'd love to see higher college attendance, the reality is that high school must prepare students for every possible outcome.
> So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?
Because your prefontal cortext does not fully grow till you are in your early 20s. A 17 years olds brain is very different from that off a 22 year old. There are different repercussions to arressting development vs letting the brain "grow" and then have it face the issues of the day. Both will still have impact but the latter gives them the best fighting chance.
I graduated highschool 4 years ago. What I remember is about 1/3 of the kids not even paying attention in class and just being on their phones. For honors and ap classes it was a little better, but even then there were always a few kids completely distracted with their cellphones.
If this is the case, question what will happen when the students you describe graduate. Maybe, they will get a reality check. Why didn't that check come in high school? Maybe, they will fail in life. In both cases, the school system has failed them. High school should be a controlled environment that allows youth to safely fail, learn from failure, and grow.
Phone addiction is an immensely complicated problem. This strategy of blanket bans will not rehabilitate students, just as the war on drugs failed prior.
> If this is the case, question what will happen when the students you describe graduate. Maybe, they will get a reality check.
I just went to whole foods the other day and the butcher didn't know how to convert between fractions and decimals. They were American btw, in 20s or 30s
Maybe they'll fail after high school? Who knows? But anyway, at least they'll know how fractions work. At least they'll have basic reading skills and be capable of voting and participating in society
there is difference between having your phone with you and using it while on the job. If you are scrolling tiktok on your job, you won't have it for long.
That is exactly the point I was getting at when I wrote
> In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone. You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care.
On the job, you will fail if you have a tiktok addiction. On the job, there are no phone cubbies.
To those saying this shouldn't be law, and instead school policy, that is precisely what this bill is requiring is it not? Further, it gives protection to students who might need a device for whatever reason. That's probably the most important piece of this bill. Many students require the use of assisted technology and poorly run school systems, such as the one I was in, are more likely to harm students if they are to roll their own policy without such protection.
This is a minor matter that is a strictly California thing so sure, they can roll this way if they want. Worse things have happened.
But if you want the outline of why this sort of thing shouldn't be a law, the issue here is that it might be that the best educators will ban devices. It might be that the best educators encourage and leverage devices. Or it might even be that they take no position on the matter. Any which way, either there is consensus and the Californian legislature doesn't need to act because the schools can, or there is no consensus and the Californian legislature should leave it to parents and educators to sort out without pretending it has some sort of competence to add anything to the mix.
Legislating everything that seems like a good idea at the time is a pretty safe way to end up doing real damage as people initially had many options to act cleverly but now do not. This is not something that the politicians have any reason to be dealing with.
To be clear, I agree with some of what you're saying. I think bans on anything are generally questionable and prefer to see individuals, children included, given agency over what they find is best for their situation. I also see the value in school choice. I also know that people are stupid, children included, and don't always act in their best interest. Hence why there's restrictions on nicotine, alcohol, and driving for youth and that generally isn't a partisan issue.
However, this bill doesn't appear to specify how phones are restricted, just that there is a school policy. Further it gives protections to students who need it. This is why I find it reasonable.
Schools still appear to have a choice in implementation. That said I'm not a Californian, I'm childless, and I only scanned through the bill.
Parents will howl at the local admin if its locally changeable policy - I suspect that the thought of being out of touch with their children is unbearable.
This is exactly why they’re not already banned in practically all schools. Teachers and admin want to. Enough parents throw a fit if they can’t text their kid in class just to shoot the shit (seriously) that lots of schools have just given up, though. There are only so many hours in the day.
In part I see this as the legislature stepping up to be the bad guy, and taking pressure off schools. School administrators know phones are a problem, but a minority of students and parents are very vocal and make it hard to put bans in place.
Pretty much every school allows teachers to ban phones in their class, so we have the fully devolved approach already, but it just puts the burden on teachers, it's not real autonomy.
“vocal minority is very loud, everyone else disagrees but are too busy to come yell at electeds, so we can’t fix this obvious problem. Done. Problem festers”
Individual school administrators would have to face off against helicopter parents if they tried to implement this policy. The state government is protecting them through air superiority.
Ideally, school administrators would toughen up a little and tell these parents to STFU and GTFO. But you’d have to have many, many districts grow a backbone in order to get the coverage that a state law provides.
Our local high school
just instituted a no phones in class policy. When kids enter the classroom they put their phones in a numbered pocket on the wall. They retrieve it after class.
An angry parent that can't possibly imagine life without immediate access to their kid throughout the school day is likely to respond differently to the statement "This kid can't have their phone on during the day." when the reason is "local school policy" than when the reason is "state law".
In the former situation, a sufficiently-offended parent will likely try to get the administrator in question fired (or -at minimum- make their life dreadfully difficult). In the latter, the only people the parent can really appeal to are the folks in Sacramento. Busybodies like that rarely have the clout to do anything meaningful to the governor or his staff.
Anyway. It's quite possible that local school administrators requested that the governor help them out by making it so they can say "Sorry, I'd love to help, but The State says I have to order teachers to ban phones from classrooms. You know how it is. Take it up with the governor if you're mad about it.".
"specified that school districts have the authority to regulate the use of smartphones during school hours"
"require every school district, charter school and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026"
sounds like this explicitly allows responsibility, and requires it be taken.
Congrats everyone, the pocket computer has developed into a useless turd to the point it actually harms productivity to the point it has been banned where it should have been the most productive. Oh and grades are failing since it was carefully designed to ruin attention span.
This message is intentionally short. I would have preferred to put it long form with less sarcasm but that would require hope for improvement and more attention than I'm worth.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
> Eschew flamebait.
(Hacker News guidelines)
There's a perfectly fine topic for debate here, but you'd do much better to word it in a less inflammatory way.
The internet has a lot of material, but kids also learn a lot from being around their peers. Lots of families have both parents that work and can't watch their kids at home, or take them to extracurricular activities. Also, depending on what area you're in, many teachers that I know have Master's degrees and do in fact know what they're doing, but are hamstrung in other ways.
Phones mostly aren’t progress, as far as schools go.
Game boys and walkie-talkies weren’t either. Playing cards. Marbles (in the classroom). Instamatic cameras. And the ban on passing notes is basically ancient.
Those same things but on one tiny computer doesn’t suddenly make them good to allow in schools.
As a millennial I never understood any time I hear about this sort of thing since I remember phones were strictly forbidden and teachers would take them from you. Not sure if California was different from Florida, but I could have sworn Florida passed similar legislation if I am not mistaken.
Only after school were teachers laxe for obvious reasons. During lunch time we were not expected to use phones.
Yes, at some point, "the experts" seem to have decided that it was very important children must be allowed to have their smartphones in class. Totally ridiculous. I guess that marks my ascension to curmudgeonhood.
A loud minority of parents agitated for it enough that lots of schools caved. Educators don’t want phones in classrooms.
No, I've certainly seen a lot of education sector academics argue for allowing them. I don't know about the teachers at the coalface, I can imagine their word carries about as much weight as any pleb worker in a bloated bureaucracy like education. I have seen stories about teachers being assaulted bullied and attacked by child and parent when trying to enforce these bans though, so I would be surprised if even those are unanimous on the issue.
midwest of United States, 2007(7th)[12-13yo]-2012(12th)[17-18]
- 2007(7th): The mosquito ring tone was a popular notification ring tone. I recall a friend testing it with my math teacher during class. He could not hear it.
- 2010(10th): The last time I recall passing notes in class... I got caught. Apologies to my Geometry teacher. He was one of the best teachers I had.
- 2012(12th): I(late to the party) bought my first phone... The only time I recalll using my phone was when went to the bathroom and accidently dropped it in in the toilet. :'( ... 3 days in a bag of rice and it worked just fine. I'm sure I must have used it in the toilet too many times for that to have happened, but I don't recall ever using it in class, as the punishment was confiscation of the phone and it wouldn't be returned until a parent signed off in person.
I was about to say. Phones were not allowed and this was when the 3310 was the peak of mobile tech to have!
This is Melbourne Australia.
Born in 1988. Just like you, Nokia 3310. Banned in high school.
I remember being 'caught' with a Game Boy Advance, tried to hide it, teacher saw me, and actually told me it was fine.
Lots of people in the comments supporting cellphone bans in school. To play the devil's advocate: the role of high school is to transition students between childhood and adulthood. In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone. You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care. So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense? "ok 17 year olds! lets put our phones away in our numbered phone cubbies!!"
Redirect them, sure. Teach about tech literacy. Find the middleground between these two stages of life. But at this point, it should be ultimately the student's choice.
It's probably worth reading the actual text of the law: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
It says each school district is required to come up with a policy to prohibit or limit smartphone use. The policy has to allow teachers to grant permission for phones, and it says:
> The goal of the policy shall be to promote evidence-based use of smartphone practices to support pupil learning and well-being.
That sounds like the middle ground you're talking about. Kids will have plenty of time to pick up tech skills at home, and they can still be taught tech literacy in class. But that doesn't mean they have to be allowed arbitrary use of phones to disrupt their own learning or their peers', just like they don't have to be allowed to skip as many classes as they want.
> Lots of people in the comments supporting cellphone bans in school. To play the devil's advocate: the role of high school is to transition students between childhood and adulthood. In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone.
You can get fired or people can stop associating with you though. Not allowed to do that to students.
> You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care. So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?
Because it disturbs and distracts other students, mostly.
> Redirect them, sure. Teach about tech literacy.
Nobody does that for you in adulthood either though, so that's not a good argument when it's used selectively like that. School is not adulthood, it's totally different, and phones are a pretty insignificant part of that.
Short of jail, nowhere in adulthood are you required to stay somewhere by law.
On top of that, I don’t think the kid quietly using their phone and ignoring class is the main issue here… it’s causing issues with the other kids and making the experience worse for a lot of kids.
Actually I'm of the opinion that highschool students needs to be sheltered, and the focus should be on academics and not necessarily trying to be an adult. There's always time to become an adult later, even if it hits you in the face in your 20s. But there's only a small window to get your academics in order while you're still in highschool.
While I'd love to agree with your opinion, it is unrealistic. 40% of high schoolers will not enroll in college. A further 20% will drop out of college before they graduate. The students that do end up completing college are likely not the students this policy is worried about anyway.
While I'd love to see higher college attendance, the reality is that high school must prepare students for every possible outcome.
> So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?
Because your prefontal cortext does not fully grow till you are in your early 20s. A 17 years olds brain is very different from that off a 22 year old. There are different repercussions to arressting development vs letting the brain "grow" and then have it face the issues of the day. Both will still have impact but the latter gives them the best fighting chance.
I graduated highschool 4 years ago. What I remember is about 1/3 of the kids not even paying attention in class and just being on their phones. For honors and ap classes it was a little better, but even then there were always a few kids completely distracted with their cellphones.
If this is the case, question what will happen when the students you describe graduate. Maybe, they will get a reality check. Why didn't that check come in high school? Maybe, they will fail in life. In both cases, the school system has failed them. High school should be a controlled environment that allows youth to safely fail, learn from failure, and grow.
Phone addiction is an immensely complicated problem. This strategy of blanket bans will not rehabilitate students, just as the war on drugs failed prior.
> If this is the case, question what will happen when the students you describe graduate. Maybe, they will get a reality check.
I just went to whole foods the other day and the butcher didn't know how to convert between fractions and decimals. They were American btw, in 20s or 30s
Maybe they'll fail after high school? Who knows? But anyway, at least they'll know how fractions work. At least they'll have basic reading skills and be capable of voting and participating in society
I thought the role of school was for teaching kids how to think.
Doesn't take much imagination to think how a viral Chase money "glitch" can get past common sense when kids ignore the lesson and doom scroll tiktok.
There are lots of professional environments where you cannot just use your phone.
Where? Nuclear power plants? I'd wager that at least 95% of high school graduates will be bringing their phones on site.
More secure or controlled environments: Could be in manufacturing, defense, medical, but also some business settings, for example.
there is difference between having your phone with you and using it while on the job. If you are scrolling tiktok on your job, you won't have it for long.
That is exactly the point I was getting at when I wrote
> In adulthood, nobody will tell you to get off your phone. You will simply suffer repercussions if you cannot preform. If you can perform, nobody should care.
On the job, you will fail if you have a tiktok addiction. On the job, there are no phone cubbies.
You’ll also fail at a job if you have a crippling gameboy addiction, but almost nobody (well—almost no adult) was against banning those in schools.
To those saying this shouldn't be law, and instead school policy, that is precisely what this bill is requiring is it not? Further, it gives protection to students who might need a device for whatever reason. That's probably the most important piece of this bill. Many students require the use of assisted technology and poorly run school systems, such as the one I was in, are more likely to harm students if they are to roll their own policy without such protection.
This seems reasonable to me.
This is a minor matter that is a strictly California thing so sure, they can roll this way if they want. Worse things have happened.
But if you want the outline of why this sort of thing shouldn't be a law, the issue here is that it might be that the best educators will ban devices. It might be that the best educators encourage and leverage devices. Or it might even be that they take no position on the matter. Any which way, either there is consensus and the Californian legislature doesn't need to act because the schools can, or there is no consensus and the Californian legislature should leave it to parents and educators to sort out without pretending it has some sort of competence to add anything to the mix.
Legislating everything that seems like a good idea at the time is a pretty safe way to end up doing real damage as people initially had many options to act cleverly but now do not. This is not something that the politicians have any reason to be dealing with.
To be clear, I agree with some of what you're saying. I think bans on anything are generally questionable and prefer to see individuals, children included, given agency over what they find is best for their situation. I also see the value in school choice. I also know that people are stupid, children included, and don't always act in their best interest. Hence why there's restrictions on nicotine, alcohol, and driving for youth and that generally isn't a partisan issue.
However, this bill doesn't appear to specify how phones are restricted, just that there is a school policy. Further it gives protections to students who need it. This is why I find it reasonable.
Schools still appear to have a choice in implementation. That said I'm not a Californian, I'm childless, and I only scanned through the bill.
Parents will howl at the local admin if its locally changeable policy - I suspect that the thought of being out of touch with their children is unbearable.
This is exactly why they’re not already banned in practically all schools. Teachers and admin want to. Enough parents throw a fit if they can’t text their kid in class just to shoot the shit (seriously) that lots of schools have just given up, though. There are only so many hours in the day.
Anybody know why this has to be a law? Whats stopping each school or the DOE from making their own rule, just like all other school rules?
In part I see this as the legislature stepping up to be the bad guy, and taking pressure off schools. School administrators know phones are a problem, but a minority of students and parents are very vocal and make it hard to put bans in place.
Pretty much every school allows teachers to ban phones in their class, so we have the fully devolved approach already, but it just puts the burden on teachers, it's not real autonomy.
Man, so many of Californias problems is just:
“vocal minority is very loud, everyone else disagrees but are too busy to come yell at electeds, so we can’t fix this obvious problem. Done. Problem festers”
This is a problem throughout the USA, not just California. A tiny minority of loud, belligerent bullies with infinite free time ruin everything.
Individual school administrators would have to face off against helicopter parents if they tried to implement this policy. The state government is protecting them through air superiority.
Ideally, school administrators would toughen up a little and tell these parents to STFU and GTFO. But you’d have to have many, many districts grow a backbone in order to get the coverage that a state law provides.
Low-hanging bill before an election.
fines, pulling funding
[dead]
Our local high school just instituted a no phones in class policy. When kids enter the classroom they put their phones in a numbered pocket on the wall. They retrieve it after class.
The teachers are so happy.
My experience is that it's not the kids with the problem. It's the parents.
Not being able to contact their kid 24/7 is apparently a travesty. I don't get it.
Related:
Governor Newsom signs bill to protect kids from social media addiction
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41610709
I think this is great, phones (largely) should be banned in schools.
I don’t think this is the kind of thing that should be a law. Local school policy is good enough
I've heard that it's needed to counter heavy parent opposition. If it's not enshrined higher, the PTA will not hear the end of it.
> Local school policy is good enough
An angry parent that can't possibly imagine life without immediate access to their kid throughout the school day is likely to respond differently to the statement "This kid can't have their phone on during the day." when the reason is "local school policy" than when the reason is "state law".
In the former situation, a sufficiently-offended parent will likely try to get the administrator in question fired (or -at minimum- make their life dreadfully difficult). In the latter, the only people the parent can really appeal to are the folks in Sacramento. Busybodies like that rarely have the clout to do anything meaningful to the governor or his staff.
Anyway. It's quite possible that local school administrators requested that the governor help them out by making it so they can say "Sorry, I'd love to help, but The State says I have to order teachers to ban phones from classrooms. You know how it is. Take it up with the governor if you're mad about it.".
"specified that school districts have the authority to regulate the use of smartphones during school hours"
"require every school district, charter school and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting the use of smartphones by July 1, 2026"
sounds like this explicitly allows responsibility, and requires it be taken.
Congrats everyone, the pocket computer has developed into a useless turd to the point it actually harms productivity to the point it has been banned where it should have been the most productive. Oh and grades are failing since it was carefully designed to ruin attention span.
This message is intentionally short. I would have preferred to put it long form with less sarcasm but that would require hope for improvement and more attention than I'm worth.
School is a distraction from the internet.
the internet is a better school than some old decrepit building with middle aged dweebs who get paid 40k a year to stand for 40 minutes at a time each
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. > Eschew flamebait. (Hacker News guidelines)
There's a perfectly fine topic for debate here, but you'd do much better to word it in a less inflammatory way.
The internet has a lot of material, but kids also learn a lot from being around their peers. Lots of families have both parents that work and can't watch their kids at home, or take them to extracurricular activities. Also, depending on what area you're in, many teachers that I know have Master's degrees and do in fact know what they're doing, but are hamstrung in other ways.
They have a masters in what? Education, generally. There’s a reason they have the lowest GMAT score https://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/AverageGMATbyMajor.pdf
Because “prohibitions” always work out.
When we will we start designing society AROUND and WITH the inevitable pace of progress instead of making it a wall in the way?
Phones mostly aren’t progress, as far as schools go.
Game boys and walkie-talkies weren’t either. Playing cards. Marbles (in the classroom). Instamatic cameras. And the ban on passing notes is basically ancient.
Those same things but on one tiny computer doesn’t suddenly make them good to allow in schools.
I don’t think a world of carefully curated dopamine in your pocket is progress for the human race.
And besides, these bans _are_ designing society around the existence of cell phones.
Where do the bans end? Should offices get phone cubbies as well?
Why do we need state bill for that? Any reasonable school should've had a school level ban on phones since 90ies.
You vastly underestimate helicopter parents.
government has to govern
One guy named Bill did it all himself, statewide?
Wonder what Ted would say?
Did he give one of his Ted talks recently?