At least one Kansas district is projecting $150,000 to $180,000 just to equip secondary students with individual phone lockers, according to the Wichita Eagle. The state provided zero dedicated funding. Every dollar comes from local budgets.
Districts choosing fabric locking pouches — think Yondr, the magnetic-lock system concert venues use to keep audiences present — face an estimated $30 per unit. Statewide, the Kansas Division of the Budget put that figure at roughly $13.4 million if every student received one, according to the Lawrence KS Times. Lockers require a steeper upfront investment. Neither option came with a state check attached.
Legislators passed the policy. The price tag was someone else’s problem.
My only point was that schools cant be trusted to hear kids who need to be heard, therefore cell phones are necessary in case of an emergency. Your argument was that “streaming makes kids do dumb things” like we didnt have Jackass wannabes growing up as well. How dare children not be obedient when told to sit down and shut up? A flashlight when its dark?! The audacity.
Im sorry you clearly hate working with kids. Its so disappointing to see someone invest the time it takes to earn a masters degree only to hate the field they find themselves in. The fact is that children have always acted like children, regardless of the tech they happen to have. They want attention. They want recognition. They want to be seen. You clearly arent engaging them if they’re on tiktok or streaming their class to their friends. Again, why do you think taking away the phone is better than teaching them to use it? When is abstinence better than education?
How about this? Since you are the expert on teaching, why don’t you go sub and show everyone how it’s done?
Not a problem. I’ll sign up as soon as you answer the question. When is abstinence better than education?
When children are being faced with algorithms designed by adults to literally addict them. Lootboxes, short form video content, slop… it’s tailor made to be irresistible to adults - why wouldn’t we expect it to be less so for children?
It does not matter how engaging your lessons are, there are children who will always choose the infinite dopamine machine over anything else when given the option. I’ve had lessons where students have thrown things off buildings, blown shit up for them, where we’ve launched rockets they designed…. and had kids fucking around on their phone.
When I was in college, I was in a program where they took my phone at all times except night for about two weeks and I survived.
I do not understand why everyone thinks they know how to do a teachers job. There’s a reason I got a degree. There’s a reason I studied child psychology as part of my program. Children are not tiny adults.
I am still absolutely fucking furious that you suggest that I hate my job or hate my students. I fucking love teaching and my students. This job is absolutely brutal and difficult and requires me to pay my own money for supplies and work outside my contract hours while paying me so little that I have two part time jobs alongside it. I have pour my heart and soul into this job, and what matters to me is what helps me help these children learn.
And what helps these children learn is not being constantly in proximity to something designed to hook you to an endless stream of short term dopamine bursts.
Cool. So instead of teaching kids the difference between productive screen time and doom scrolling, you embrace abstinence because you did it once and you were fine.
Humanity has been tailor making distractions for millenia. We’ve been hunting the dopamine high since we started banging rocks together. We’ve also been developing self control. Did you forget about that one? Maybe you needed a lockout program for your phone because you were too weak to focus for your own sake?
Again, I dont understand how you can say you love your kids and then set them up for failure in the same breath. You’re like the morons in the 90’s who told us we’d never have a calculator in the real world just to be forced to teach us to run a TI-84 a handful of years later. Abstinence may have worked for you, but its going to do more harm that good on a larger scale. Thats just history repeating itself. Must have skipped that day back in college.
Better, they’re going to go home and jump right back on the dopamine train because a) you kept it from them all day and b) you arent taking the time to teach them appropriate attention management techniques. And then you get to start the same fight the next day. How productive. How worthwhile for the kids. Might as well quit the second and third jobs with the amount of gratitude you’ll have rolling in.
Again, go substitute. I am sure that there are tons of openings near you.
Your lack of critical thinking skills and ability to comprehend what you read might hamper you, but it would help you realize that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Maybe I should come to your workplace and tell you how things work.