this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Great question. And a hard one. But knowing a proposed solution will worsen the situation is an important step in it.
It's like every time a person says "see, this is what happens when you don't hit children" at every behavior issue. Even though we know that hitting children objectively worsens behavior over doing nothing, but they insist that doing the only thing they know, even if harmful, is better.
I had a math teacher that helped us see which math we would use in real life, and which math we wouldn't, and helped us understand why the latter was still important for us to know. Everyone paid attention to her.
When you have a room of 30 students and 29 of them are complaining about something, we need to remind people that one of the real life uses of math (stats & probability to be precise) is to point out how unlikely it is that those 29 students are the causal variable.
"Personal Responsibility" attitudes just doesn't work for crowd dynamics, especially with regards to children. The way a group behaves is nearly 100% predictable from the balance of outside human factors. In this case, the outside factors are parents and teachers. That's it. Either there is something that all the parents are doing wrong, or the teachers.
Since there are some teachers who have far more success than others (common "favorite subjects" based on school), that means the most likely cause, and mechanism for improvements, are the teachers.
But we know children learn better without phones https://www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/news/the-evidence-is-clear-students-learn-better-without-mobile-phones-in-class/276071 You are the person insisting on hitting the child here.
Putting phones in school makes learning harder.
You are saying 29 out of 30 people can't be right, which is very wrong. But what you miss is that it's really 3-4 kids disrupting and the rest going along because it's easier.
It's the path of least resistance, and people will jump onto the easy path.
Except they do. Look at all the examples of Japanese fans cleaning stadiums.
In a crowd most people will follow the norm. If the norm is playing on your phone and not listening, the you have a bad time. It's not punishing kids because teachers are bad at their jobs, it's setting a behavioral norm.
Next time you dislike your teacher think about when you got stuck in a group with people who wouldn't do anything. Now imagine a class full of them. If just one or two more people put in a little effort good things would happen.
I disagree. For two reasons. First, there is only a couple studies in your link, and its "difference-in-difference" strategy does not seem (at least prima facie) to shown effective isolation to only a single variable. Second, it seems to be making the same mistake previously made by Psychologists in the "hitting children" debate, making unsubstantiated (or "common sense") conclusions about the gulf in the middle after only doing a quick analysis of the two extremes. Further, your link also calls question your claim by pointing out Switzerland did not find any effectiveness in banning phones.
And the "hitting" reference was intended to point out the concern against positive advancement. There was a time where psychologists thought hitting was better than nothing even when they knew it was net harmful and so did not strongly discourage it when parents could not or would not embrace more modern parenting strategies. The same is true of phones in school (and, per your link, laptops in college). Looking at the laptop studies I could find, they have the same methodological problems the phone studies have. They're looking presumptively at distraction, and setting up an experiment where distraction is more pronounced.
Yet laptops have a lot more research than phones. Studies mentioned above compare ubiquitous laptop use and scores, while failing to address that each individual that uses a laptop averages higher scores than individuals who do not. What studies I could find with phones could be moving in the direction of that same dynamic that shows missing understanding of how to be use technology in learning.
Let's look at the other side of things. Another study (again, possibly flawed...I don't trust either side's phone studies much yet) found that removing a phone ban in NY caused an increase in overall student obedience and educational productivity, at the cost of "school culture". As someone who grew up as a victim of "school culture" in a world where teachers supported bullying (and in many places they still do), I have no problem with that trade-off. Of course, this study does directly contradict your educatoronline article.
From this fairly balanced piece (which agrees with both my article and yours in some ways):
"If educators do not find ways to leverage mobile technology in all learning environments, for all students, then we are failing our kids by not adequately preparing them to make the connection between their world outside of school and their world inside school"
...which is more important than test scores.
Is that something you can cite, or just your own personal "pick em up by their bootstraps" opinion? Do you have any experience with crowd simulation? Can you show any evidence that your explanation is likely, or even reasonably possible?
That's... not an effective or topical rebuttal at all. Did you misunderstand what I meant by "Personal Responsibility" attitudes? I referred to blaming the individuals in a large group for their failure instead of blaming the causal elements of the group. I have to deal with that type of problem regularly, where a manager tries to blame a majority of his reports (all capable and talented) of being the problem when something goes wrong. Guess who I ultimately find responsible?
Thankfully, I'm decades out on that. From the kinds of things I see and read about education, I'm grateful I don't have to go back. But then, my education started after school anyway.
It's concerning that you think the absence of a device is comparable to the presence of a action, in this case hitting.
I'm genuinely lost on how you think the only variable here is whether something is being banned or being encouraged. Or should I say, it's "concerning". Did you have a smartphone in school?
Fyi when you resort to trying to mock people, they won't want to talk to you.
Hmm. I'm curious about this. I repeated the words you used because I thought it was appropriate to do so. Were you resorting to trying to mock me in the first place?
If so, then "glass houses" and all that. If not, then please don't take my reply as mocking. I genuinely mean it. And I am genuinely curious if you had smartphones in school. We didn't have them when I grew up.
Great! But you have no evidence to support your argument. Your apples to oranges comparison of laptops isn't compelling. Nor am I compelled by your methodology argument, which seems to take issue with testing a hypothesis that phones are a distraction.
Once again, we know cellphones are detrimental to learning. This is not a matter of schools failing to adapt to new technology. Tablets, computers, interactive software and more are used. It is about unrestricted cell phone use, which studies have shown hinders learning.
No it doesn't. It says that no phones mean better learning. You are missing the forest for the trees.
Lots of research has been done on this, and a small number of people can influence a large group. Look at "wave" studies for more info.
Calling minimum acceptable classroom behavior "picking yourself up by your bootstraps" is absurd. It's like saying that you can't expect people to not talk at the theater because that's just asking too much of people.
I cited two pieces of fairly substantive evidence in reply to someone who cited a single article. If you don't think that is reasonable escalation of evidence, we can stop now.
My cited references contradict that. More importantly, your article contradicts the "we know" part. Let me quote your reference: "Research from Sweden, however, suggests little effect of banning mobile phones in high school on student performance. "
My references made clear argument that this is indeed a case of schools failing to adapt to new technology. I even quoted a relevant quote to you.
"My findings suggest an improvement in educational productivity due to the NYCDOE’s ban removal". I understand there's a double-negative in that reference, but the cited study's findings suggest that "yes phones mean better learning". You might disagree with it, but please reread it so that you do not misrepresent it.
Sure. Please demonstrate that your claims are correct. Until then, and especially because you seem to have failed to comprehend the involved references, I will wish you luck.
I've lived an entire life of watching people blame the bulk of individuals for failures by authorities. I have become reasonably skeptical of any claims that "it's everyone but..." the decision-maker.
One of the problems with arguing with people online is I tend to assume people are arguing in good faith.
After getting about 50 studies showing that cell phones are bad for learning, I switched to duckduckgo. Not until page 3 did I find your sources. You have waded through data that says you are wrong. I'm not interested in copying them for you.
One of the things that stop me from arguing with people online is when they accuse me of arguing in bad faith because I have facts they don't like. From such no-name sites as Harvard.
EDIT: For future reference (and 2 points):
So in summary, the only reply that would not have been "bad faith" in your eyes would be to concede the argument. So you got it. Congrats, you were right about every opinion you've ever had in your life.