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Sobering article on kids tuned out of education, lost in their cell phones:
"A Teacher Did All He Could to Keep Kids Off Phones. He’s Quitting in Frustration.
Mitchell Rutherford faced a crisis of confidence as smartphones took over his Arizona high school classroom and students lost the motivation to learn"
He seems like he's going above and beyond to motivate students. He blames the situation on pervasive cell phone use bordering on addiction, resulting in high school kids who just don't care and spend their days watching Tik Tok videos.
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
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Took the bus into Seattle this week for dentist.
This is the primary express bus for Microsoft and Amazon employees who live on the eastside of Seattle. As soon as these workers board, out comes the phone. Not a word is spoken in the entire bus of 40+. It was a fine day too, Crossing over Lake Washington, Mt Rainier was outstanding and entering Seattle, the Olympic Mts were still capped in snow.
I find it difficult to understand how a person can be on a computer screen all day, and not want personal human interaction.
The same can be said for adults these days. We've become slaves to technology,
and we only have ourselves to blame.
That's one of the bizarre things about it: there was never an edict handed down;
everyone who became a phone zombie did so by choice.
Every now and then, I still see someone on a bus or a train reading a book.
Who could've imagined, 20 years ago, that this would become almost a rarity?
Recommended reading: "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster, 1909 (yes, 1909)
Every now and then, I see still someone on a bus or a train reading a book.
That's me.
And a comment above is correct - it's consumed people of all ages. I've stopped going to shows/concerts because I can't tolerate seeing an ocean of glowing screens in front of me, ruining the performance. I can't go to my monthly book club meeting without everyone whipping out their phones and playing show & tell. I'm done.
Smartphones have made me anti-social and isolated, not because I use one, but because I don't.
Took the bus into Seattle this week for dentist.
This is the primary express bus for Microsoft and Amazon employees who live on the eastside of Seattle. As soon as these workers board, out comes the phone. Not a word is spoken in the entire bus of 40+. It was a fine day too, Crossing over Lake Washington, Mt Rainier was outstanding and entering Seattle, the Olympic Mts were still capped in snow.
I find it difficult to understand how a person can be on a computer screen all day, and not want personal human interaction.
I am at fault too.
What else do you expect then to do on the bus to work? Uses to be a newspaper they were reading. What difference does it make if they are reading the screen or a piece of paper? I get all the human interaction I can stand so a few minutes of peace before the grind starts should be ok.
I would be 100% supportive of statewide mandates that prohibit cell phones in school by state law. To implement it properly you need to build secure cell phone lockers of some sort where students check in their phones and then get them back after school. It can be done, some schools are rolling it out.
Expecting teachers to do it on a ad-hoc basis in class just doesn't work. The kids are too tempted to pull their phones out on their laps and it is exhausting being the cell phone cop every period all day long. Just make it universal state law and properly fund it. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing seriously and correctly.
In the schools where they have done such things, it only takes a brief transition period and then kids come to appreciate it.
I don't understand why the school didn't have a policy school wide (or even district wide) dealing with cell phones. At the local high school, if any teacher SEES a phone in class, they take it til the end of class. Used to be you had to buy it back for 20 bucks, but that went away pretty quickly because it was, after all, the property of the kid's parents. But yeah. If a teacher sees a phone it's gone for that period. And you can use it during passing periods or at lunch, if you want.
Fighting the battle of this addiction is too much for a teacher to do by him/herself.
You can learn much more in 60 minutes on a phone than you could ever learn from a "teacher," spouting rote facts (usually without any context).
If that is the case, then why aren't students everywhere getting straight A's in school from all the information they're getting on the internet?
Why are test scores in reading and math declining in spite of all of this unprecedented access to information?
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