In California, a high school teacher complains that students watch Netflix on their phones during class. In Maryland, a chemistry teacher says students use gambling apps to place bets during the school day.
Around the country, educators say students routinely send Snapchat messages in class, listen to music and shop online, among countless other examples of how smartphones distract from teaching and learning.
The hold that phones have on adolescents in America today is well-documented, but teachers say parents are often not aware to what extent students use them inside the classroom. And increasingly, educators and experts are speaking with one voice on the question of how to handle it: Ban phones during classes.
That’s true the world has changed and we’re much more an interconnected and online society than before. And a case can be made that phones have good uses as you point out.
But, coordinating pickups and job scheduling and such still shouldn’t be done during class time. The problem here is that kids are allowing themselves to be distracted by their phones, and are using them in harmful ways - I’ve seen it myself, my neices and nephews talking about sex pictures they have been sent by their classmates during school hours.
I think phones and laptops definitely belong in modern schoolrooms but they do need to be regulated in some way. Kids are not as well-heeled as adults are and don’t see the dangers.