Canada

American high school teacher here (Midwest region). We implemented a policy this year banning cellphones in instructional spaces during instructional time. Enforceable by confiscation if teachers saw or heard a phone. We have a strong set of administrators who supported teachers in any case where there was student pushback. It has been a huge success in terms of limiting distractions during instructional time. All of our students are provided Chromebooks so there really isn’t much of an instructional reason to have phones anyway. It has also contributed to a drop in student-on-student behavior problems.

I do feel for the girl in this article for whom it was used as a coping mechanism for bullying. No policy comes with zero downsides. However, it sounds like she was allowed exceptions in certain cases, which is exactly what should happen.

I'm surprised that this wasn't something that was already implemented. When I was in highschool in the early 2000's cellphones would be instantly taken away if they were spotted by a teacher during class.

I don't understand parents needing constant contact with their children. As a kid I would've hated that, helicopter parenting x1000.

At my high school most of my teachers didn’t allow cellphones in class, and would take them away for the period if they caught the student more than once.

There isn’t a lot of need for cellphones in a classroom, especially if the students have access to school laptops/computers.

Phones aren't the problem, applications are. No one ever complained about having Nokia 3310s in their pockets.

There's a lot of people here immediately jumping to the "cell phones bad!" conclusion.

Phones are a part of kids lives nowadays. Banning them in schools isn't going to help anyone. How are children supposed to learn to use technology safely and effectively if we just take it away from them instead? I don't want to imply that it is only a teachers job to teach kids about safe technology use, because it isn't, but kids spend 30+ hours a week at school. It is a large portion of their lives and what they learn in the classroom often ends up reflected in their lives outside of school.

I think everyone who jumps to the conclusion to ban cell phones in schools is missing the point. All it does is encourage kids to use their technology in unsupervised spaces instead. It doesn't teach them how to use it safely or effectively, and it doesn't prevent them from participating in cyber bullying. All it does is push issues such as that outside of the school where kids have arguably less resources and support systems to deal with it.

I assumed cell phones would be banned in classrooms. When I was in school any sight of a walkman would get it taken away!

Secondary teacher here.

Trying to remove phones from the classroom entirely is just reinforcing that phones are for entertainment. It is a tool and needs to be handled like a tool: we should be teaching responsible use, and limiting it from those who have proved they can't be responsible on a per-case basis.

When students use their phones responsibly, they can be powerful learning aids. And I have zero issues calling out individual students who refuse to use them responsibly and treating their actions like any other misdemeanor.

I think cellphones should be banned in classrooms and allowed between classes. I'm not sure why they should need to be banned during students' freetime. This is how it was when I was in high school during the very early years of smartphones and it worked out fine. If I wanted to listen to music while walking down the halls or during lunch, that was a really important coping mechanism for me with how dramatic high school can be. It also allowed me to keep in touch with my friends and meet them around the school. I think it's overly reactionary to do a blanket ban like that. I completely understand the need to ban them within classrooms. That's reasonable to me as classrooms should only be for learning.

At least when I was in secondary school teachers did not have to confiscate phones, reasonable usage of cell phones was permitted (or laptops for that matter) while unreasonable usage would first result in the instructor asking you to put your phone away and subsequently result in confiscation. Reasonable usage could be using a English-French dictionary online, or taking a photo of a white board. I think it also helped that the school wifi blocked social media and the building had horrendous reception due to the building style, and most VPNs would be blocked so it was difficult to circumvent anyways. I think a complete ban is unreasonable, students should learn how to use technology effectively to ameliorate their education while also learning when it is not appropriate to use it at all (e.g. when the teacher is lecturing).

Edit: I should add for primary school I feel like devices are significantly less useful, and only school owned devices should be used under supervision of staff if necessary (e.g. a computer lab, or a chromebook cart). I do not know how many students bring phones in that age group now, since when I went the most anyone had was an iPod usually except for the rare person with more.

I live in the USA, and phones are generally banned in schools here, although they're allowed to be used while class is not in session.

In some cases though, kids have become violent and attacked teachers who have tried taking their phone away.

Sounds like a fabulous idea.

Looks like a ban on smartphones would be more reasonable, while allowing certain kinds of old school phones (the kind for example Hasidic Jews use), to allow for emergency contingencies.

Schools have dress codes, and people adapt to those. Maybe we just need tech codes.

I like the idea of a complete ban on cell phones during teaching periods, and maybe even on school grounds at all. I have no idea how to enforce such a ban and as mentioned in the article if schools are struggling to even contain violence, how are they going to manage cell phone use?

The article highlights an issue, there is something wrong with our schools. It is more then just the normal generational discomfort(though that is part of it). Again I don't know the solution but I think we need to acknowledge that we are failing today's students(they are not failing us because we are the adults). Then we can discuss how to improve things.