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French School Students To Be Banned From Using Mobile Phones (theguardian.com)
The lower house of parliament in France has passed what it called a "detox" law for a younger generation increasingly addicted to screens. As a result, French school students will be banned from using mobile phones anywhere on school grounds starting in September. The Guardian reports: The new law bans phone-use by children in school playgrounds, at breaktimes and anywhere on school premises. Legislation passed in 2010 already states children should not use phones in class. During a parliamentary debate, lawmakers from Macron's La Republique En Marche party said banning phones in schools meant all children now had a legal "right to disconnect" from digital pressures during their school day. Some in Macron's party had initially sought to go even further, arguing that adults should set an example and the the ban should be extended to all staff in schools, making teachers surrender their phones on arrival each morning. But Macron's education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, brushed this aside, saying it wasn't necessary to extend the ban to teachers and staff.
to pass messages in class.
I pass about 8 school grounds (covering all age groups) on the way to work every day for over a decade. I remember it was always kids playing sports, on the swings, running around, etc. The last 5 years it's mostly sitting around and staring at phones.
I'm so thankful I wasn't raised in this generation.
They're also a distraction in lectures/classes -- you retain a lot more if you're taking notes on paper and not browsing the Internet. Honestly, this should extend to all electronic devices like laptops and tablets unless there's an accommodation for a disability.
What does one thing have to do to another? Not that cops having less ability to conduct surveillance is ever a bad thing.
students will be banned from using mobile phones
...
a legal "right to disconnect"
Being forced to do something isn't a "right", unless you live in Oceania
Because 'Freedom' to be a jerk seems to be written in the Constitution....
My daughter's school had a water main break & flooding. They canceled school in the middle of the day. Her ability to call me was a godsend!
Mind you, her phone stays in her locker all day. She can't use it in classes or during lunch. But when we need to coordinate after-school activities, having a phone available for texting or calls is a godsend!
I wonder if it applies only to primary school or to secondary school as well. The measure would be mostly relevant in secondary school.
At my daughter's school, all students put their phones in a basket as they enter the classroom and collect them as they leave. This is a small private school, so I don't know how well this would go over in a larger public institution....
If you got a phone...
[($)]
I know you're out there! But I'm not one of them.
In the US, we can't ban mobile phones from schools because then how would students be able to tell their parents goodbye when they're hiding in a closet from a member of the well-regulated militia?
You are welcome on my lawn.
have to pass their exams and tests on merit.
Got to study more for your professionnel, technologique, général, scientifique, économique et social curriculum for real in the future.
Hours of study. Learning equations, facts, how to think within in a set time. Rather than what site to look up that has the needed facts on Napoleons successful campaigns.
The happy decade of glowing instant networked support is over.
The only skill an entire generation had was how to use the internet.
With academic changes like this France will soon be back as an academic super power.
Think of the future innovations in hydropneumatic car design and bridge building. In the improved quality of Ada code used to fly rockets.
All due to a better quality of graduates who passed their tests by learning and having the skills to study.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
They're also a distraction in lectures/classes -- you retain a lot more if you're taking notes on paper and not browsing the Internet.
IDK, in many of the classes I've been in I would probably have learned more if I spent the class Googling the topic instead of taking notes.
Once again people who actually study are forced to pay for the sins of those who cannot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As in a lex legis right. That right may not be the *student* right. It seems counter intuitive but some right are imposed on the whole as a restriction to protect people. e.g. the right of school until you are 16 , would probably not being recognized as a right by the kids, rather as an imposition, on their freedom, but it is definitively a right.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No, in France, the State is seen (and sold as, from the earliest childhood) as the carrying mother that shall cater to all your need and dictate how you shall live. (source: I'm French... unfortunately)
I'm french too, and nobody "dictates" me how I should live. Hopefully ! Some may think it's over-regulated. That's a different thing to me. :P
Freedom remain central in France, and this is what really matters to me. You're even free to leave France and find a better place elsewhere
Wouldn't it be a whole lot smarter to teach the kids how to have access to their phones but not to use it? - Because that's how the world is outside the school...
A straight-out ban teaches nothing and only encourages students to find workarounds and similar.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
My daughter's school had a water main break & flooding. They canceled school in the middle of the day. Her ability to call me was a godsend!
Do you suffer from the delusion that that sort of thing never happened prior to mobile phones being widely available? Here is a hint. The SCHOOL called you instead. I know, right? You might actually have to talk to an adult!
Schools now can very easily send a blast message out to all parents via text or email. They also maintain call lists and other people have phones too. Your child would have survived just fine and worst case would have been bored for a few hours. Schools are well equipped to deal with this sort of thing.
But when we need to coordinate after-school activities, having a phone available for texting or calls is a godsend!
No it has become a crutch. It is not necessary. When I was school age I had no problem coordinating after school activities with my parents and I didn't get a mobile phone until I was 26. Your argument is specious.
The point should be, this isn't school rules, this is government mandated LAW....
The point should be, this isn't school rules, this is government mandated LAW....
Is there much difference these days? Schools in most countries have lost most of their autonomy. Even in the USA where we have local school districts with local tax dollars, everything from which books to use to how many days/hours to be in school to what to feed for lunch is dictated by the government.
When I was in school, unauthorized items including electronic games, etc... were confiscated by the individual teachers. If you were lucky, you got it back at the end of the current school day. In other cases, your parent had to come retrieve it for you. I also distinctly remember teachers bringing their box of confiscated stuff out on the last day of school and giving kids back stuff that they had confiscated and held on to for the entire school year.
Even in college, most of my professors had a no cellphone policy. I'm amazed that middle schools allow kids to have phones in class. I know many employers and even a few schools that don't allow employees to have phones. For kids, this seems like a no brainer. Phones should remain in their locker during school hours.
Freedom remain central in France
Well, unless you want to wear something the government deems inappropriate. https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
At my daughter's high school, any student whose phone rings in class has to get up in front of the class and dance The Macarena. This is a surprisingly effective deterrent.
Until you get to the showoff with six different remixes of "Macarena" on his phone, including the one that sounds like it's straight out of Mortal Kombat ("La Mezcla Guerrillera by Fangoria") and the one that sounds like almost a mash-up with "Unbelievable" by EMF ("Bass Bumpers Remix").
Source: Macarena Non Stop
throwing a football into the field
hey stupid, its france, they dont throw in football, they kick.
Until someone kicks the ball across the sideline. Then it's just as AC said: throwing a football into the field.
Are you too stupid to realize there's a difference between a tool, primarily used for a single function (helping with math calculations) and a toy which CAN have that kind of functionality, or are you just trolling?
nobody "dictates" me how I should live
May I carry a gun?
Non!
Have gnu, will travel.
Are you too stupid to realize there's a difference between a tool, primarily used for a single function (helping with math calculations) and a toy which CAN have that kind of functionality, or are you just trolling?
I'm smart enough to realize that if a high school freshman already carries an entry-level Android phone on a low-end prepaid plan (no cellular data and a handful of minutes and texts per month), a graphing calculator app for that phone can be much cheaper for the parents than a dedicated TI-8x graphing calculator, which includes a hefty surcharge for College Board rent seeking.
Whether every classroom carries a full set or just a handful for those who forgot or cannot afford their own calculators depends on the attitude of the taxpayers in the area toward funding public K-12 education. Some states' fiscally conservative electorates have chosen to put a ceiling on property tax.
During a parliamentary debate, lawmakers from Macron's La Republique En Marche party said banning phones in schools meant all children now had a legal "right to disconnect" from digital pressures during their school day.
Sort of like my right to not kill people in public? Seriously, 'right to disconnect' is totally the wrong choice of words. How the hell did 'banning phones' morph into 'right to disconnect'? Even for a euphemism, that's a pretty serious stretch.
Yeah, and...?
Seriously, who cares if it is cheaper? This is about what is right (for French school children), not about what is cheap.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
In other words, this ban can work provided the people of France are willing to pay for a full set of calculators or other electronic learning aids for every public school classroom that requires students to use them.
No, you can't. People don't have guns here. This is not the kind of freedom I'm looking after, but granted: thats personal opinion.I'm actually glad other's can't have this "freedom"in my country. You also can't do religion proselytizing in public schools; it goes as far as not showing obvious religion signs. People have fought and voted for this in the past. Nothing I would call "lack of freedom".
Lol right. Phones cost maybe $100-$1000, do you really think parents would be ok with teachers having an arbitrary confiscation of a $1000 phone that lets the parent talk to their kid? And do you really think teachers want to be responsible for safely storing thousands of dollars of electronics?
This policy has to be clear policy with well understood rules. I am a teacher and I gotta say bravo for France. Cell phone use in class is basically every teacherâ(TM)s pet peeve, and making it federal policy will help the nations schools.
I sent an email just last week giving my kids teachers permission to take away their phone and not be responsible for damages. Our school also implemented a no backpack policy for a while and required them to be left at the office. It's simple enough to require kids to either leave them at home or leave them in their lockers. Lots of schools have lots of policies from no ballcaps, to no guns, to certain dress codes. It would be easy to just say no phones allowed at school. Lots of businesses do that already. My kids school already tells parents not to call or text their kids at school. If they think they need them for the walk home, then requiring them to be in the locker and/or off would work too. Make use of a phone during school hours a one day suspension. How is this so hard? Plenty of places are cellphone free zones. My mom's school won't even allow teachers to have them. If I need to get a hold of her during school day, I have to call the office and use the intercom like they've been doing since the 1970s. And if for some reason you need to keep them on their person, https://www.overyondr.com/ is a low tech solution. I kindof understand why teachers have to put up with the school's policies, but I don't understand why they don't complain to the principal and make a school wide policy. Most schools likely used to have a school wide ban, it's only recently that they have decided for some reason that this is acceptable behavior.
Should graphing calculators also "remain in their locker during school hours"? If not, why should phones used to run a graphing calculator app "remain in their locker during school hours"?
My kids school allows phones but doesn't allow graphic calculator apps to be used on tests and even if they did, all their instructions are for a single model and brand so kids would be on their own. Same with colleges. Colleges aren't going to allow smartphones to be used on tests anytime soon. Kids are still going to be required to buy dedicated graphing calculators. I've heard plenty of parents say that an app would be cheaper but I doubt many schools are going to budge. So yes, in theory, some kids might save a few bucks by allowing them to bring a phone to school but that's doubtful and still not reason enough to allow phones at school. Also, at most schools, they usually have a school issued tablet anyways.
French governments believe there need to be laws framing every single aspect of human existence. It's just a Gallic tradition, like blocking roads and making boring TV shows.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Does your kid's school keep a full classroom set of graphing calculators on hand for tests? (And to the point of the article, do French schools?) A phone ban could work if that is the case.
I clearly remember, although I am not able to track the reference right now, of an ancient roman text that went somehow this way:
It was during the wars of Cleopatre. The scene depicted a war field, with one of Cleopatre generals receiving orders, reading them, then turning to apply them.
In any classical movie you can imagine the picture : general receives sealed package, unseals, reads, and now on to the next action scene, nothing special to be seen here.
Then, the actual roman text: written by the man dedicated to this, a clerk which you'd call today the embedded war reporter, or something like that.
And that's where it goes wild : our 'reporter' actually turns extraordinarily haggard when seeing this, and his text expands at length.
Thing is, the general read *silently*. And, that's the first time our 'reporter' sees this. In his life. Despite the fact he himself is a clerc.
What he is describing is not the prelude of yet another romanic battle. At all.
It is a change in human mind and thinking. Romans, and then us, were on the verge of *thinking differently* -by the fact one, from then on, could read silently.
Maybe, without Cleopatre, generations of commuters wouldn't anything to read during hours. The word 'education' would have a different meaning. Would you, yes you here, be reading this very text aloud? Really? Slowly?
The connected generation is just one such switch. Many have told us about the Gutenberg revolution, etc. Silent reading is another one less known. Connected people is yet another. All come with trashing various things, some *very* regrettable, and, clearly, some *irresistible* and significant too.
This switch to connected people is now a thing of the past, of the recent history at best.
My main concern today is rather, what will AI bring, and delete, in our everyday life.
Not just jobs, I mean : which parts of our minds are going to change again, in my grandchildren.
Herve S.
Yes.
Anyone who has been paying attention during their maths lessons can look at the function, derive the inflexion points and axis crossing points and sketch the curve within a few seconds. If you don't understand the maths, then you have already failed your maths test and that's your education over and finished. I'll have fries with that burger.
If your school curriculum is so fucked up that your Physics course demands things that your Maths course hasn't already provided, then you've got an issue to take up with the school management. And you did take it up when you read the course description at the start of the year. Because you read the paperwork before signing up. Didn't you?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Does your kid's school keep a full classroom set of graphing calculators on hand for tests? (And to the point of the article, do French schools?) A phone ban could work if that is the case.
Some schools do, but most I've seen require kids to buy their own as part of their school supplies at the beginning of the year. I've heard plenty of parents complain over the years especially when they already have calculator A (from another kid/class) but now need calculator B but that's how it's usually done in the USA from what I've seen. Most elementary schools do have some sort of allowance for kids who can't afford to buy their own. In college, you're usually on your own and I saw some kids try to get by with a different model/brand but it usually made the class harder if your calculator didn't match the one the teacher/book used for examples.