Well, by their teenage years, why not all the reasons adults need smartphones fully accessible? Looking up information from authoritative sources? Emergency contact? Coordinating schedules for office hours?

Schools often simultaneously demand more from children than workplaces do adults, and give them less opportunity to excel.

I’m not saying work-inappropriate phone use should be accepted, but taking them away entirely is downright irresponsible. Just like schools who still demand students write on a notebook instead of using a laptop. Raise your hand if you had RSI-related issues for a decade or more after high school? We old people tend to forget how bad school used to be (and can be) for physical and mental health AND for learning.

Well, you can quickly search up some information. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember that once in middle school teacher said something I wasn’t quite sure about, but also I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t more sure. So I looked it up, seeing that I was right, I asked if it rather wasn’t meant to be that other thing, he checked too and indeed he was wrong.

Also, my mind often wanders off. And it may happen that I suddenly can’t remember something. Could just be some word I could look up on my phone in less than a minute. Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can’t stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.

Next, spine. I am currently in high school. Phones are allowed here. Any time. So, I utilized my scanner and digitized one 500 or so page book I couldn’t find on the internet, and then used it as PDF instead of a physical book. It is less likely that I would forget my phone. I wish schools would have options for e-ink tablets instead of having to carry many heavy physical books. That used to be problem mostly in elementary school and middle school. Same goes for note taking.

Obviously, the last example can be easily solved by modernization.

Fast talking teachers. I can’t write that fast. I mean, I can, but then I can’t decipher my handwriting, which is already hard anyway. Voice recorder is a quick solution. Obviously, it is easier to look through notes than audio, but IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE A REPLACEMENT FOR NOTES, just a help.

But do take that with a pinch of salt. Especially in elementary school, I used to be one of those weird kids who greatly preferred being liked by the teacher over having friends. So even though I had a phone at the time, I never used it during classes because teachers disliked it.

But at least during breaks it should be allowed. Otherwise kids will find much more dangerous ways to entertain themselves.

Schools should just be one huge faraday cage. Kids have to learn to focus and pay attention.

And they need to learn the curriculum

but if you’re watching Overwatch

You can just take away their phone in that case, no?
Not sure about OP, but my point is that phones can be useful. But if they’re clearly not…

I actually doubt that phones are the major reason for a post like this. There are many reasons that you could fill in that only happen to some schools but phones happen to be the only one that applies to nearly every school. For example, at my school, our lunches have been cut down to shit 15 minutes at most, and if you buy lunch, it’s much less. We usually have them call 5 minutes left. Sometimes they will say the kitchen is closed, sometimes they can’t because people are still ordering.

You can increase motivation to learn by making lessons more engaging even if it’s a subject they’re not personally interested in. But making lessons more interesting and engaging is not easy and we can’t expect all teachers to have the skills and resources to do the research and development needed to produce lesson plans that are really interesting. I think it could be improved by putting more money into developing interesting lesson plans centrally and distributing the materials to teachers to follow instead of just producing dry curriculums. Teachers need support.

That aren’t motivated and are bored as hell; the average motivation level for schools where I live is a 2.9… out of 10. If kids aren’t motivated and they have devices on them, what do you think they would do in class?

Well said. Social media is designed specifically to hold attention and encourage addictive behavior. There’s no way to compete.

not treat students like indentured servants? productively encourage them to pay attention instead of imposing austere zero tolerance policies? do you really think that people in ancient greece paid attention to every second of lecture because there weren’t any phones?

could you, yes you, in your day to day life, handle being forced to go through school again? to learn something new every hour of every weekday and being given obligatory deadlines, not even being paid for the work, having to be there at like 7:30am, having even less control over your personhood and freedom just a few years after being born?

school didn’t have to suck as much as it did.

Maybe if they used blender(the software) to explain it.

Says the neurotypical teacher to the kid who can’t concentrate without music during study time.

Well, at least you gave them a chance. Thank you.

It’s not the job of the the school staff to make the material extremely interesting, it’s their job to remove every more interesting thing from the reach of students.

And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else. They should make the material interesting enough that people won’t have to resort to other stuff

Read up on dopamine if you didn’t understand that.

I know what dopamine (the joy hormone which the body uses as a “reward”) is. Since the body uses it as a “reward” if school gives students that, then students will like school

I just wanted to be able to listen to my music while doing work.

I don’t think OP is thinking that far into their future. I don’t think OP has any plans for higher education either. It’s been a few decades for me, but when I was an undergrad, if your pager went off in class --cell phones weren’t really a thing yet-- most professors would ask you to leave, which was not a good thing in the small upper division classes as they were very difficult and you had to pass with a B or better to move on in my major.

I don’t think so tbh. If students are motivated enough, then this policy wouldn’t need to be pursued.