• Four_lights77@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    School will never be as interesting as a phone. Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer. Your textbooks will never be as entertaining as your feed. What families and teenagers have to understand is that education is a choice. If you want to learn, you’ll probably have to put your phone down for long periods of time to actively listen and learn. It’s difficult. It tires you out. It’ll frustrate you. But you will eventually learn.

    Then again - when I look at home prices and inflation, I understand young people’s feelings of futility.

    Good luck young people. I’m really rooting for you to figure this out.

    • Waltzy@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      As a former young person that came from poverty and is finally buying a house in a high cost of living area, go read “so good they can’t ignore you” it might help with the figuring out!

    • Numuruzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think it’s just a feeling of futility - it’s true phones can be distracting and offer more potential entertainment, and it’s true learning can sometimes be a slog. At the same time, learning can be fun and engaging, and phones can offer access to a wealth of information (of highly varying quality, admittedly).

      Concentrating too hard on mere academic success as gauged by metrics like school grades is undoubtedly discouraging for a student who only goes to school if they are told they must.

    • redempt@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      people learn things all the time despite phones existing. the issue is not solely being more entertaining. people need to find their learning meaningful and aligned with their own interests and goals. students don’t, and so they go on their phones. go to a college classroom and you’ll see people more engaged on average. still far from perfect, and that system is broken in many ways too, but people are at least studying something they chose and are presumably interested in.

      “I’m really rooting for you to figure this out” rings hollow. we all need to be part of the solution. gen Z feels like it’s carrying the expectation of fixing literally every societal problem right now and it sucks.

    • trailing9@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      When I look at home prices I know that school never has been good. People don’t understand what they have to do to drive down prices.

      Why can’t Tiktok be used to find the best courses? There is no need for teachers to teach when Tiktok can do it better. Let teachers become mentors.

  • jaackf@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The amount of times I told my students they can use their phone for certain exercises, then 90% of them just went on Tiktok or played Clash Of Clans, is why is started not allowing phones.

    I get that to the 10% it was super helpful but it’s just easier to not allow everyone.

      • jaackf@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m all for giving them a chance to prove they’re able to be responsible. Especially the kids that always try hard and deserve to be trusted.

        I found that a lot of kids struggled to accept any consequences of their actions, though taking their phones off them for playing games was pretty clear to them.

    • Swallowtail@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      It would be funny if people were forced to do something akin to mandatory military service but for working at a school as a paraprofessional or other aide for a little while. I feel like most people really have no idea how much teachers have to juggle and deal with on a daily basis. Come see how my kids behave when left to their own devices and then judge me.

      • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Everyone should have to work a retail/customer service/care/teaching job, its eye opening the way people treat those they see as in their service.

      • jaackf@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        For sure! A lot of parents don’t really understand the amount of stuff teachers have to go through either, and we don’t get paid for the hundreds of hours we do outside of teaching hours.

        It’s why I had to quit in the end. Felt like I couldn’t give it my all because I was mentally and physically exhausted.

    • trailing9@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Like flight mode there should be school mode where students can only use a provided wlan that comes with content filters.

      • jaackf@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        100%, if the schools were funded well enough, issuing school phones would be amazing!

        School computers work well because they block most of the distractions but ofc students have 1001 distractions in their own!

      • Daefsdeda@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Block cellular with thick walls, then only allow them through wifi. Things like youtube can only be acces with a cabled connection. Something like this seems like a good start.

        • Offline games entered the chat. ProtonVPN entered the chat (specifically Proton with their bypass methods). Tor entered the chat.

          They don’t even need to know what VPN or Tor is, it’s just “Download this app to access internet, bro”.

          • Daefsdeda@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            If there was a sort of national system for it, maybe some kinks could be worked out. And if some people still succeed, sure let them have it.

            Also, limiting it to offline only already makes a huge difference

  • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    I can try to make the material interesting and be engaging but if you’re watching Overwatch on your phone all of that is a moot point.

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      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…

  • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I mean it kind of needs to be both. But it’s hard to find a compelling reason why kids need their smartphones fully accessible during class.

    • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        If you want to teach kids how to look up information, you can create spaces for that. They don’t need unrestricted access to their smart phones to accomplish that throughout the day. Hell you can relax your policies as they grow up and show the maturity to handle having a smart phone in the classroom. If schools want to do that, I am all in favor of it. But they would have to start early and build a system, which is a lot to ask of already overworked educators.

      • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

        Option C: Write it down.

          • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

            Bugging you until you remember? You write it so that you can’t forget and so it stops bugging you.

            Bugging you because you need that info itch scratched right now? Aka instant gratification. Then you have to learn to not need instant gratification. Seriously, it’s another skill.

      • braxy29@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        … yes, my phoneless childhood was super dangerous. it’s amazing i survived a couple of decades without one!

        • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago

          I mean, comparing class with active kids throwing stuff around and ones just sitting and playing on their phones, I’d take the second. Cyber bullying may be hard to detect though, but it’s not like schools care either way.

      • Juno@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        All this is spoken like an entitled bratty immature kid. (No offense, it’s just your age and you’ll grow out of it)

        There’s a reason why you can get a ticket or be charged with distracted driving while you’re on your phone and behind the wheel of a car. IT IS A DISTRACTION. FULL STOP.

        Stop lying to yourself and to us in the process.

        • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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          1 year ago
          1. Using phone while driving is much bigger issue.
          2. This phone issue has never affected me personally. I am defending OP and others.
          3. I am not talking about using the phone all the time for some stupid thing. It gives you access to a lot of information when needed.

          Also if you trust kids with making life changing decisions, this is unfair.

          Also sorry if I sounded as you described. I only started carrying the phone with me since I was 15. I was too worried about breaking it (it’s not cheap thing). That makes finding positive points (that would apply to younger kids) a bit harder.

          Edit: Also, don’t be worried, I would almost never voice my opinions in real life.

          • Juno@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.

            The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?

            Maybe you use your phone only for the most strictly academic things, but most people don’t.

            Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.

            • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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              1 year ago

              Spoken like an introverted someone who HAS ALREADY been affected socially in a negative way by their cell phone use.

              Can’t disagree with this. I got a tablet when I was 8. With unrestricted access. On the positive note, it did help me learn quite a lot of stuff. Like English.

              The entitled and bratty part of your comments = when people tell me not to use my phone I simply DONT use it or bring it. What’s the problem exactly? You want access to an encyclopedic knowledge in class? You don’t have a laptop or computer in the room you can use ?

              No problem, really. If someone wanted to search up something during class, teachers could just allow it, and generally they did. Except when I was in grade 9 and the school decided to prohibit even just having them at school, as if it were grenades. Some teacher would always just collect all into a bucket and return at the end of the day.
              When we had free substituted classes, sometimes they would tell us something like “Sorry, I’d allow you phones now, but if I did I could have problems from it.” So clearly they would punish teachers for that. That’s just crazy.
              And computers aren’t in every class. Even if they are, they might not always work. Now we use our phones even to do exams sometimes. But, yeah, school isn’t even mandatory for me anymore, so it’s already different.

              Finally, I don’t trust kids to make life changing decisions. See all the high schoolers who got suckered into a worthless degree from the University of Phoenix. It’s very fair to take the reigns from people who can’t control themselves and their impulses.

              I wasn’t even talking about such late decisions. For example, when I was 10 I was given the decision between going into class A or class B since I had good enough results for A. A was class for a little more talented kids. They even had some additional subjects. Well, my dad discouraged me from going to class A. He told me “There won’t be any normal kids. I’d choose B if I were you.” So I did. I regret. I could have gotten to a better school later on.
              Some explanation of those classes:
              A - Talented
              C and D - sport classes (basketball and hockey respectively)
              B - everything else

              Next, when I was 14, I told my psychologist about my living conditions. Including photos of how our home looks like. She told me that she could call social services. Then asked me if I agreed. I was scared, so I said no. I regret, once again.

              And something that’s there always, choosing high school when you’re 15.
              I am not sure how it works across different school systems. In Slovakia, they are focused just on 1 particular field of study determining where you’ll be for the rest of your life. 3 year fields are without graduation (e.g.: various mechanics and plumbers). 4 year and 5 year fields are with graduation, meaning you can go to college/university.
              I’ve had a few classmates who only chose particular field because their friends were going there too, even though they weren’t interested in it.

              ------------------------------

              Oof, sorry. I got too much off topic.

    • abraxas@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Mudface@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

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

      And they need to learn the curriculum

      • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I mean I’m not that extreme lmao that’s also a safety issue. Kids will be kids, they will not sit quietly all school day and be total lesson sponges lol

        • Mudface@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Of course not, but I think we should at least act as if they should.

          Knowing it’s not possible, though.

          My kids are in 5th, 3rd and 1st grade. I wouldn’t want them on their phones during class as they grow up.

        • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          How much of a safety issue would it really be? Cell phones didn’t really become a thing for my age range until high school. If there was an emergency, there was a landline in the classrooms.

          • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            I don’t think y’all realize that not a single staff member or administrator or any employee of the school would be able to use a phone either (other than landlines I guess?). Schools aren’t just full of students lol

            • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              other than landlines I guess?

              You mean that thing I specifically mentioned? Yes, I realize that. Would it be inconvenient? Yes, it absolutely would. Would it suck to work in that environment? Again, yes it would. If I’m just thinking about safety, I’m not sure it’s that much more unsafe.

                • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  It’s incredibly unsafe when you live in a society built around smartphones/tablets for health and safety tools to remove said smartphones.

                  But is it? Landlines can make the same emergency calls. A Faraday cage also doesn’t mean you can’t have an internal wifi that reaches outside that the staff can connect to, or even the students can connect through with a proxy controlling their connection.

                  I agree it’s impractical. But it doesn’t mean laptops and phones suddenly don’t work. They can still work within the cage and you can poke holes through it with a landline and a proxy to control traffic in and out.

                  Ultimately, it’s definitely not worth the engineering and the effort. I just don’t think that safety is the reason it is impractical.

          • justhach@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Right? Somehow schools survived until at least the 2010s without every kid having a cellphone in them at all times.

        • ridethisbike@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No, but the attention span kids have these days seem to be shortening. Phones and the current state of social media intake doesn’t help.

          That said, a faraday cage is absolutely too far, but they don’t need their phones when they should be focusing on the course.

          • hoodatninja@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            No, but the attention span kids have these days seem to be shortening.

            I hear this a lot but have yet to see evidence/sources from anyone. It’s just “look around you.” I don’t find it particularly compelling. I didn’t exactly sit quietly as a kid myself.

          • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I mean, I’m doing quite well having gone though school without smart devices and 100% would have never gotten straight As if I had one when I was a kid. And I’m every type of ADHD you can be diagnosed as…

    • EvokerKing@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    OP take a look back at this in about 5-10 years and realize how monumentally ignorant it is.

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • sculd@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Multiple studies have shown that smartphone decrease concentration, and have negative impact on emotional well being in adolescents.

    The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4

    Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691462

    Attention or Distraction? The Impact of Mobile Phone on Users’ Psychological Well-Being https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8093572/

    Mobile phone use, behavioural problems and concentration capacity in adolescents: A prospective study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1438463916300645

  • ShranTheWaterPoloFan@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    What would you prefer the school do?

    How could they motivate you to actually pay attention in class instead of playing with your phone? Honestly ask yourself if this “addressing motivation” would make geometry more interesting than tiktok.

    • cabbagee@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

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

      • electrogamerman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In one episode of hannah montanna they use a song and dance to learn about the skeleton bones. I still remember the song after like 10 years, lol

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

          • Jaccident@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            You can quit work and starve. You can quit school and get in a little bit of trouble. I don’t really see the equivalence here.

            Children have lots of rights in this analogy, in fact in a great many places, they also have a right to be cared for by the state that adults don’t. Statutory service provision routinely is written in protection of children.

            Weirdly, most people don’t have a right to take out and use their phone when working, and given that’s the thread topic it’s a decent sized hole in your argument. I worked a high-wage and technical role, white collar as it gets, and you know where my phone was when I was meant to be concentrating on my work, in my pocket. Know what would happen if I was fucking about on it when I had something important to do? Disciplinary, HR, threatened loss of livelihood. If you’re arguing you’re not being treated like adults, I have bad news for you.

            Look, you’re not some oppressed underclass of unperson and your myopic determination to cast yourself as such is a genuine insult to people living under actual hardship.

      • papertowels@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Your statement would sound a lot less dramatic if not for the fact that literally everyone goes to school.

        “Not being paid for your work” 🤣🤣🤣

        My man, your book report is contributing nothing to society. Future scholars will not look upon it with awe. It is purely an exercise to help students as a whole develop as individuals.

        Here’s my question - how do you expect teachers, who are actually providing society with a much-needed service, who are already well understood to be overworked and underpaid, to productively encourage students to pay attention?

      • Aagje_D_Vogel@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

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

        The fuck you think everyone has to go through in their lives prior to being an adult.

        Edit: though

        • TehPers@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          “Today in class we will be finding out whether or not triangles will blend. Please put on these safety goggles before sitting at your desks.”

  • calzone_gigante@lemmy.eco.br
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    1 year ago

    I agree that the school environment should be more motivating, but there’s no way to compete with apps and games designed to be addictive, even adults have trouble avoiding their phones at work.

  • NaoPb@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Even before phones schools were like this. But they’d just put you in mandatory extra classes to fix your grades. Instead of, you know, talking to you. To get to know how you are doing and how you’re feeling.

    I’ve hated my school time and all it taught me is teachers are obsessed with having power over others. Maybe not all teachers, but a lot are like this. They won’t listen to you, they just force their opinion on you. And if you don’t do well in their pre-made lecturing framework then it’s on you because you don’t pay attention and you are lazy. It’s never on them.

  • someguy@lemmyland.com
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    1 year ago

    If schools only focused on what students were motivated to learn, I’m not sure schools would really be accomplishing much. Not to say that schools shouldn’t foster motivation in students. Just that technology, especially social media, is very effective at distracting people.

    • fidodo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • AMuscelid@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I have literally built a dungeons and dragons campaign to learn statistics, and had some students on their phones. I’m not a dancing bear, and having a dopamine panic-button makes it near impossible to engage with anything challenging (I struggle with it too and know it’s an anxiety crutch, but it’s super maladaptive).

        • fidodo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I fully support kicking kids off their phones in class, I don’t think any lesson no matter how engaging can compete with that. I’m not supposed to be on my phone during meetings, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ban phones from class. I was just commenting that work can be done to make lessons more engaging when phones aren’t involved. There’s of course a limit to what you can do, and some subjects are just inherently harder to get kids into, like statistics. But seriously good on you for doing that. I’m sure that while it didn’t have perfect engagement, it was far better than just teaching it to the book.

          Just curious, is there a place you can share that lesson plan to other teachers? It’d be a shame for all that work you did to not get to be used in other classrooms as well.

    • ZWho63@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • someguy@lemmyland.com
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        1 year ago

        They would probably be more likely to stare at their phones instead of learning if they did.

        I do think that having students sit at desks for hours at a time is not an effective way of teaching. Giving students different ways of learning is beneficial and more likely to motivate them. But that usually is more work and more expensive to do.

        In an ideal world, every student would have an individualized, self paced learning program with a dedicated teacher. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for nearly any student.

        • Corroded@leminal.space
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          1 year ago

          I would be interested to see how a self paced learning program with a dedicated teacher would end up if it was focused on embracing getting sidetracked. I know I’ve sat through history classes in the past and had semi-unrelated questions I wanted to research or ask about but didn’t want to waste people’s time. In situations like that I would prefer to have a computer to get a quick answer versus pondering it in the back of my head.

          There must be some truth to an idea that you don’t learn as much from an answer from a question you didn’t ask.

          • Jamie@jamie.moe
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            1 year ago

            I had a history teacher in school that liked me even though I barely paid attention in class. I was bored in the class itself, but loved history and would spend the entire period just reading the textbook because I found it interesting. So even though I didn’t pay attention I would still ace assignments like nobody else in there.

            I was usually a couple chapters past the class at any given time.

          • someguy@lemmyland.com
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            1 year ago

            Man, I remember a couple teachers that encouraged randomly asking questions like that, and the whole class was really engaged. It was very rare but an amazing environment to learn in. I feel bad that there’s so many people that never got to have those sort of teachers.

            • Corroded@leminal.space
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              1 year ago

              It’s like the educational equivalent of a gateway drug. Some of the electives I took like programming really encouraged it and that’s what kept me interested even afterwards with subpar instructors.

        • verbalbotanics@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          You’re not supposed to have fun. You’re supposed to learn so you can get a job that you enjoy.

          Hi, elder leftist here. The whole education system is already set up to produce obedient workers. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself how much time is spent teaching kids to organise effectively, or advocate for issues they care about. Or even just build good communication with their classmates, like how to react to bullying.

          All that matters is to follow the authority, don’t question the rules, put the things in your head that they give you and nothing else.

          The reason kids are bored in school is because the current system doesn’t address the real problems they have, so why should they care about the system.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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            1 year ago

            Take it from an old man, as you grow up friends drift apart. People change, you meet new people. You’ll always cherish those friendships you had back then, but you will never all be together in one place like you are now. People will have jobs, families, girlfriends, spouses, commitments. I love my best friend to death, we’ve been friends since jr high, but I see him once a year now.

            Take advantage of the time you have with them. Go to the gas station and get a soda that’s too big, walk around town aimlessly, do boring kid stuff. You’ll have all the time in the world to be online here later, late nights writing comments at 10pm, thinking fondly about doing stupid teenager stuff with your friends 20 years ago

            • Jamie@jamie.moe
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              Yup, I haven’t seen one of my friends in person in years because he’s in the army. Another one lives right here in town but has a whole family to take care of, but every single time he’s asked me to do anything with him has been a bad time, and I kinda feel bad about it. The rest of my friends have mostly either moved elsewhere or I’ve just not kept in touch.

              So yeah, even people that I kept in touch with for some time after I got out of school have basically not been in my life for some time now. I’ve got a few friends that I usually hang with online, but all my school mates have basically gone their separate ways.

  • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, the second one will directly affect the first one positively. Essentially, school work needs to be the most interesting thing you can do in school, otherwise you will have low motivation. 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.

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

    (And yes, this affects adults too)

    • original_ish_name@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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

      • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        They should make the material interesting enough that people won’t have to resort to other stuff

        Nope. It’s all relative. Compared to what’s available via the phone and internet, 90% of school material is fundamentally more boring, because important things are often boring – and there’s almost nothing you can do about it. I mean sure, an incompetent/unmotivated teacher can make the material even less interesting, but that’s also why we need competent teachers. That’s a separate problem.

        So the quest to make school material more interesting than the Internet is a dead end – it’s just impossible. So they need to make everything else less interesting. Which means that phones and computers can fuck right off. If there are kids for whom this is a difficult situation and they’re unable to cope, such kids will need intervention. I.e. restrictions in free time as well.

        • original_ish_name@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Did you hear what I said about dopamine being the “joy hormone” and used as a “reward”. Your body gives out happy hormones like this after an exercise and other good stuff for you (including school work if it is interesting)

          And don’t you tell me that knowledge isn’t interesting. For something to be interesting (by my definition) it must give you knowledge.

          Girls twerking on TikTok is not interesting - the way Hitler died is

          Memes are not interesting (unless they contain important info)

          These may produce dopamine in other ways but they are not interesting

          Which means that phones and computers can fuck right off.

          I could be considered “tech savvy”, I know a bit of C/PHP and a lot of shell script. Explain ro me how I could learn that without a computer (I’m also self-taught)

          So they need to make everything else less interesting.

          As I said, sleep is something that pupils prefer to schoolwork. Get schoolwork above a bar that low and then we can talk. Amyway, it just needs to be interesting enough that students won’t feel a need to check social media

          • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            I could be considered “tech savvy”, I know a bit of C/PHP and a lot of shell script. Explain ro me how I could learn that without a computer (I’m also self-taught)

            By using the computer or phone at home. Roughly half of the programmer workforce currently alive went through childhood without a mobile phone, because they didn’t exist for regular consumers. And personal laptops for children would’ve been perhaps an option for the top 1%, but probably not even them. Since you just didn’t have electronics in school.

            • someguy3@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Way more than half. Let’s separate dumb phones from smart phones. Even smart phones weren’t all that capable for a long time.

          • PerCarita@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Please don’t learn about how Hitler died through Tiktok. Befriend your librarian and read it in a book.

      • TehPers@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else.

        I think this has more to do with sleep deprivation. I can probably count the number of days I got a full night’s rest while in high school and college on one hand. Rather than making classes more interesting (though they could do this as well I guess), they should focus on not completely overwhelming the students with homework, although I’ll admit that was more of a college thing.

      • TehPers@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Hey at least they give you some books to read if you’re bored. They’re heavy as hell, but you might learn something and get a well needed break from the phone.

    • noobnarski@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Oh yeah I totally needed to learn about what a writer might have thought 200 years ago while writing EVERY SINGLE PAGE of his book, when I already knew that I wanted to do something with technology.

      But we didnt have enough teachers for biology and physics and chemistry, so instead we got more literature.

      I wonder where I (and our whole society) would be now if schools werent meant for preparing kids to transition into work, but instead about getting the full potential out of every kid.

      Im German and I did learn English in school, but not really, because it was taught in a way that made me lose interest immediately.

      I actually learned English when I started to watch Minecraft Youtubers in English because they had some interesting contraptions in their videos or something like that (Its been a while, I dont know exactly why I started watching them)

      • NateNate60@lemmy.ml
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        If you think studying literature is to teach you literature, you’re sorely mistaken. Similar to if you think you study mathematics to learn mathematics.

        You are taught literature so you can better communicate with other people. What is the author’s intention with this passage? What are they trying to say? What might their motivations be? Now apply this to a letter from a potential business partner or a politician’s tweet and you might begin to see how what you were taught becomes relevant.

        Why are you taught grammar? Who cares whether you use the Oxford comma or not? Who has the need to know what mood, theme, and figurative language are? Apply this in the context of trying to write a professional email to your boss or trying to tell a story to engage other people, and maybe you’ll start to see that it wasn’t worthless.

        Why do we need to know the way to prove that the angles of a triangle add up to 180? Who needs to know the Quadratic formula and how to apply it? It’s so you know how to think rationally and apply logic rigourously, so you don’t fall into familiar logical traps that we see on the evening news and the Internet every day.

        Why do you need to know how cells reproduce? Why do we need to know how the pH scale works? It’s so when people on Facebook claim that vaccines erase your DNA or that alkaline water prevents cancer, you’ll know better.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Not taking enough literature and humanities is how we end up with Elon. Every little wannabe engineer who thinks they shouldn’t have to take a humanities course should be smacked in the face by a physics demonstration.

  • L'unico Dee@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    Phones certainly decrease our level of motivation by decreasing our dopamine baseline. Huberman Labs episodes addressing dopamine are really interesting