New York City schools have had a long history of phone restriction policies, with an outright ban in the early 2000s that was reversed about 10 years later. Individual schools, like the ones where Corletta and Leston teach, have had the freedom to implement their own restrictions.
That will change again in the new academic year as all schools in New York state will implement a bell-to-bell ban — one of the strictest among dozens of other states that have passed similar legislation — barring students from access to personal devices that can connect to the internet for the entire school day. Schools will be required to provide storage for the devices.
But with such new policies, many being implemented for the first time this school year or in effect for less than two years, no one knows what the perfect model looks like.
Researchers are moving cautiously as they grapple with uncertainty about the effectiveness of in-school phone bans on mental health. Data yields mixed results — and there’s growing a sentiment that more has to be done outside of schools to get kids off their phones and back into the world.
A recent Pew Research survey found that nearly three quarters of Americans support restrictive phone use in schools, up six percentage points since last year — but many are also unsure how far the bans should go. About 44% of respondents supported all day bans, with others split on whether students should have access to their phones between classes or at lunch.
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I want to respond to the unschooling bit here as I have some personal experience.
First I acknowledge that this is an anecdotal thing and there are likely examples of unschooling going way better. Second, I really do empathize and appreciate people wanting to not have kids grow up in a system that perpetuates toxic aspects of capitalism.
This being said, I think unschooling, while having a fine motive, can set up children to have extremely difficult lives. We have family friends who are unschooling their children and their knowledge and behavior is concerning to me. The eldest is 13 years old and doesn’t know how to read, because she never had any interest in learning. I am fine if a child wants to be a creative. But learning to read and write I feel is too important a skill to leave out of any curriculum. I won’t let that become just some tool that perpetuates capitalism.
Do I enjoy our capitalist society? No, and I want to work towards a better future in that regard. But I also think unschooling just tries to cover ears to the reality we live in. I think it’s important to teach children to criticize the systems we are in. But if a child grows up wanting to be a creative, but can’t read, write, do simple arithmetic, all sorts of skills that one would need to just survive in a capitalist dominated world… Like what’s the point. Traditional school does not have to be nefarious. I grew up in Seattle public schools and was taught to criticize these systems despite being a cog in it at the time.
We did not want to be in school and ran away from it all the time. It was a terrible, awful experience. Yet we did have a thirst for learning just not in a rigidly defined system where we could only fail or pass, where hierarchy was the main thing going on, where teacher’s egos could not take being told they were wrong. Where we were bullied and stressed all the time.
We did not do well in school but thrived outside of it as far as learning was concerned.
We hope you can appreciate why we push so strongly for unschooling or any other system that is not the terrible experience we were forced into, and we know many still are as well, to this very day.
I was abused (bullying is a cutesy term to.avoid calling it what it really is) in school and still have social anxiety from it. It’s only “a good place for socialization” because all the other ones are banned being banned (see OP’s post) or are engineered out of the built environment. In high school I learned as much out of class as I did in, and the more valuable half too.
I’m sorry y’all had a bad experience in traditional school. But I still think a healthily funded well curriculumed public school system can be a great thing. I recently had my 10 year high school reunion and it was a really awesome time with a bunch of smart thinkers and kind souls. Ofc that’s not the experience for everyone, but a lot of people have great experiences in school. I mean I was also bullied in school but overall am very happy I had my public school experience. I’m sure unschooling can go well too. We can trade anecdotes all day though. I can’t say for sure that unschooling is actually bad and public schools are actually good. What I do know is I’m not ready to throw away the public school system just yet
What we are saying is that it needs to exist for reasons other than teaching to a test or to get a job, we agree it shouldn’t be thrown away but it needs to be massively different and way less abusive.
Oh yeah I for sure agree with that. Standardized tests are fucking stupid. There are issues with the way it’s set up and think it can and should be changed and overhauled. I don’t think giving youth some direction on things to learn is bad but it for sure right now drives kids to a certain capitalistic end goal. Which I also still think isn’t totally un-useful in this fucked up system we find ourselves in (though it can be done kinder). Give kids the tools to understand why the system is fucked up while also gentally preparing them to work through it and maybe try and change it for the better.
I think we’re mostly on the same page. I do sometimes get worried about homeschool stuff as this perpetuation of the hyper individualistic nature of the United States (where I live) but there are some things a traditional school system can learn from it. Thanks for talking through it with me though c:
Yes, we agree on that.
Oh, we are well aware how homeschooling and unschooling can go wrong, especially in such a system, we are not fans of it and so not support abuse perpetuated in any education, public, home, or otherwise.
We are against it being for religious reasons or conspiracy reasons, we just want people to be able to choose what truly works for them, public school does not work for everyone currently and those who it does not work for should not be forced into it.
Those who it does work for still deserve better than what is avaliable currently though.