SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Jamie Doward reports at The Guardian that according to a recent study in the UK, the effect of banning mobile phones from school premises adds up to the equivalent of an extra week’s schooling over a pupil’s academic year with the test scores of students aged 16 improved by 6.4% after schools banned mobile phones, “We found that not only did student achievement improve, but also that low-achieving and low-income students gained the most. We found the impact of banning phones for these students was equivalent to an additional hour a week in school, or to increasing the school year by five days." In the UK, more than 90% of teenagers own a mobile phone; in the US, just under three quarters have one. In a survey conducted in 2001, no school banned mobiles. By 2007, this had risen to 50%, and by 2012 some 98% of schools either did not allow phones on school premises or required them to be handed in at the beginning of the day. But some schools are starting to allow limited use of the devices. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has lifted a 10-year ban on phones on school premises, with the city’s chancellor of schools stating that it would reduce inequality.
The research was carried out at Birmingham, London, Leicester and Manchester schools before and after bans were introduced (PDF). It factored in characteristics such as gender, eligibility for free school meals, special educational needs status and prior educational attainment. “Technological advancements are commonly viewed as increasing productivity,” write Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy. “Modern technology is used in the classroom to engage students and improve performance. There are, however, potential drawbacks as well, as they could lead to distractions.”
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 18 2015, @12:06PM
First define use. And allow. I've been out of school a long time but there's a wide spectrum between "call police and expel student if caught in random locker searches" vs "play angry birds during lectures but at least try to turn down the volume". Until thats defined discussion will be pointless.
Second problem is alignment with the aspirational workplace vs the real workplace vs future academic.
The aspirational workplace is some pipe dream hazy with smoke daydream of an open office workplace knowledge worker STEM field startup working at the edge of technology where a plucky 23 year old ivy grad saves the company by running a google search because no one over 23 understands this hand wavy internet social thingy and much like innumeracy they're VERY proud to declare their inability. Of course, its not like I've ever heard of a workplace claiming their workers were too uneducated in cell phone use to be successful. Its kind of like the crisis of tween boys who can't play video games and we need to fix that with special education perhaps, or teen boys who can't find pr0n on the internet or businesses that can't find STEM employees (aka its all bullshit)
The real workplace is most grads are going to be working crappy low wage McJobs mixed in with unemployment. Unless your daddy owns a hedge fund or you got into stanford the world of work is un and under employment for life, etc. This leads to screwing around at work, because what kind of normal human would give a F about TPS report headers anyway. So "most workplaces" for "most people" ban the use of cellphones on the job. Why should you have to wait for a cold beer because your education major graduate is tweeting instead of bartending, or why should you have to wait for a CS grad IT drone to give you a new mouse because he's checking facebook? On the other hand, for the large percentage (and growing) of the population who have been kicked out of the economy for life, they're not working and some "opiate of the masses" is just what the doctor ordered. This explains the quality and educational level of most local tweets when I look at local tweets... almost the only people tweeting are corporatespam professionals broadcasting brand impressions and the dregs of humanity goofing off.
Preparation for future academic work is complicated. I'm not aware of any "real" post secondary schools that are institutionalizing like K-12, so on one hand pre secondary schools should allow phones to align. On the second hand, most college is "pay me tuition, I give you title of nobility, now get a job that used to only require a middle school education and still does, other than the whole require a degree thing" so college / uni can get away with letting the kids sit in lecture and play trivia crack instead of learning, but high schools theoretically have the business model of getting kids into the most expensive uni they can by actually educating them, so no phone. On the third hand, the whole world comes to the USA for post high school .edu, and the whole world makes fun of USA K-12 because its run by drooling morons, and there's a ton of aggression by the losers against the winners so whatever the college/uni admins do, the K-12 admins will automatically do the opposite, no matter how stupid, its political, just like "D" vs "R" debates about social issues as soon as one takes a side the other MUST take the opposite side, so from that 3rd hand perspective the K12 admins politically cannot free cell phones until the uni/college admins ban them. It would be like expecting the D party to support abortion bans before the R party going pro choice. Also in a hyper authoritarian fascistic system of brainwashing like K12 edu, higher classes flip flopping doesn't encourage blind obedience and all that other stuff they're pushing, which makes change difficult.