Comment on France to ban students from keeping smartphones in schools

• blind3rdeye@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I don’t know what you mean by favouritism. The reasoning for the phone ban goes something like this:

  1. Teachers and education researchers have agreed that children are less productive in school due to mobile phones.
  2. But preventing children from using their phones in school creates significant additional workload, due to conflicts and arguments.
  3. Various governments have recognised this, and have created a law which can remove the phones without the workload.

  If you’re talking again about the fact that teachers are allowed phones but students are not, then I’m disappointed. I’ve put in quite a bit of good faith effort into talking about this stuff. At the start of our conversation I felt that I was answering genuine questions, and perhaps helping clarify why someone might want a law like this. But now I’m starting to feel like that was entirely wasted, because you never wanted to think about it anyway - you only wanted to fight it. That’s how I’m starting to feel. Maybe I’m wrong, but this ‘how does the law prevent favoritism’ seems like a totally bullshit line to reasoning to me.

  Different laws and rules target different groups of people for different reasons. There’s a huge list of rules and responsibilities that apply exclusively to teachers and not other professions. And there’s a heap of rules that apply to children and not adults. There can be different rules for different reasons. As for phone usage, I’d personally be totally fine if all smart phones were phased out for everyone for all purposes across the entire world. But I do think it’s a false equivalence to say that if phones are banned for students they should also be banned for everyone else. It a totally separate argument. And note: I’m not introducing this law. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t design it. I don’t even live in the country that the article is from. I’m only try to outline what I understand to be the motivation. If you think something negative is going to result from this law, you should try to outline what that is. What-aboutisms are not helpful.

  source

  • atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Man. I read the article. You all seem to be taking what I said as “I think students should have cell phones in schools”. In actuality I don’t think there’s any reason for students to have cell phones in schools.

    So my argument isn’t that I think the ban is bad. My argument is that this is a piss poor way of going about it that doesn’t really add any benefits (especially when you consider that the law preventing students from using cell phones in schools has been on the books since 2018).

    So this is not an argument about what researchers found as far as differences in the mental health of students allowed to have phones (which is a big jump because at best the phones are tolerated in students pockets or bags not allowed to use them in school during lessons), vs those that aren’t. That part of what has been said up and down this comment section is irrelevant. It has nothing at all to do with my original comment.

    I don’t care what governments recognize about a correlation between student mental health or well being and cell phone use. That’s not got anything at all to do with what I said.

    If you’re disappointed it’s literally because you didn’t read.

    source