It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take away.
Current legislation allows the teacher to tell a student to put their phone away in a pocket or backpack, for example, where it will not be a distraction.
The use of phones during breaks cannot be completely banned, as students have fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees everyone the protection of property, which also applies to students' phones. Restricting the use of mobile devices must be considered from the perspective of freedom of speech and the protection of a phone call or other confidential message.
Section 12 from Finnish constitution:
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Section 12 - Freedom of expression and right of access to information
Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other communications without prior prevention by anyone. More detailed provisions on the exercise of the freedom of expression are laid down by an Act. Provisions on restrictions relating to pictorial programmes that are necessary for the protection of children may be laid down by an Act.
Documents and recordings in the possession of the authorities are public, unless their publication has for compelling reasons been specifically restricted by an Act. Everyone has the right of access to public documents and recordings.
> It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take away.
It's a strange concept to hold that there are rights that can't be taken away, but then take them away merely by passing legislation.
anhner · 59m ago
Those rights can't be taken away... without existing legislation.
There are many rights that can be taken away, freedom of movement for example in the case of prisoners, but you need laws in order to not make that taking away a crime itself. You can't just apprehend and throw someone in your basement because they stole something from you.
Same thing with children's phones, a teacher can't just take away the phone because they didn't have the authority before.
thinkingtoilet · 10m ago
Not at all. Libel can punish you for speech. Defamation can punish you for expression. If you break a law, you no longer can vote in some states (I heavily disagree with this, just stating a fact) or own a gun. Etc... Etc... This is very normal.
nabla9 · 6m ago
That's how it is everywhere. Constitution gives rights, exceptions must be set by law.
You have free speech... then comes the list of exceptions, incitement of violence, defamation (libel and slander), Child pornography, perjury, speech integral to criminal conduct, copyright infringement, state secrets,
smaudet · 58s ago
And hopefully the constitution sets some bounds on said restrictions...
Otherwise a constitution becomes ineffective at some point.
There are such things as unconstitutional laws and laws that should not be observed nor enforced...
chithanh · 1h ago
The keyword here is just.
They cannot simply order children to comply, there has to be same legal basis like there has to be for ordering an adult to comply.
oortoo · 53m ago
Can't "just take away" ie, there has to be a law prescribing the removal of the right. Lawful rights vs inalienable human rights. Same thing exists in US. You have a right to certain things, like the right to privacy, but that right can be lost in the right circumstances as determined by law.
The difference here is that in the US, children don't by default inherit the same legal rights as adults and instead have a different set of rights which often means they never had a legal right to, for example, privacy or ownership, in the first place.
eptcyka · 1h ago
You have the right to get intoxicated, you possibly have the privilege to drive a car if you are licensed. It’s quite the shame that these shmucks legislated against doing both at the same time.
teloli · 49m ago
You should have seen what happened a few years ago during a thing called covid
adverbly · 57m ago
So wait did they ban it for teachers and staff as well?
Aurornis · 2m ago
What next? Are they going to let the teachers drive cars and smoke cigarettes while forbidding students to do the same?
Jolter · 10m ago
Staff are expected to use phones and other digital tools in order to do their job, so I don’t think this comment is as witty as you might think.
DocTomoe · 27m ago
If you look into it, you will find that some animals are more equal than others.
PeterStuer · 3h ago
If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome world and social model and some practical skills and basic physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a lot from those aims.
RHSeeger · 1h ago
My daughter brings her phone to school with her
- If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to come drive her to school
- If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call us and let us know she won't be home at her normal time
- If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it
- etc, etc, etc
There's a ton of reasons for her to have her phone on her. Enough so that, when she gets punished with phone removal, we generally still let her bring it to school.
The fact that the phone doesn't contribute to the schooling itself (although it does when she forgets something she needs for school) doesn't mean that it doesn't contribute to QOL overall by being with her at school.
smoe · 40s ago
While I see the utility of a phone in situations where children can't move around independently for one reason or another, I reckon that in Finland, most children walk or cycle to and from school on their own starting in like first grade, so there's no need for this kind of coordination.
dfxm12 · 12m ago
The first two aren't in school. The last doesn't actually require a cell phone.
It's worth noting, according to the article, the law gives school officials leeway to allow kids to use their phones in some circumstances. So, the law doesn't stop any of the use cases you've listed.
dweekly · 54m ago
Those are good reasons to have a smart watch with cellular capabilities.
They are not good reasons to have a phone at school.
In terms of QOL: there is a meaningful body of research about the impact of giving a teenage girl access to a phone on their quality of life.
Those studies speak about social media addiction, smartphone addiction, and excessive phone use and not about having a phone.
If you want to prevent the negative effects of social media and (designed to be) addictive apps, then you should ban social media and addictive apps, and not phones (because that would just mask the symptoms).
meowface · 52m ago
I assume those effects are similar even if they're only using the phone before and after school.
rapind · 35m ago
Probably, but it would be much less reasonable for the state to enforce outside of school (both for practical and ideological reasons).
thomastraum · 3m ago
THIS is it.
even all the above reasons are not actual reasons. None of these are a problem. you job is NOT to bring something to school because she forgot it nor to drive her to school if the bus doesnt show up.
stefs · 1h ago
> The law does not entirely ban the use of mobile phones at school, and their use will be permitted in certain situations. But generally, the use of phones *during class time* will be prohibited.
so, the finnish don't prohibit that at all.
stetrain · 1h ago
I did all of those same things while in school with a Nokia candy bar phone. I did waste some time playing Snake though.
Per the article this is a ban on using smartphones during class time, not a ban on bringing them to school at all.
That seems pretty reasonable to me. When I was in school if a teacher saw you using phone during class you might get one warning and then it was being confiscated.
ecshafer · 1h ago
All of those reasons can be solved with her using a public phone. My school growing up had a phone in the hallway by the main office for those reasons.
ethbr1 · 1h ago
As part of the last generation to grow up without phones in (early) school, this.
The endless rationalizing of why kids need to have phones at every moment rings hollow...
Because grade school kids actually did just fine without them.
Things functioned, people got where they needed to get, emergencies were handled, etc.
Especially with pre- and post-school access, we're balancing a minimum of in-school utility against a massive danger to learning and development.
We should just accept we built addiction boxes and therefore restrict them appropriately.
meowface · 49m ago
I also grew up without phones in schools but in my opinion the problem is phones (and laptops, frankly) in class. If a student isn't in class, I don't see why they can't use their phone to talk to people or browse websites or whatever.
If they're in class, then 99% chance it's distracting them from learning. If they're not, I think personal autonomy is a good rule.
ale42 · 1h ago
Here around public phones are gone since long, even inside schools. However, mobile phones that just do calls and SMS are still a thing. And anyway, the Finnish law is not preventing any of the use cases you mentioned as far as I understand it.
bluGill · 56m ago
No they cannot. My school had multiple doors that could not see each other - more than once my parents were waiting for me at a different door from the one I was standing at waiting for them. We did find each other, but only after a lot of searching - sometimes we even passed each other as we both switched doors to wait at.
Okay, it did work out, but not nearly as well as a simple cell phone. Smart phones add additional functionality. (I can see on google maps where each kid's phone is)
spicyusername · 52m ago
So you had to wait a little extra for the benefit of a society where children aren't always on a screen?
Seems like a good trade to me.
probably_wrong · 1h ago
All of those problems can be solved without smartphones, as evidenced by literally every previous generation dealing with them. If anything, my grumpy self would argue that not having means to contact my parents if I forgot something ensured that I paid more attention the night before to what I had to pack.
But I'm open to compromise: let's give children bring dumb phones that can only call and text.
bluGill · 1h ago
Sure. I remember standing in line at the phone for 10 minutes as a kid waiting for my turn to call my parents when my activity was done. Cell phones are better. Smart phones would mean I could use the time waiting for something.
Smart phones when class is in session is a distraction and should be banned. However outside of class they are helpful.
dagss · 10m ago
1) Point 1 and 3 can in many families be an impediment to the development of the child rather than a good thing. If you can always call on helicopter parents to solve your issues you do not get the experience that even if you mess up / get into a bad situation, in the end, you can solve the situation yourself -- or if it is not solved, that you at least survive it and life goes on. Important life skills.
2) The entire list can be equally well solved by dumbphones without TikTok and Snapchat. Which is what such bans as this is about.
3) It is always about pros/cons. In Scandinavia phones have (in my view as a parent and married to a teacher) essentially destroyed education wherever they are allowed in the pocket/backpack of the student during class.
Not to speak about downsides to social life. E.g., people not attempting dancing in high school proms because there are videos taken everywhere. People not showering in gyms due to phones. Just two examples. SO MANY things are killed by the phones.
The benefits have to be weighed against the quite massive downsides.
--
They banned phones on the high school where my wife teaches last year and she is basically a changed person. Instead of spending 50% of class time policing phone use, she can, you know, actually teach.
(She still has to deal with a generation addicted to dopamine, but a habit of phone confiscation during class is at least a massive improvement.)
jairuhme · 1h ago
These are good examples of why a non-smartphone is valuable and a smartphone is not necessary. Also the linked article states that they will be allowed to use their phone when given circumstances require, which I think covers the cases you outlined
sandos · 1h ago
Uh, yes, same exact reasons our kids have their phones with them to school. BUT, the phones are handed in, and when they are handed in during the day, the kids can ask a teacher either for their phone or for getting help using another phone. At the end of the school day, they get their phones back.
I see no problem here.
lossolo · 1h ago
She can have a basic phone just for calls—like the ones designed for older people.Or depending on the school, they might have a system where all phones are stored when children arrive and returned after school.
zdragnar · 1h ago
It can stay in her locker when she is in class, no?
dist-epoch · 55m ago
> If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it
Curious what this will lead to.
When she'll get a job, if she'll forget her laptop at home, will she call you and ask you to bring it to the workplace?
bombcar · 10m ago
Depending on where people are relative to each other, absolutely yes.
I’ve done similar for friends and family.
For most kids, the embarrassment of a parent appearing during the school day is enough to really negatively enforce forgetting things, at least after middle school starts.
brainzap · 3h ago
the goal of school and what it is used for are different thing. School is childcare
os2warpman · 1h ago
The first several years of school is indeed childcare. Childcare mixed with education.
I am confused by people who use this as a derogative.
I learned drafting, how to type, welding, library science, color theory, woodworking, BASIC programming, the internal anatomy of a piglet, resume writing, how to play the cello, calculus, and how to sing the names of all 50 US states in alphabetical order in middle school and high school.
That is not childcare.
edit: forgot darkroom photography, yearbook editing, extemporaneous speaking, and Robert's Rules of Order.
FollowingTheDao · 1h ago
> The first several years of school is indeed childcare. Childcare mixed with education.
Yes. Former teacher here to tell you I cared about the children. :)
But seriously, in the United States teachers are considered "In loco parentis" which "refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent. "
This is about Finland. They have a rather well-reputed school system that delivers in both areas.
cudder · 2h ago
At least used to. Last few years Finland's PISA scores as measured by the OECD have plummeted and now they are just a bit above average but nowhere near what they used to be.
What do you think are the factors that caused this fall?
cudder · 1h ago
I always felt like the teaching method in primary school was very much like "no pupil left behind". Teachers really tried their best to keep everyone up to speed on what they taught. If you were a huge troublemaker or just couldn't keep up with the (slowish) pace you would get moved to a special class where you would get more attention (even smaller class sizes) and wouldn't slow the rest of the group down.
As a "smart kid" it sometimes felt like waiting for everyone in class to grok something before moving on was a waste of time and that personally I'd learn very little, but ultimately I think it worked very well to ensure that everyone was on common ground.
At some point it was deemed that the current system wasn't inclusive enough so the special education for the troublemakers was gutted and they were put back into regular classrooms. At the same time, due to lack of funding and lack of teachers, class sizes ballooned from <15 to up to 30 or even 40 students per class in larger cities. I think there's some critical point where that system breaks down and now we're past it. The teacher has too many students to make sure everyone is up to speed, and giving too much individual attention in such a large class wastes everyone else's time.
Immigration has also played a role I think. Finland used to be quite monocultural, but that has changed. There are now more and more students who speak Finnish as their second or third language and as such have trouble keeping up. I don't think the solution is to stuff them into their own schools either as that promotes segregation and makes integrating into the society as an immigrant harder, and I don't pretend to know the perfect solution (if one even exists), but one thing's for sure: the Finnish school system was 100% unprepared for it.
bombcar · 6m ago
The solution is almost always more teachers (though at some point you have two teachers per kid and that’s likely to be excessive).
A class of five can handle darn near anything; a class of fifty needs everyone to be as nearly identical as possible.
You can artificially increase the number of “teachers” by combining classes of different grades sometimes. 12 year olds can do great assisting 6 year olds.
veeti · 1h ago
Some common themes in the conversation are neoliberal cost cutting, failed attempts at inclusion and immigration.
* Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have made significant cuts to education and the general wellbeing of younger generations.
* Modern schools are increasingly built like open plan offices with dozens of students crammed into "learning spaces" instead of traditional classrooms. This reduces building costs and is also sold as a trendy new innovation in pedagogy.
* Special needs and gifted students are no longer put into special classrooms where they can receive the extra attention and care they need. Instead, they are put in with the other kids to the benefit of no one except the state budget, but at least it feels more "inclusive" to some research professor in their ivory tower.
In summary, Finland has brought the policies that have caused much destruction in other Western countries into their own education system, where those policies have also caused destruction, much to everyone's amazement.
hjgjhyuhy · 1h ago
Yep, this country is no longer that special by European standards. Childcare is still good, but later education and healthcare are very mediocre.
In EU only greeks are less satisfied with the availability of healthcare. Our unemployment rate is pretty similar to Greece and Spain as well. This is what right wing governments want I guess.
thaanpaa · 1h ago
Voting for right-wing politicians repeatedly. You know, tax cuts for the wealthy, education cuts in fear of national debt, and all that jazz.
Cloudef · 1h ago
At least used to
constantcrying · 2h ago
Why do 16 year olds need 8 hours of "child care"?
fsloth · 1h ago
Child care? This is legally required school attendance for under 18 year olds.
Most school days are way shorter than that. The curriculum seems to keep my kids intellectually engaged. Commenting as a finn.
constantcrying · 1h ago
>Child care?
Why does a 16 year old need "child care"? In Germany they are allowed to drink. They also are allowed to drive certain vehicles.
>legally required school attendance for under 18 year olds.
Germany does not have that. A 16 year old could leave school and work full time.
fsloth · 6m ago
Sure, different countries have different norms.
In Finland 16 olds are not allowed to drink and access to alcohol is state controlled.
IMHO learning foreign languages, math, history, biology and physics is not child care.
This is in preparation to getting access to upper secondary education (vocational or academic). Usually you start this at 16.
This is not a simple question but one part of the answer is that students are a) ready for upper secondary education b) their grades can be used to grade access to schools with top upper secondary schools being extremely hard to get into.
Ofc if you ask “why would a society do this” I guess the reason is that an educated population is expected to be more productive AND because the law requires schooling up to 18 it also implies all students must have access to free schools with close to zero material costs. So it’s intended also to level the playing field for all social classes.
Is this worse or better than germanys system is impossible for me to tell.
tejohnso · 1h ago
In my experience and observation, as the age and school level increases, there's more actual learning going on.
By the time you're 16, I'd say a significant amount of school time is decently geared toward learning, and you're old enough to supplement that yourself during spares or downtime if you want to.
At younger ages though, it definitely seems like more of a daycare service than a learning focused environment. The free daycare is important, but I do feel bad for the kids who are stuck in that absurd environment. Someone can come up to you and stab you with a pencil for no reason and that's just par for the course.
noworld · 2h ago
Because of child labor laws.
constantcrying · 1h ago
In which country are 16 year olds not allowed to work?
Y-bar · 1h ago
In my nation 16-year olds may work outside of school hours (school is mandatory until they are 18 years old). There are other hard limits on which types of jobs and the time of day they may work. Work shall never interfere with school.
lolinder · 1h ago
Which suggests that the child labor laws for 16-year-olds are there to keep 16-year-olds in school, rather than school being there as a place to put 16-year-olds who are banned from employment.
constantcrying · 1h ago
In Germany you can leave school at 16 and work full-time.
das_keyboard · 1h ago
That is not true for most states in Germany.
After 10 years of mandatory school most states have what is called "Berufsschulpflicht" until you are at least 18 years old.
That means you have to learn a job, which is not the same as working full-time and still considered education.
constantcrying · 53m ago
16 year olds in Germany are employed and they can work 40 hours a week.
Claiming that 16 year olds "can not work because they have mandatory school" is false.
fmbb · 2h ago
Have you met a 16-year old?
closewith · 2h ago
In a very real way, adolescents rise to the responsibilities given to them. Usually teenagers that need modulating is a reflection on their upbringing rather than any innate flaw.
constantcrying · 2h ago
They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol. If we trust them with that surely we can let them do things during the day without constant adult supervision.
graemep · 2h ago
> They are old enough to drive certain vehicles and old enough to buy alcohol
Hopefully not at the same time.
Meneth · 1h ago
They would drive to and from the store. Drinking what they bought is a different matter.
_heimdall · 2h ago
The legal drinking age in Finland is 18 or 20, depending on the ABV.
Where us the drinking age 16?
messe · 2h ago
In Denmark anything less that 16.5% can be purchased by 16 year olds.
SwiftyBug · 1h ago
This is crazy. 16.5 is stronger than regular wine.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
That's exactly the point. It's a middle ground ABV where there aren't a ton of products and below which are mostly fermented beverages and above which is distilled liquor.
smoe · 1h ago
In Switzerland, it is 16 for beer and wine, and 18 for spirits (or drinks that contain spirits, like "alcopops", even if they have a low ABV). I think Austria and Germany are the same.
constantcrying · 2h ago
I was talking about Germany.
jonasdegendt · 1h ago
Belgium as well.
tokioyoyo · 2h ago
Do you remember yourself at the age of 16?
constantcrying · 1h ago
Sure.
doublerabbit · 2h ago
Depends on what. I can't even trust the 40 year developers in my team at work. "Hacky if foreach loop will fix later"
Trust is a privilege that must be earned not given. Prove to me you're trustworthy and I'll give you trust.
One untrustworthy 16 year old can cause hell chaos in a group of trustworthy teenagers. I've seen it when I was a youth worker.
closewith · 2h ago
Trust is by far most often given and earned (or lost) post facto. In fact, that's an essential characteristic of a society.
> Depends on what. I can't even trust the 40 year developers in my team at work. "Hacky if foreach loop will fix later"
Whenever people make statements like this, I always wonder what their peers think of them. This dismissive attitude is so off-putting.
xnorswap · 2h ago
People who make statements like that are the kind of people you dread will pick up your pull request. You just know you're going to go from maybe spending an hour cleaning up some suggestions to a 3-day philosophical battle to get them to a point where they deign to accept your PR.
doublerabbit · 2h ago
Not at all. If the code is decent and shows effort I have no problem. If it's sloppy it shite code.
I really don't have time to care about what my peers think of me. It's work. I don't want to communicate with them outside work. Work is just another mind space that stays at work. I am strict when it comes to code, I expect the same.
I want working maintainable code to enable me to do my job. If people dread submitting a PR because they can't write code with effort, good. I like my ships built strong not weak.
If they fix their problem, good. Trust given, more than happy to salute however time and time they've proven to me they don't.
These developers have proven to me they won't. These are developers who are those who do not fix the issuing code and will just move on to the next problem hacking it to make it work.
If you've never worked with such, then lucky. If this sting for you, time to put more effort in to your work.
Ghoelian · 2h ago
Ok, so the PR never gets approved and their work never makes it into prod, right?
doublerabbit · 1h ago
No. I put my view on to reject PR and they go to the next best person to approve.
Blag the senior with bullshite of: "I will fix this in the next revision, it works for now" and don't.
closewith · 34m ago
I'm not to engage further as you're only ever going to repeat yourself in more obnoxious ways, but I will say that if you treat people in real life the way you comment here, you will only ever be tolerated at best. Never respected and never liked.
Even the people you consider peers will abhor that you think and speak like this about people.
theshackleford · 1h ago
> I don't want to communicate with them outside work. Work isn't a friend zone
Neither of these things was suggested or raised so this is quite a bizarre rant to go on.
Even if you care about neither of those things, what your peers think of you still matters because you must work with them.
doublerabbit · 2h ago
I don't trust them and they prove to me I can't. They don't own to their mistakes nor fix their problems.
Now your left with a code base forever with tech debt because of a hacky foreach if loop.
You're telling me you've never worked with anyone who does half arsed work? Where you need to pick up their slack? Lucky you.
Because if you can't do a proper job at least on elementary level then what do you do then when they refuse to fix their mess?
lolinder · 1h ago
I'm not even sure what you're talking about. Is this a JavaScript complaint and they were meant to use a for..of? Are you an FP purist and think they were supposed to use map/filter?
This sounds like you have some very specific trauma around a very specific "foreach if loop", because I would personally never throw around such a specific-but-not-specific example of tech debt. Tech debt is extremely contextual.
CalRobert · 2h ago
Yes, they can be fully functioning young adults if not raised terribly
Ekaros · 2h ago
And what percentage of entire population of them is not raised terribly?
lupusreal · 2h ago
Their fingers are too big to fit in electrical sockets, they should be fine.
rad_gruchalski · 2h ago
No worries. A tongue will always fit. Especially after some alcohol.
GuB-42 · 2h ago
The thing is: smartphones exist. The young adults these children will become will live in a world where smartphones are an essential part of their life. Using a smartphone is a practical skill.
That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea. It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit like with calculators, there are classes with calculators, classes without, and classes that teach how to work with them, their strengths and shortcomings.
I don't know how to do it in practice though. Airplane mode and offline educative apps may be a start.
eitally · 9m ago
Fwiw, my local public school district (I have three kids at three different public neighborhood schools) does provide kids instruction like this, as well as lots of other programming around empathy, acceptance, drug/alcohol use, common health/physiology topics, driver training, etc. This is my tax dollars being spent on things that aren't core academic topics but imho absolutely help develop youth into better decision makers with a more holistic view of society than many of them might otherwise given their home situations.
The middle and high schools here ban phone use during class, and the high school confiscates phones (and grants detentions) for students who flaunt the ban. In practice, it usually works with teachers using those door mounted phone holders as a way to take attendance. Put your phone in the pouch when you get to class, and grab it when you leave. Occasionally, a teacher will also ban smartwatches if they become too distracting, but this is not common.
That said, many teachers take advantage of their students having phones to augment their methods & curriculum, and afaik this is the teachers' prerogative.
cheschire · 2h ago
Cars exist and are foundational to modern living yet we do not push kids to learn to drive until their later teenage years. Some countries wait until they are 18 and others choosing a couple years sooner.
GuB-42 · 50m ago
I don't know how it is done in the US, but I definitely learned about cars at school. Including:
- Lessons about road safety (causes of accidents, number of deaths, etc...)
- In elementary school, navigating the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. Including going outside and crossing roads.
- In secondary school, basic information about traffic law, road signs, and information related to light motor vehicles (mopeds, ...)
- Though I didn't do it personally, some school had a class at a practice track, using pedal cars to learn about things like right of way
So while we didn't do actual driving, probably for economic and liability reasons, it is definitely part of the curriculum.
makeitdouble · 1h ago
Kids still get to walk with cars around, ride bikes, drive motorcycles usually a few years before majority, they also ride cars and are usually familiar with how they work way before driving.
I'm actually of the option we should have a smartphone category/setup at the same positioning as bikes are to cars, it would even benefit adults the same way not everyone wants a car.
lolinder · 1h ago
We do, they're called regular cellphones. They can be used to make phone calls and even to send text messages, but they can't be used to access social media hellscapes.
DocTomoe · 18m ago
On the other hand, we don't teach kids in school the mechanical basics of automated locomotion, how to distill oil into usable fuel and how to mill an engine block before we allow them to get a driver's license.
Unlike modern education, which puts a massive emphasis on teaching how to do menial, useless things before going the sensible route [e.g. I remember vividly how we were tortured by doing table of values calculations in maths for what felt like weeks before we were allowed to use derivatives. I loved maths. Until that point. Then I hated the course (not the subject) with a passion.
Lo and behold, I enter university, and the first thing we do in Mathematics 101 is 'let's forget everything we have learned, we're going to start from the beginning'. Joy.]
I want to stress the point: Smartphones exist (and have existed for 15 years - a more modern 'scary new tech' would probably be LLMs). Banning these things from school will only keep teachers happy because they can keep their teaching methods from the 1890s alive for some more time, instead of using what is available to get kids educated better.
Cloudef · 1h ago
Honestly if driving was teached at school and you get license once you graduate, that would be amazing
tremon · 57m ago
In NL, cycling proficiency is tested at school (around 10yo). You don't get a license though, and it's not really taught as many children already bike to school at a younger age.
torpfactory · 2h ago
What’s the skill though? Most everything you do on a smartphone is trivially easy thanks to all those hard working app developers. We all know from experience that the vast majority of actual phone time is spent consuming some kind of media. I’m not at all worried about kids not learning to use a smartphone well enough- that part will sort itself out. It’s all the other (boring) skills that get pushed aside in the mindless scramble for dopamine that concerns me.
criddell · 11m ago
Where my kids went to high school, a smart phone was required. The teacher would encourage kids to put assignments and tests on their calendar. They would use the camera to take a picture of a home work assignment written on a whiteboard. They used the camera for photo and movie projects. They had some twitter-like app for the teacher to broadcast to all students.
GuB-42 · 5m ago
Using the smartphone a a useful tool while avoiding the mindless scramble for dopamine is the skill.
swiftcoder · 1h ago
I think there might be something to be said for the idea of teaching computer literacy on smartphones. There's often a real gap in comprehension of conceptual computer use in those who grew up in the age of ambient smartphones/socialmedia/etc.
That smartphone one only uses for TikTok is still 100x more powerful than any computer we had access to at that age, and it can do real work (just so long as you look beyond the consumption apps).
T-zex · 2h ago
Smartphone should not be compared to a calculator. The closer analogy would be kids bringing in their friends, cousins, music, games, photo albums, films etc into a class and interacting with them.
m_fayer · 1h ago
Glossy magazines, handy-dandy mobbing tools, porn, a kiddie slot machine, a big stack of totally random niche zines that include yes the icky ones, a kiddie panopticon, their anxious parents, a gaggle of marketers and influencers grooming their income streams (this is a fun game) and interacting with them.
ioseph · 2h ago
I think a PC is a more apt comparison. Yes we learnt them in computer class but they weren't in the Math classroom. Hell learning software engineering I didn't use my laptop at all during lectures.
a3w · 2h ago
For some reason, we learn math as if we were farmers in the early 1900s.
We do not learn (Bayesian) statistics early enough to tell fact from fraud, what city dwellers and voters could probably use instead.
And applied math on a PC would be great, but we barely have applied math on a calculator.
And kids love calculators: only digital numbers are numbers. 2/3 is cleary not a number to anyone below 20 years of age, that is two numbers, we have to write .6666666\dash_over{6} down as a solution instead.
ndriscoll · 1h ago
At least when I was a kid 20 years ago in the US, the math curriculum worked toward physical science and engineering applications (i.e. algebra, geometry, calculus), which also sets you up to understand probability/statistics. My impression was that's more or less standard all over. Has that changed?
I'm not sure how to interpret your last statement, but that seems like a problem worth correcting if true? They're going to need to understand fractions to do any math more advanced than grade school level.
donatj · 2h ago
Many real world distractions exist. Drugs and alcohol exist, and will be part of many of these children's lives. Just because something exists in the real world doesn't mean it belongs in schools.
Frankly, smartphones should be discussed in health class, much like drugs and alcohol, and in a similar tone.
jorvi · 1h ago
It's not really smartphones by themselves that need to be discussed, but rather (simplified) the dopamine loop reward system.
Explain it to young kids as the smartphone giving you a 'treat' for doing nothing. Eventually you get lazy and won't do any work because you get a 'treat' from the smartphone for free whereas if you play sports or hang out with your friends you only get the 'treat' for doing something.
Then explain that very smart people have taught the smartphone how to make the 'treat' tastier and tastier until you spend most of your time chasing treats instead of doing and enjoying things.
InDubioProRubio · 2h ago
The problem is they do damage, at home and as a teacher, you get to compete against the dopamine kick for attention - the whole day, even if the device is not around
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 2h ago
You know I used to think this but my cousins were raised extremely strict on phones and media consumption and today they're successful and well-adjusted. They didn't binge and lack self control when they became adults.
constantcrying · 3h ago
Is that the aim of schools?
It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany. There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you described I do not think they were ever considered.
All around school was a giant waste of time.
2muchcoffeeman · 2h ago
I know several teachers. So these sorts of comments are always funny. I know math teachers who lack support but continuously attempt to present topics from different POV because some students don’t get it.
So some self proclaimed smart person “learned nothing”, and therefore school is a waste of time. At the same time, ignoring that maybe a school or system is indeed not prepared to handle some individuals (which is not good), or that maybe some teachers are bad, or maybe the system does not support their staff enough. But that can’t be the case because they learned nothing. Whole school system must be a scam.
nisegami · 1h ago
Those teachers are admirable, but their actions are more of a 'nice to have' than the primary objective of the system.
constantcrying · 2h ago
As I wrote below. My most memorable math class was a teacher failing to explain fractions to me, what later became obvious to me was that the teacher did not understand fractions either.
I am sure you want to blame me for this, but somehow I went to university and got a degree in (applied) mathematics. So I doubt it was some fundamental problem with me.
Everybody is upset when someone tells them they fail at their jobs and teachers are an entire industry of total failure. In a single semester of university I learned so much more than in 12 years of school. If teachers aren't at fault, who is? By any metric I was a successful student.
2muchcoffeeman · 2h ago
I’m not blaming you. But as intelligent as you may be, you have discounted all the possibilities for the failure of you school or your particular teachers. Because you had a bad time, then the whole system is malicious right?
I know a high school teacher with a PhD and has tutored and lectured at the university level. But they are a teacher now. Guess I’ll paint them with the same brush as all teachers.
constantcrying · 2h ago
>then the whole system is malicious right?
Where did I say that the intentions were bad?
>Because you had a bad time, then the whole system is malicious right?
No. In university the expectations were drastically higher. If the goal of the school was to prepare me for university, then it failed at that for everyone. The mismatch can not be attributed to me.
>But they are a teacher now. Guess I’ll paint them with the same brush as all teachers.
We had one of these as well. Average teacher, learned basically nothing in her class.
RandomLensman · 1h ago
All students at university were unprepared from school or only some, i.e., performance of different schools, classes, etc. would be heterogeneous?
constantcrying · 1h ago
Curricula are standardized. All students experienced almost the exact same disconnect. This is also not some secret, all Professors know this and some try their hardest to bridge the gap.
eitally · 4m ago
Then this is a failure of the system in Germany, and does not reflect the experience of many American kids. Some, yes, but not all. Primarily, it's the "smart" kids who didn't have to work for good high school grades who have a bad time in university, not the kids in the fat part of the curve who more likely matriculated having already developed strong study skills. In my experience, at least, the biggest difference between high school and college is that high school teachers teach and homework is for reinforcement, whereas college professors expect self-learning to be the core method of pedagogy and their role is to reinforce and contextualize the topics. Switching from one mode to the other can be rough, no matter how innately intelligent a student is.
RandomLensman · 1h ago
Maybe aligned/frameworked/pooled but no full uniform testing or single curriculum across all the states in Germany, for example - so variations exist and some schools might prepare better than others.
tejohnso · 1h ago
Incompetence is rampant in government jobs. Schools aren't technically government jobs, but there are many similarities in terms of incentives, hiring practice, dismissal difficulty, talent pool, etc.
In any normal (private sector) job, if you can't perform the basic job requirements you get fired or retrained. Maybe you're moved to a different area that better suits your skill set. But you don't just sit in a position for 20 years screwing it up day after day as you see in government / lower education.
lores · 1h ago
"Incompetence is rampant" is enough. No, incompetent people do not get fired from the private sector either. The dumbest tech question I have ever heard from a tech manager ("why don't we do datamining in Flash?") was from an established guy at an established corporation that controls a lot of the things the world does and really, really shouldn't.
zx90 · 1h ago
To add another case: When I was 14 or so, a science teacher taught the whole classroom that the reason stars twinkle is because of light being waves. I considered interrupting and mentioning pockets of air with different densities, refraction, etc... I decided not to. I didn't want to be branded (again) a troublemaker. I hope nobody else in that classroom remembers that lesson.
Some teachers start with high spirits but most turn into regular slobs trying to get to the end of the month once they realise that their job is to mind the children while the parents work.
I was lucky enough to meet just a handful of teachers that tought me some values, the rest were just ... forgetable people.
tremon · 1h ago
Why do you choose to remember that class and not the ones where you learned to write proper English?
roenxi · 3h ago
You have put your finger on something - the actual purpose of school is to socialise children (it isn't very efficient as a teaching system - tutoring is better and what the people who really care about educational attainment use). But a side effect is teaching them a lot of useful things.
And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it often fades into the background and nobody notices. But it still makes a difference.
constantcrying · 2h ago
>the actual purpose of school is to socialise children
I agree that this is probably the most important thing for children to learn. My point is that sitting in a room for 8 hours does very little to accomplish that.
>And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it often fades into the background and nobody notices. But it still makes a difference.
I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It became very clear that I was learning much more and faster.
To talk about schooling we first have to make clear what the goal is. Sure everybody needs to learn how to read, write and do basic arithmetic, but that is not a 12 year endeavor. Even including basic general knowledge is not a 12 year endeavor. And we should not be wasting children's time on things, just because we can't be bothered to have them do something actually meaningful.
myrmidon · 2h ago
> I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It became very clear that I was learning much more and faster.
Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out all children with low interest/performance/support in preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning rate could also be much faster in school for the rest.
But if you want a solid baseline of reading/writing/math/general education for everyone in society, those twelve years are already barely enough.
I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top.
Optional programs for faster/more targetted learning are much better and can be very positive IMO, but even there you need to be careful with how you set things up to avoid problems.
constantcrying · 2h ago
>Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out all children with low interest/performance/support in preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning rate could also be much faster in school for the rest.
In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university.
myrmidon · 1h ago
> In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university.
Yes, but if half the class was not smarter than you (by whatever standard), then that segregation was too low to really hit the spot anyway.
My personal experience was the completely opposite: I learned more useful knowledge in school than in university, despite wasting like a year of math on trigonometric sum formulas and similar nonsense; but the baseline for physics/electronics, programming and math was much more applicable and necessary than anything I learned in university (frequently overspecialized and barely useful).
Sure, I also learned a lot during university on my own, but mostly thanks to sufficient free time and personal interest; university itself did not contribute too much there, and this was somewhat similar during school already anyway (most specifically with programming).
To me, it sounds like you suffered from mediocre teachers in school and learn better on your own-- but neither is universal enough to draw system-wide conclusions IMO.
andrepd · 2h ago
> I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top.
I'm curious about this, can you elaborate more? My feeling is that in a class of 25 kids grouped by age being taught by 1 single teacher, it's basically impossible that the teaching pace and style is adequate for more than a handful of them. You're going to have kids bored out of their minds learning nothing and being unengaged, and you're going to have kids that can't keep up and would need extra support / a different kind of support. You're not doing either of those any favours.
myrmidon · 1h ago
My view is that schools purpose is teaching everyone not only a common baseline in language/math, but also how to deal with expectations/responsibilities and other people (teachers and classmates).
By doing "early segregation" you make this more difficult because that "common baseline" no longer exists; you'd expect to get significantly more people that struggle with language and basic math as a result (in exchange for better outcomes in your "gifted" track).
Furthermore, you are sorting people into social buckets in a way that is really bad for social cohesion (inevitable, all the white kids with rich parents are gonna end up in the "gifted" schools). Everyone is gonna grow up in a echochamber, basically.
Finally, this is going to lead to restrictions on a young adults options, that I find really unpalatable to blame on the affected children: Can you honestly argue that people don't deserve the chance to study medicine at university just because their parents did not tutor, push and mentor them sufficiently? Equality of opportunity as a principle is gonna be nigh impossible to preserve in such a system.
I do not dispute that you could teach children faster and better with individual tutoring and customized programs, but that would be cost-prohibitive, and I see currently no realistic way to get there without above consequences.
Maybe AI will solve it :P
bluGill · 48m ago
Don't forget that kid that was 1 point off from making the gifted track that now gets stuck with much worse options for the rest of their life even though they could probably pass the gifted track as well (at the bottom of the class, but still a pass).
roenxi · 2h ago
> To talk about schooling we first have to make clear what the goal is.
What can I say; I like arguing. We don't actually have to choose a single goal - everyone can have different goals. If schooling isn't compulsory then you could have a mass of different people doing different things for different reasons and it all gets called 'schooling'.
If schooling is state managed ... the same interest groups exist, they just have to fight over the curriculum in parliament or the Department of Schooling. The end result will be a weird hodge-podge of compromises that nobody can confidently say satisfies them completely and doesn't have a clear goal.
It happens that we cannot say that there is a goal of schooling. Some people may have one goal, but other people may have alternative goals. There are some really tricky edge cases, like History - should Mongolian schoolchildren be taught that Ghengis Khan was a hero, a scumbag, a disaster, a triumph, a fact, a national symbol or someone best forgotten? That is not a question where a reliable and enduring consensus can be reached because real life is too complicated to take a final universal stand on something that happened 1,000 years ago.
bluGill · 29m ago
We do need and have a goal. As a taxpayer I'm paying for school for kids other than my own. If there is no goal of that, then I am wasting my money: give me that back so I can go on vacation. Let those kids play in a park or whatever instead of spending time in school.
The goal is wide and open ended, but there is a goal. Likely others can word it better than me, but it goes something like this: "to produce kids that grow up to be productive adults that contribute to society and make the world a better place."
We all are not the same, and even if we were there are many different needs. I need someone to haul my trash to the wherever it is handled, but my city only needs a few hundred such people (thousand?). A few other people need to ensure I have clean water. A lot of people need to ensure I have food. Some of them need to provide medical care. Thus we need to have multiple different outcomes (if you are just hauling trash you need less education than the medical doctors, while the person designing the dump needs more education than a basic nurse).
Because of the different needs in society there will and must be debate over what the curriculum should be. There is no way to teach everything. Time spend teaching one subject is time that cannot be used for a different one. There are many different ideas how to teach, and we need better science to figure out what really works.
constantcrying · 2h ago
>We don't actually have to choose a single goal - everyone can have different goals. If schooling isn't compulsory then you could have a mass of different people doing different things for different reasons and it all gets called 'schooling'.
I completely agree. If I wanted anything from current schooling it would be giving students more abilities to develop themselves. Obviously that doesn't mean a 16 year old playing videogames for 12 hours a day, but students who like doing sports should be doing much more of it and those who like learning should be doing much more of that and so on.
bluGill · 12m ago
I disagree. Most kids need to be forced a bit to learn something hard. Sure the kid who likes sports should play. However only exceptional kids will ever be good enough to make a good future playing sports. Most kids will grow up to realize that much as they love the game they will never make a living at it. Thus we need to ensure those kids don't spend all their time getting better, but instead spend time getting useful life skills that they will need as an adult. Much as "post scarcity" people like to think otherwise, we are still not in a world where many people can "slack off".
Kids learning how to develop themselves is a good thing ONLY if they choose the "right thing" to develop. You can get really good at video games, but as you already said probably not a good only investment (a fine hobby, but keep it a limited time hobby). There are some sports that because of injuries should really be banned (but I won't list them because as soon as I do there will be a lot screaming from people who live that sport). What we need is kids who develop themselves into something that makes them good productive adults - for some jobs we need adults to do this is boring and so kids won't do it unless forced.
bnegreve · 3h ago
Surely reading/writing are useful skills that most people did not have before school was mandatory.
constantcrying · 3h ago
I did not take me twelve years to learn to read and write. What an awful excuse. What made me good at reading was reading books outside of school.
In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.
rad_gruchalski · 2h ago
No, I don’t think that’s true. The 12 years of the pre-uni education set you up for being a member of society. You don’t see it because it became a part of you. You also learned to read, write, all basic math, geography, …
The uni taught you more real-world expected skills but I‘m certain you learned more before uni.
constantcrying · 2h ago
Why couldn't I have learned university courses and these other skills at the same time?
rad_gruchalski · 4m ago
I don’t know. Why couldn’t you?
kube-system · 1h ago
> Why couldn't I have learned university courses and these other skills at the same time?
Was that not offered at your school? It was at mine.
University level courses do presume you have some basic skills. But in many places, schools do offer university level courses for those who are prepared.
constantcrying · 47m ago
>Was that not offered at your school?
I think it would have been theoretically possible, but obviously logistically difficult as I would have had to skip multiple classes in other fields to attend.
It's also not like I was particularly interested in mathematics at that point in my life. I essentially chose my field of study based on what I had the best grades in. Only during my studies, when the material actually became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged in the subject.
kube-system · 37m ago
For the schools that offer students the ability to take university-level courses, students aren't "skipping" other classes.
> Only during my studies, when the material actually became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged in the subject.
Many schools solve this by having different difficulty-levels of courses. My school, in the US, had three.
moooo99 · 2h ago
> In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.
I learned more in a single year on the job than I did in 3 years of university. That doesn’t make university useless
kube-system · 1h ago
> I did not take me twelve years to learn to read and write.
It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write at a 12th grade level.
You could study it for another 4 or more years at university if you wanted to develop your skills further.
> What made me good at reading was reading books outside of school.
This is your personal experience. I learned to read and write quite well at school and was well-prepared for university.
bluGill · 6m ago
There is no such thing as a 12th grade level. 6th grade is all the farther English is taught. There are sometimes things called levels above that, but they are not levels in English they are levels in some specific specialization and have more to do with that specialization than reading. (doctors would not be expected to understand deep computer science writing even though doctors have very advanced reading skills in a medical domain).
I understand Spanish only goes up to a 5th grade level while Japanese to 9th. This is a reflection on how complex the writing systems are, and not the kids, intelligence, or school systems.
The years after you have your basic reading down are used to learn other skills that are of general use in life for everyone.
DocTomoe · 14m ago
> It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write at a 12th grade level.
Nah. You are mixing up the skill 'writing glyphs on a piece of paper and retrieving that information via optical means' with 'being well-grounded in a wide array of subjects so you can express an idea in a way that is mentally stimulating to a potential reader'.
Neither takes 12 years to learn. The first, we teach within a year, at most. The second we do not teach at all, and the best 'writers' often are those who were challenged outside of school, by parents who gave them a rich, intellectually interesting environment, not within it.
tremon · 52m ago
You should have taken that semester when you were 4 years old then, you could have skipped fifteen years of education!
andrepd · 1h ago
> In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.
You keep saying this but I have a hard time believing this is true; in fact I'm not even sure what "more" means (objectively) in this context.
Let's see, in the 12 years of schooling you've learned at the very least: how to read and write, how to interpret texts, how to read literature, how to compose an essay, how to speak, read, and write a second language, a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths, several topics of physics and chemistry, biology, geology, and other natural sciences (in more or less detail), several years of history, and mandatory physical exercise to top it off. What magical university did you go to that in a single semester you learned more than that :D Unless I'm missing something.
constantcrying · 1h ago
In school I spend 8 hours listening to some teacher or playing silly learning games and did some busywork as homework. I never learned for any test or found any of the material particularly interesting.
In university I actually had to study, take notes, research the subject, study for many hours, etc.
>a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths
Hilarious to say this. As it turned out, my first semester of university mathematics was spent on learning everything I did not learn in school. And it made it extremely clear to me how badly school had prepared me.
You would think that school would put me in a position where university mathematics were just a continuation. Nothing further could be from the truth, nearly everything taught in school was taught in a way which made it useless for actual mathematics.
In school we learned nothing about: Sets, logic, deductions, Axioms or Proofs (which turn out to be really important!), we did however spend years solving integrals, which turned out extremely unhelpful for actual mathematics.
poincaredisk · 1h ago
You're either not arguing in good faith, have an unusual definition of "more", or hate school so much that it clouds your judgement.
Do you honestly believe that is you were sent to University (or some other educational institution) with absolutely zero school knowledge, not even literacy and grade school math, you would be able to learn everything you learned at school in less than one semester?
RandomLensman · 1h ago
Seems experiences vary: For me, the first year of university mathematics was to a large extent a continuation or even what was covered in school (sets, axioms, proofs etc were covered in school). That said, that wasn't the case for everyone as far as I could tell.
Ekaros · 2h ago
They did. Well at least officially. Being able to read was needed if you wanted to get married.
closewith · 2h ago
And yet consistently the happiest, healthiest, and most developed societies are those with the highest levels of primary and secondary education attainment.
Not necessarily causative, but we'd want to be very sure the educational fence isn't contributory before we tear it down.
watwut · 2h ago
Quite a lot of Germans learn quite a lot. German schools expect quite a lot from students that do actually want to go to better schools. But yes, it is possible to slack through it all if you want to slack.
DocTomoe · 9m ago
Heavily depends on where you went to school.
Bavaria, Saxony, Baden-Württemberg? Preferrably Gymnasium? Preferrably a state school, not a city school? Hell, you have good chances!
Any other Land? Something on a lower tier? Nah, easy going. There are schools in Germany which are famous for breeding 16-year-olds who can barely read.
Disclaimer: Writer is German, Württemberger, visited a state gymnasium
constantcrying · 2h ago
>German schools expect quite a lot from students that do actually want to go to better schools.
Not my experience.
>But yes, it is possible to slack through it all if you want to slack.
I was a good student though and did really well. I never learned for anything though and was bored in basically every subject.
There never were any expectations on me which I didn't trivially meet.
watwut · 1h ago
Hey, you are the genius who knew it all before learning and got highest possible grades with no effort. Congrats.
Overwhelming majority of people is not like that, they do not get highest grades, they do not get into gymnasium without effort, don't pass tests without effort.
constantcrying · 1h ago
Haha, are you serious?
bmacho · 5m ago
I think so. And he is presumably right. You either
- learned something -- aced the tests
- had the opportunity to learn something -- didn't ace the tests but somewhy you still claim that you were bored
It is possible that neither happened, you just somehow knew everything. But that's highly improbable.
bmn__ · 1h ago
He is. Today is the day you realise that thanks to your innate intelligence you had a time of privilege in school.
constantcrying · 43m ago
I felt much more privileged when I was at university and there were students far more intelligent than me, who helped me with the material.
sofixa · 3h ago
> There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing
Do you think that was because their methods were bad, you didn't bother and they couldn't force you, or that their methods were not adapted to the way you learn?
Also, I'd find it surprising if you really learned nothing. From what I know of German schooling from people who went through it, you certainly learned at least a bit about the depths to which humans can go to and how to prevent them (Holocaust and wider Nazi atrocities). Also, you probably learned social skills, basic project management and collaboration, and some knowledge which is probably useless other than maybe as a basis of understanding the world and various things you might encounter. I don't recall much from my biology or chemistry classes, but I recall vague outlines, which is enough.
constantcrying · 3h ago
>Do you think that was because their methods were bad, you didn't bother and they couldn't force you, or that their methods were not adapted to the way you learn?
It was because they had nothing to teach. I still remember trying to learn fractions from a teacher who clearly did not understand fractions either.
Just to be clear, I did very well in school. Given their standards I would be considered a "successful student" and I went on to get a university degree.
>Also, you probably learned social skills, basic project management and collaboration, and some knowledge which is probably useless other than maybe as a basis of understanding the world
None of that I learned while sitting in class. I learned it despite the school activities I had to do.
sofixa · 2h ago
> None of that I learned while sitting in class
School is about more than the part where you sit in class. The social skills, time and project management navigation etc. is all stuff you learn and do because of school but outside of class.
constantcrying · 2h ago
But if that is the goal of schools then we would drastically reduce the time students sit in class.
immibis · 1h ago
From what I know about Germany, they don't teach anything about the depths humans can go or how to prevent them recurring. They seem to just learn the Nazis were evil people and as long as you're not one of those, similarly evil things can never happen again. Also because only evil people can do evil things, calling out an evil thing is illegal because it implies someone involved is evil and that's an attack on their honour.
See Germany-Palestine relations. One third of weapons used in the Gaza war are paid for by Germany, and the remaining two thirds by the USA. Other countries contribute negligibly.
Kim_Bruning · 1h ago
I deplore the fact that schools need to resort to banning phones.
When I was younger I imagined a world in which computing devices would be a boon to (young) people everywhere.
But many apps appear to be detrimental to people's mental health, both young and old.
Possibly this can be changed. Maybe separate app stores are a solution (think f-droid)? Or maybe we need to start looking a lot harder at apps that might actually be user hostile.
shayway · 1h ago
Smartphones were just starting to be common right around the time I hit middle and high school. Teachers let us use them whenever we wanted, more or less, but if there was something we were supposed to be doing, we were only allowed to use them for educational purposes.
We were often encouraged to use them, in fact. If there was ever a question someone asked that the teachers couldn't answer, or they heard an argument between students about something that could be solved by looking up hard data, they would invite us to take out our phones and look it up. One of the teachers would occasionally make little websites and apps related to whatever we were learning at the time. Sometimes we were shown interesting blog posts, educational youtube videos (before it was an industry), personal sites from people who make things. It was reinforced again and again that they were for discovery first, creation second, and anything else third.
I feel very lucky for that to be how I learned to interact with them. The fact that we have magic machines that can answer any question in our pocket, that can take photos and connect us to people and teach us languages, yet we've corrupted them to the point that people are willingly giving them up and banning them from educational settings, is one of the greatest failings of modern society in my view. Or rather, an indication of even deeper and more troubling problems.
asadotzler · 1h ago
Computing devices could have done that except the people making them built hellscapes with black hole level gravity to sell us shit we don't need so now we have to treat computing devices like cigarettes and begin limiting their use in meaningful ways and teaching society to shun them, not because they couldn't be amazing, but because they are not now and probably won't be given Big Tech's stranglehold and inherent evil.
fsloth · 1h ago
Apps are the result of darwinian competition for engagement in a user base of billions.
It’s a horrible way to optimize technology for addictiveness.
Not sure if there is a fix for that.
CivBase · 1h ago
Counter point: Materals which are needed/useful for education should be provided by the school and used at the teacher's discretion under their supervision. A personal smartphone shouldn't have any place in classroom activities since it is an obvious distraction and not equally accessible to all students.
ilrwbwrkhv · 48m ago
I think what Finland did is the right take because these are devices which kids do not need.
They can call their parents if required from the main office.
This is fantastic and once again shows why Finland is a pioneer in childhood education and why Americans and other countries are so far behind.
bcraven · 3h ago
I'd recommend watching Social Studies to get an idea of what phone use in schools can look like. It's filmed in LA but I'm sure can be applied generally.
The amount of anxiety on show is really saddening.
* no phones during classes or during breaks (with the exception of lunch break, I think)
* phone can be allowed by teachers for a particular class and purpose
* if a student uses a phone while it's not allowed, the phone will be confiscated until the end of the school day
* (there might be a more severe rule for repeat offenders)
IMHO this strikes a pretty good balance between allowing phones for coordinating transit to school and back home, and no distraction in the class room.
FinnLobsien · 2h ago
I'm totally in favor of this, but there's something poetic about the country of Nokia banning smartphones.
Tade0 · 2h ago
The main (literal) takeaway is that teachers can now confiscate phones.
Over here, at the other end of the Baltic sea, there's an ongoing debate about phones in the classroom and some schools have regulations in place regarding the use of electronic devices, but these are largely toothless as otherwise they would infringe on the right to property.
I graduated high school before the smartphone era, so I don't have much of a point of reference, but I'm leaning on disallowing at least Wi-Fi/mobile data - that's the largest source of distraction in my view.
esperent · 1h ago
> they would infringe on the right to property.
Can children bring in portable hifi systems? What about those squeaky chicken toys? Or a water pistol?
Tade0 · 1h ago
My sister's friend brought a microwave oven once and started making grilled cheese sandwiches during recess. He was told to unplug and never bring it again, but it was not confiscated.
My classmate brought a super-sized calculator to class for tests, as he had a medical condition which allowed him to bring "a calculator". The buttons made a lot of noise but, again, it was not confiscated.
asadotzler · 1h ago
the hifi system has a much better chance at attaching itself to freedom of speech protections than squeaky chickens or toy guns.
geremiiah · 2h ago
Is it possible to fight Internet addiction without banning stuff? While it helps to ban smartphones during school, it won't stop these kids from logging on for 5 to 7 hrs after school. We need to find ways to make people (not just kids) more resilient to Internet addiction without resorting to widespread bans, which are both hard to implement, unlikely to keep people away long term and dangerous for other reasons.
ndr42 · 2h ago
I do not think kids and everybody else are standing a chance against all the money that is thrown at making and keeping them addicted.
So I fear if we do not want them to be addicted we have to prohibit things (it does not need to be smartphones, it could be mechanisms on these devices).
FinnLobsien · 2h ago
Bingo. The decline of smoking wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for banning smoking in most public places and everywhere indoors, removing cigarette vending machines, etc.
makeitdouble · 1h ago
Prohibition didn't work for booze, doesn't work for drugs.
Why would you be expecting better results for this ?
Ekaros · 1h ago
Smoking ban in bars and restaurants seem to work. So doing same with phones in schools during lesson time does not seem unreasonable.
ty6853 · 36m ago
I agree it is not unreasonable, but I'd also note that bars have their livelihood at stake. While a child has their phone at stake, you cannot threaten their livelihood without a trip to prison.
There are no material stakes to the child other than losing their entertainment device. Might as well break the rules.
Miraltar · 55m ago
This and taxes, it's much much harder to get cigarettes as a teenager now because of the price
ndr42 · 1h ago
If you would like to prohibit e.g. gambling mechanisms in games or social media you need a legal framework and then you investigate and fine the firms that don't adhere to the rules. This works very well in the EU as seen by the example of apple and facebook last week. It's not perfect but what is?
jalict · 1h ago
> Is it possible to fight Internet addiction...
Yes!
> ...without banning stuff?
What incentive do companies have to do this? It seems quite profitable for them?
I am quite strict here with my comment; but honestly, I can't see much reason other than making new products that are made as an "anti" movement, but companies will just find new ways to get people hooked -- because it is profitable for them to do so.
FinnLobsien · 2h ago
I think you're right in a way because if school wants to prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent with tech.
But at the same time, I think banning smartphones is perfectly fine because you can still use computers and stuff. It's not like they're going back to quills and ink.
Smartphones fry your attention span and enable bullying. And if parents want to have emergency contact, you can always have a simple mobile phone with texting/calling.
zx90 · 1h ago
Using a dumb-phone is the reason a pre-teen neighbor of mine got bullied. So much that she ended up stealing money to get herself a smartphone. Shortly afterwards the parents folded and became less strict with their anti-consumerism stance.
FinnLobsien · 1h ago
yeah but isn't that precisely what banning smartphones in schools fixes? Nobody said anything about outside of school.
zx90 · 55m ago
Sorry, I was not clear.
Absolutely smartphones should be banned, at least during lessons, and at best during the whole time in the school, recess, etc.
Giving a child a dumb-phone in an environment where everybody else uses a smartphone doesn't work. If smarphones are not banned then _all_ will end up with a smartphone, and socialisation difficulties, etc...
This is a case where individual freedoms end up in collective damage. Maybe I'm an outlier here but I'd ban all kinds of social media all the time.
_Algernon_ · 2h ago
>I think you're right in a way because if school wants to prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent with tech.
They are failing spectacularly on that front anyways. You don't learn useful skills by being handed a remotely administered tablet or Chromebook, which is what schools provide.
threetonesun · 2h ago
Growing up we had computer class in school, where we did BASIC programming and worked on typing, and this wasn't a particularly good school system. Moving towards "you'll learn computers and typing by having them in your face all the time" feels like a considerable regression in both computer and general skills.
zx90 · 46m ago
I saw this in the Netherlands: Chromebooks with which the children did their research online, submitted their homework online, got them graded online, organized their workgroups, schedules and meetings online ...
Actually </s> they were learnig vital skills like Agile Sprint management! (I don't know if they ever physically met for standup meeetings)
graemep · 2h ago
> I think you're right in a way because if school wants to prepare kids for work, then they'll have to get competent with tech.
1. Educational is not vocational training. Schools should give kids skills and a foundation, not teach them how to use particular technology.
2. Not all jobs require much knowledge of how to use technology.
FinnLobsien · 2h ago
1. Correct, I think you've changed my mind on this and I'll investigate further. Though they should probably get foundational knowledge on tech literacy.
2. True, though less true over time. Even in the non-tech jobs you're now constantly using technology. In the trades, you need to know how to operate a CNC machine. As a nurse, you're operating medical devices that are getting more and more powered by technology.
forinti · 2h ago
In Uruguay in the 1980s there was no TV before 10am. I liked watching cartoons a lot, but I'm glad this made me do more interesting stuff in the mornings.
_flux · 2h ago
Maybe it does help increasing resiliency by forcing them not use the device for the day? Whether it does that will be found during the next few years. Why is it unlikely in long term?
You pose this as a question, but I find it's quite easy to say "we need to achieve this some other way" but then not having a concrete suggestion what that other way could be.
enaaem · 1h ago
Easiest way to fight addiction is to remove the triggers, like seeing your phone. Requires less willpower.
piva00 · 1h ago
No, I don't think there's a way without regulating addictive feed-based content machines.
As much as we would like to tout some individualised solution for this, there's no way for all individuals to be trained to resist products designed for maximising its usage. There are armies of smart people being paid to think about ways that will make users be "engaged" with their products for as long as possible for it to be profitable, armies of experts in user behaviour, developers that can churn out good quality digital products, designers who can make the experience feel smooth. It's all geared to be addictive since the incentive is to capture as much attention as possible.
Is it possible to fight gambling addiction, alcohol addiction, nicotine addiction, drugs addiction, without banning them? Yup, it's costly, relies on a lot of regulation, control from the State on what kind of behaviour these companies can engage, and so on.
The addictive thing is not the smartphone but what it gives access to, without a conversation about what kind of regulations could curtail the addictive side of the real culprit, social media, there's no way out on an individual basis.
Banning smartphones in schools is akin to banning cigarettes' commercials, you aren't banning the stuff completely but at least trying to curtail its reach. We need more of this, social media has a lot of benefits so I don't think it should ever be outright banned, we do need more talk about its downsides and potential mitigations on a societal level.
macote · 24m ago
A committee in Quebec also recommends a full ban on cellphones and electronic devices at schools.
NY just banned cellphones in schools. I don't know the exact details but its being called "bell to bell" presumably the whole day.
cromulent · 2h ago
Note that this means "in class" rather than "in school".
nicce · 2h ago
”in school” is left for the school to decide. The can ban in breaks too.
0xCafeBabee · 45m ago
Great to see Finland taking a balanced approach to phone use in schools - keeping the focus on learning while still being practical about when phones are actually needed!
Kaethar · 2h ago
I wonder if there's any alternatives to this that teach actual discipline when it comes to phones. Methods that actually attack the reason kids are using phones in school (boredom, social anxiety, uninterested in school etc.).
stevage · 1h ago
What I hear from teachers is they are constantly bombarded by notifications. They aren't idly playing on their phones. They're constantly responding to things happening.
There's seriously no alternative to banning them, and I don't even see the interest in trying.
AlecSchueler · 2h ago
I think this would be reasonable except for all the billion dollar companies pouring their money into researching how to keep the kids on their phones. The solution supposes that there's a state of mind the child could have that would give a smaller intrinsic need for the phone and that would be that, but this falls down when there are better funded and more powerful entities than the schools and parents pushing extrinsic motivations to stay on the phone for longer and longer.
skydhash · 2h ago
I remember being a kid and I wouldn’t need any reason to using smartphones at school. And we did bring banned things like walkman, gameboy, dumb phones,… And we only needed to spend 5 hours there.
nutanc · 48m ago
We all know the advantages of smartphones. What we dont know yet are the harmful effects of the smartphones on young minds. I just hope we are not stunting the mental growth of our kids just because we dont know the harmful effects. Like how smoking was allowed everywhere initially and now we ban it everywhere.
jampekka · 1h ago
This was mostly a kind of political posturing law by a deeply unpopular government. Teachers and schools already had the authority to ban phone use in class, including that they must be put into a cabinet, and most in fact already did.
lupusreal · 3h ago
Where they not already?
In America they started off banned as soon as kids started getting them in the early 00s, but then some years later the bans became unenforced or even undone because, apparently, parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
But that shouldn't apply in Finland at all.
DocTomoe · 4m ago
> kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
Considering the US is a country where two dozen cops stay out of a school with an active school shooter until they have run out of bullets ... yeah, it is. No-one wants to hear the local TV station run the dying screams of their children. Better not give them phones so they can call for help (or give the cops information, which would be pointless to begin with).
And thats no reason to let kids do empty highly addictive activity unhinged instead of getting prepared for later life. Emotional reactions != smart ones.
n4r9 · 2h ago
No, I agree. Just give the kids brick phones if you're that worried.
nopakos · 1h ago
It's Finland. The school should give a Nokia 3310 to each kid.
constantcrying · 3h ago
How does sitting in a classroom, learning nothing for twelve years prepare anyone for life?
ndr42 · 2h ago
I've read the same comment from you as a response to three different comments. I will just answer here:
"There is substantial evidence to suggest that education influences intelligence.[3]" (From Wikipedia)
[3] Baltes, P., & Reinert, G. (1969). Cohort effects in cognitive development in children as revealed by cross sectional sequences. Developmental Psychology, 1, 169-177.
constantcrying · 2h ago
Why do you think I am "against learning"?
I am saying that school is terrible at teaching. If the goal of schooling is that students learn then the school system I was in was a total failure.
The moment I entered university I learned much more and much faster.
messe · 2h ago
> The moment I entered university I learned much more and much faster.
Is it not possible that schooling prepared you for this and enabled you to learn much more and faster?
constantcrying · 2h ago
No. It is not possible.
Why couldn't the school have prepared me for that when I was 16? Why does preparation take precisely 12 years and only then I can really learn anything.
messe · 2h ago
Maybe you're right. You're taking your own anecdotes as evidence that schooling is useless. If schooling and university didn't teach you not to do that then maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be.
constantcrying · 1h ago
The curricula for school and early university semesters are largely standardized, which allows me to generalize my observations as all other students had to learn roughly the same in school and university.
dpatterbee · 1h ago
You're definitely wrong because I learned lots in school but university was completely useless.
constantcrying · 1h ago
What was taught in school over an entire semester usually was a single lecture in university. At least for the mathematics courses, where actually similar things were taught, just from drastically different perspectives.
ndr42 · 2h ago
I'd suggest not making it so black and white ("school does nothing", "total failure"), there is room for a bit of nuance.
constantcrying · 1h ago
Sure, I am guilty of being polarizing. But I honestly do believe that my 12 years of schooling were in large parts a waste of time and I would like it if people at least considered the possibility that you can have children do other things.
baud147258 · 1h ago
Maybe the particular school you went to was terrible _for you_, but personally I learned a lot, both which helped me both at the (local equivalent) university I went after school and later in life.
pandemic_region · 2h ago
Are you implying we should school them the Spartan way rather then? Would that prepare them for life in a better way? Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
constantcrying · 2h ago
I am not implying anything.
>Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
I think that this is different between children.
Actually I think it could be extremely valuable to learn, but then the child's activities should actually focus on learning effectively. And sitting in a classroom with children not that interested in learning and a teacher trying to find some middle ground is not helping that.
Personally I believe that with a good school system I would have been perfectly fine doing university courses at 16 and a good school system would have encouraged me to accomplish exactly that.
CivBase · 1h ago
> parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
It really is a dumb argument. Your primary concern in a school shooting should be getting out safely not messing around with your phone. One more 911 call won't make police any more effective. The phone isn't making you any safer. If anything, it's a distraction putting you in danger. Once you've made it to safety, you won't have any trouble contacting your parents whether or not you have a smartphone.
Hamuko · 3h ago
At least in my time they were pretty much banned. You could have your phone on you but if you got caught using it during class, they'd just confiscate it. Of course, some exceptions apply like if a teacher informed of some upcoming event, you could pull up your phone and set it in your calendar without getting chewed out. Not sure what's happened since.
technothrasher · 3h ago
At my son's school, they have to put the cell phones into the "phone hotel" at the beginning of the day, and they pick them back up at the end. But it is performance only, really. If the kid really wants a cell phone, they'll just put an old one in the phone hotel and keep their real one hidden in their bag. But even that isn't really done all that much, as they're required to have laptops for class and they can do anything social and/or distracting they'd want to do on the phone on the laptop instead.
cudder · 1h ago
I went to primary school in 1999-2008 and it was the same for me. After that I started my secondary education in business school in 2008 and there were basically zero restrictions on smartphone use. Smartphones probably became ubiquitous in primary school after that too, but this law seems to also target secondary schools which sounds stricter than it used to be.
the_mitsuhiko · 1h ago
Austria did too.
clydethefrog · 1h ago
Netherlands too. They are also banned during breaks. Schools where the ban had been implemented reported more concentration of students in class and more social interaction between students. Various studies show that contacts between students are returning, now that they are no longer hunched over their phones. There is much more conversation and social contact.
They did this at my kids school. Then issued them all with iPads which half the software they need to use doesn’t work properly on iPad size devices.
Total fuck up.
gostsamo · 3h ago
Kids should not have access to anything more complex than a Nokia with a flashlight.
abofh · 2h ago
Kids have access to what their parents give them - I suspect most parents shouldn't be trusted with a flashlight or a nokia.
FirmwareBurner · 2h ago
TI calculator with Doom?
constantcrying · 3h ago
A non solution to a problem everybody sees, but which is hardly acknowledged.
What is the point of school? Why do children have to spend 12 years of their lives learning basically nothing and coming out anything but well formed adults.
thomassmith65 · 2h ago
Apparently the author's grade school was on the moon?
At grade school, the rest of us learned: to read and write, a little arithmetic, some biology, some physics, some history, maybe a second language, and much more.
What a blessing it would be, as an adult, to have free access to a tutor for such a variety of courses.
The point of school is to grow up not to be an ignoramus.
graemep · 2h ago
That is very little relative to the amount of time spent.
School is very inefficient in terms of the student time spent to learn. It optimises for minimising teacher time and other costs.
> What a blessing it would be, as an adult, to have free access to a tutor for such a variety of courses.
You have paid access. Do you value it enough to pay?
No comments yet
sham1 · 55m ago
The point of schools is an attempt to provide uniform education to all pupils that are funneled through the system. Whether or not they succeed on this is irrelevant for the point. Also forcing kids of an age cohort to socialise with each other, which can be used for things like networking and forcing social interactions across class boundaries, which is why home schooling for example isn't regarded that well here in Finland.
In other comments you've made the point that we could have children do something else other than 12 years of schooling. And so I want to turn the question to you instead. What would be an example of an alternative to schooling? What would you have preferred, especially since you seem to have gotten what you need from university education.
Liquix · 3h ago
partially to guarantee a base level of competence and knowledge, partly to condition a society of good workers.
the modern public school system was designed during the height of the industrial revolution to pump out laborers. by adulthood it seems natural to show up in the morning, complete tasks assigned by authority figures, receive discipline or praise, then go home for dinner.
constantcrying · 3h ago
Given that schools totally fail at these, can't we consider making children do something else. Something which does not involve sitting in classrooms for 8 hours a day and learning nothing?
technothrasher · 2h ago
I learned plenty in primary and secondary school. So has my son, who is about to graduate high school and attend university in the fall. Perhaps you went to bad schools, or the school's environment just didn't fit you. That's an argument for better and more adaptable schools, not a condemnation of the concept of mandatory public education.
constantcrying · 2h ago
The moment I entered university I learned much more and much faster. Obviously the fault for that lies with the school system.
My school was an average school for students targeting a university degree and I did quite well compared to my peers.
piva00 · 1h ago
The foundation you needed to even attend university was set during basic schooling. As much as you think you "learnt nothing" I don't think there's a way for you to have gone through university by learning absolutely nothing in basic schooling.
Should schools be reformed to better align to contemporary ways of living? Of course, I'm all onboard to have a better education system, finding ways to foster kids inherent curiosities in a less strict and authoritarian way, finding new systems that are both scalable while being more free for kids to pursue their interests at their own rate, and finding a way where every kid might have a decent shared baseline of knowledge to go on into their adult lives.
It doesn't mean tearing down all education, or that current education is useless and teaches nothing. It's inadequate but it's the most valuable asset any society can have, finding better ways to do it is a natural progression to improve it.
I wish the education system had allowed me to not waste countless hours in classrooms listening to lectures that I either had already learned through autodidacticism, or that I wasn't interested in at that moment in time, I had to "re-learn" a bunch of material that was presented in classrooms but I was too uninterested to focus on it at that moment. Still, I don't think it was a total failure, just an education model with flaws that needs to be fixed.
constantcrying · 49m ago
My point is that for the 12 years I was at school, I actually learned very little.
To be clear, I am not against "learning", quite the opposite. I want children to learn effectively.
fsloth · 1h ago
There is a huge variation in education outcomes in different countries.
I guess you should first define which countrys curriculum in your opinion fails to deliver an education.
testing22321 · 1h ago
A cynical take is To keep kids out of the labor market, and to keep them busy so the parents can participate in the economy.
Ekaros · 1h ago
I think day care for comprehensive education is main goal. Then with secondary education is to make them somewhat useful in work life. As a lot of truly unskilled labour does not do well in modern economy.
pandemic_region · 2h ago
Copying my answer from the other message where you state this:
Are you implying we should school them the Spartan way rather then? Would that prepare them for life in a better way? Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
graemep · 2h ago
I took my kids out of school from when they were about nine until they were 16. They went back into school with a better education and better prepared for life than those who stayed in school, exams (UK GCSEs and IGCSEs) passed with high grades as as evidence, and obviously better than good social and life skills, and excellent study skills and self-discipline.
There are definitely better alternatives to the current school system.
pandemic_region · 1h ago
You don't say what they did as an alternative from age 9 to 16?
sofixa · 3h ago
> What is the point of school? Why do children have to spend 12 years of their lives learning basically nothing and coming out anything but well formed adults.
So that every kid has a uniform and common base of knowledge that helps them understand the world around them, and enables them to go further by learning more or starting to work.
With no mandatory schooling, most kids would be illiterate and ignorant. A lot of countries, even developed ones, already struggle with the second (antivaxers, flat earthers, voting for dumb populists, etc.). Which indicates the need to improve, not remove.
If there was no schooling, how would kids becoming young adults even know what they're interested in to do? Would they know that e.g. chemistry or physics are things that exist if nobody explained the basics to them? Or would they just continue doing what their parents did, condemning them to a vicious cycle and almost zero social mobility? From history, the latter.
graemep · 2h ago
> antivaxers, flat earthers
Generally people who went to school.
> With no mandatory schooling, most kids would be illiterate and ignorant.
School is not mandatory in a lot of countries. In the UK education is mandatory but school is not and educating kids out of school leads to much better results in my experience.
constantcrying · 3h ago
>So that every kid has a uniform and common base of knowledge that helps them understand the world around them, and enables them to go further by learning more or starting to work.
Oh, I must have missed that class.
tekla · 2h ago
I'm guessing you skipped it
constantcrying · 2h ago
I "skipped" like two days in my entire school life by pretending to be sick. If that was taught in those two days I will obviously apologize.
Current legislation allows the teacher to tell a student to put their phone away in a pocket or backpack, for example, where it will not be a distraction.
The use of phones during breaks cannot be completely banned, as students have fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees everyone the protection of property, which also applies to students' phones. Restricting the use of mobile devices must be considered from the perspective of freedom of speech and the protection of a phone call or other confidential message.
Section 12 from Finnish constitution:
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Section 12 - Freedom of expression and right of access to information
Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other communications without prior prevention by anyone. More detailed provisions on the exercise of the freedom of expression are laid down by an Act. Provisions on restrictions relating to pictorial programmes that are necessary for the protection of children may be laid down by an Act. Documents and recordings in the possession of the authorities are public, unless their publication has for compelling reasons been specifically restricted by an Act. Everyone has the right of access to public documents and recordings.
-----
See also: Convention on the Rights of the Child https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/... Wikpedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...
It's a strange concept to hold that there are rights that can't be taken away, but then take them away merely by passing legislation.
There are many rights that can be taken away, freedom of movement for example in the case of prisoners, but you need laws in order to not make that taking away a crime itself. You can't just apprehend and throw someone in your basement because they stole something from you.
Same thing with children's phones, a teacher can't just take away the phone because they didn't have the authority before.
You have free speech... then comes the list of exceptions, incitement of violence, defamation (libel and slander), Child pornography, perjury, speech integral to criminal conduct, copyright infringement, state secrets,
Otherwise a constitution becomes ineffective at some point.
There are such things as unconstitutional laws and laws that should not be observed nor enforced...
They cannot simply order children to comply, there has to be same legal basis like there has to be for ordering an adult to comply.
The difference here is that in the US, children don't by default inherit the same legal rights as adults and instead have a different set of rights which often means they never had a legal right to, for example, privacy or ownership, in the first place.
- If he bus doesn't show up, she can call and ask us to come drive her to school
- If she wants to go somewhere after school, she can call us and let us know she won't be home at her normal time
- If she forgot something at home, she can call and ask us to bring it
- etc, etc, etc
There's a ton of reasons for her to have her phone on her. Enough so that, when she gets punished with phone removal, we generally still let her bring it to school.
The fact that the phone doesn't contribute to the schooling itself (although it does when she forgets something she needs for school) doesn't mean that it doesn't contribute to QOL overall by being with her at school.
It's worth noting, according to the article, the law gives school officials leeway to allow kids to use their phones in some circumstances. So, the law doesn't stop any of the use cases you've listed.
They are not good reasons to have a phone at school.
In terms of QOL: there is a meaningful body of research about the impact of giving a teenage girl access to a phone on their quality of life.
https://adc.bmj.com/content/109/7/576 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245195882...
If you want to prevent the negative effects of social media and (designed to be) addictive apps, then you should ban social media and addictive apps, and not phones (because that would just mask the symptoms).
even all the above reasons are not actual reasons. None of these are a problem. you job is NOT to bring something to school because she forgot it nor to drive her to school if the bus doesnt show up.
so, the finnish don't prohibit that at all.
Per the article this is a ban on using smartphones during class time, not a ban on bringing them to school at all.
That seems pretty reasonable to me. When I was in school if a teacher saw you using phone during class you might get one warning and then it was being confiscated.
The endless rationalizing of why kids need to have phones at every moment rings hollow...
Because grade school kids actually did just fine without them.
Things functioned, people got where they needed to get, emergencies were handled, etc.
Especially with pre- and post-school access, we're balancing a minimum of in-school utility against a massive danger to learning and development.
We should just accept we built addiction boxes and therefore restrict them appropriately.
If they're in class, then 99% chance it's distracting them from learning. If they're not, I think personal autonomy is a good rule.
Okay, it did work out, but not nearly as well as a simple cell phone. Smart phones add additional functionality. (I can see on google maps where each kid's phone is)
Seems like a good trade to me.
But I'm open to compromise: let's give children bring dumb phones that can only call and text.
Smart phones when class is in session is a distraction and should be banned. However outside of class they are helpful.
2) The entire list can be equally well solved by dumbphones without TikTok and Snapchat. Which is what such bans as this is about.
3) It is always about pros/cons. In Scandinavia phones have (in my view as a parent and married to a teacher) essentially destroyed education wherever they are allowed in the pocket/backpack of the student during class.
Not to speak about downsides to social life. E.g., people not attempting dancing in high school proms because there are videos taken everywhere. People not showering in gyms due to phones. Just two examples. SO MANY things are killed by the phones.
The benefits have to be weighed against the quite massive downsides.
--
They banned phones on the high school where my wife teaches last year and she is basically a changed person. Instead of spending 50% of class time policing phone use, she can, you know, actually teach.
(She still has to deal with a generation addicted to dopamine, but a habit of phone confiscation during class is at least a massive improvement.)
I see no problem here.
Curious what this will lead to.
When she'll get a job, if she'll forget her laptop at home, will she call you and ask you to bring it to the workplace?
I’ve done similar for friends and family.
For most kids, the embarrassment of a parent appearing during the school day is enough to really negatively enforce forgetting things, at least after middle school starts.
I am confused by people who use this as a derogative.
I learned drafting, how to type, welding, library science, color theory, woodworking, BASIC programming, the internal anatomy of a piglet, resume writing, how to play the cello, calculus, and how to sing the names of all 50 US states in alphabetical order in middle school and high school.
That is not childcare.
edit: forgot darkroom photography, yearbook editing, extemporaneous speaking, and Robert's Rules of Order.
Yes. Former teacher here to tell you I cared about the children. :)
But seriously, in the United States teachers are considered "In loco parentis" which "refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis
As a "smart kid" it sometimes felt like waiting for everyone in class to grok something before moving on was a waste of time and that personally I'd learn very little, but ultimately I think it worked very well to ensure that everyone was on common ground.
At some point it was deemed that the current system wasn't inclusive enough so the special education for the troublemakers was gutted and they were put back into regular classrooms. At the same time, due to lack of funding and lack of teachers, class sizes ballooned from <15 to up to 30 or even 40 students per class in larger cities. I think there's some critical point where that system breaks down and now we're past it. The teacher has too many students to make sure everyone is up to speed, and giving too much individual attention in such a large class wastes everyone else's time.
Immigration has also played a role I think. Finland used to be quite monocultural, but that has changed. There are now more and more students who speak Finnish as their second or third language and as such have trouble keeping up. I don't think the solution is to stuff them into their own schools either as that promotes segregation and makes integrating into the society as an immigrant harder, and I don't pretend to know the perfect solution (if one even exists), but one thing's for sure: the Finnish school system was 100% unprepared for it.
A class of five can handle darn near anything; a class of fifty needs everyone to be as nearly identical as possible.
You can artificially increase the number of “teachers” by combining classes of different grades sometimes. 12 year olds can do great assisting 6 year olds.
* Finland is a gerontocracy and recent governments have made significant cuts to education and the general wellbeing of younger generations.
* Modern schools are increasingly built like open plan offices with dozens of students crammed into "learning spaces" instead of traditional classrooms. This reduces building costs and is also sold as a trendy new innovation in pedagogy.
* Special needs and gifted students are no longer put into special classrooms where they can receive the extra attention and care they need. Instead, they are put in with the other kids to the benefit of no one except the state budget, but at least it feels more "inclusive" to some research professor in their ivory tower.
* The amount of immigration and share of children speaking Finnish as a second language is rising and they are statistically more likely to perform worse (https://yle.fi/a/74-20018233, https://yle.fi/a/74-20016772).
In EU only greeks are less satisfied with the availability of healthcare. Our unemployment rate is pretty similar to Greece and Spain as well. This is what right wing governments want I guess.
Most school days are way shorter than that. The curriculum seems to keep my kids intellectually engaged. Commenting as a finn.
Why does a 16 year old need "child care"? In Germany they are allowed to drink. They also are allowed to drive certain vehicles.
>legally required school attendance for under 18 year olds.
Germany does not have that. A 16 year old could leave school and work full time.
In Finland 16 olds are not allowed to drink and access to alcohol is state controlled.
IMHO learning foreign languages, math, history, biology and physics is not child care.
This is in preparation to getting access to upper secondary education (vocational or academic). Usually you start this at 16.
This is not a simple question but one part of the answer is that students are a) ready for upper secondary education b) their grades can be used to grade access to schools with top upper secondary schools being extremely hard to get into.
Ofc if you ask “why would a society do this” I guess the reason is that an educated population is expected to be more productive AND because the law requires schooling up to 18 it also implies all students must have access to free schools with close to zero material costs. So it’s intended also to level the playing field for all social classes.
Is this worse or better than germanys system is impossible for me to tell.
By the time you're 16, I'd say a significant amount of school time is decently geared toward learning, and you're old enough to supplement that yourself during spares or downtime if you want to.
At younger ages though, it definitely seems like more of a daycare service than a learning focused environment. The free daycare is important, but I do feel bad for the kids who are stuck in that absurd environment. Someone can come up to you and stab you with a pencil for no reason and that's just par for the course.
After 10 years of mandatory school most states have what is called "Berufsschulpflicht" until you are at least 18 years old.
That means you have to learn a job, which is not the same as working full-time and still considered education.
Claiming that 16 year olds "can not work because they have mandatory school" is false.
Hopefully not at the same time.
Where us the drinking age 16?
Trust is a privilege that must be earned not given. Prove to me you're trustworthy and I'll give you trust.
One untrustworthy 16 year old can cause hell chaos in a group of trustworthy teenagers. I've seen it when I was a youth worker.
> Depends on what. I can't even trust the 40 year developers in my team at work. "Hacky if foreach loop will fix later"
Whenever people make statements like this, I always wonder what their peers think of them. This dismissive attitude is so off-putting.
I really don't have time to care about what my peers think of me. It's work. I don't want to communicate with them outside work. Work is just another mind space that stays at work. I am strict when it comes to code, I expect the same.
I want working maintainable code to enable me to do my job. If people dread submitting a PR because they can't write code with effort, good. I like my ships built strong not weak.
If they fix their problem, good. Trust given, more than happy to salute however time and time they've proven to me they don't.
These developers have proven to me they won't. These are developers who are those who do not fix the issuing code and will just move on to the next problem hacking it to make it work.
If you've never worked with such, then lucky. If this sting for you, time to put more effort in to your work.
Blag the senior with bullshite of: "I will fix this in the next revision, it works for now" and don't.
Even the people you consider peers will abhor that you think and speak like this about people.
Neither of these things was suggested or raised so this is quite a bizarre rant to go on.
Even if you care about neither of those things, what your peers think of you still matters because you must work with them.
Now your left with a code base forever with tech debt because of a hacky foreach if loop.
You're telling me you've never worked with anyone who does half arsed work? Where you need to pick up their slack? Lucky you.
Because if you can't do a proper job at least on elementary level then what do you do then when they refuse to fix their mess?
This sounds like you have some very specific trauma around a very specific "foreach if loop", because I would personally never throw around such a specific-but-not-specific example of tech debt. Tech debt is extremely contextual.
That's why I don't think banning smartphones is the best idea. It is probably better than unrestricted access, but I feel that school should teach how to use them well instead. It is a bit like with calculators, there are classes with calculators, classes without, and classes that teach how to work with them, their strengths and shortcomings.
I don't know how to do it in practice though. Airplane mode and offline educative apps may be a start.
The middle and high schools here ban phone use during class, and the high school confiscates phones (and grants detentions) for students who flaunt the ban. In practice, it usually works with teachers using those door mounted phone holders as a way to take attendance. Put your phone in the pouch when you get to class, and grab it when you leave. Occasionally, a teacher will also ban smartwatches if they become too distracting, but this is not common.
That said, many teachers take advantage of their students having phones to augment their methods & curriculum, and afaik this is the teachers' prerogative.
- Lessons about road safety (causes of accidents, number of deaths, etc...)
- In elementary school, navigating the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. Including going outside and crossing roads.
- In secondary school, basic information about traffic law, road signs, and information related to light motor vehicles (mopeds, ...)
- Though I didn't do it personally, some school had a class at a practice track, using pedal cars to learn about things like right of way
So while we didn't do actual driving, probably for economic and liability reasons, it is definitely part of the curriculum.
I'm actually of the option we should have a smartphone category/setup at the same positioning as bikes are to cars, it would even benefit adults the same way not everyone wants a car.
Unlike modern education, which puts a massive emphasis on teaching how to do menial, useless things before going the sensible route [e.g. I remember vividly how we were tortured by doing table of values calculations in maths for what felt like weeks before we were allowed to use derivatives. I loved maths. Until that point. Then I hated the course (not the subject) with a passion.
Lo and behold, I enter university, and the first thing we do in Mathematics 101 is 'let's forget everything we have learned, we're going to start from the beginning'. Joy.]
I want to stress the point: Smartphones exist (and have existed for 15 years - a more modern 'scary new tech' would probably be LLMs). Banning these things from school will only keep teachers happy because they can keep their teaching methods from the 1890s alive for some more time, instead of using what is available to get kids educated better.
That smartphone one only uses for TikTok is still 100x more powerful than any computer we had access to at that age, and it can do real work (just so long as you look beyond the consumption apps).
And applied math on a PC would be great, but we barely have applied math on a calculator.
And kids love calculators: only digital numbers are numbers. 2/3 is cleary not a number to anyone below 20 years of age, that is two numbers, we have to write .6666666\dash_over{6} down as a solution instead.
I'm not sure how to interpret your last statement, but that seems like a problem worth correcting if true? They're going to need to understand fractions to do any math more advanced than grade school level.
Frankly, smartphones should be discussed in health class, much like drugs and alcohol, and in a similar tone.
Explain it to young kids as the smartphone giving you a 'treat' for doing nothing. Eventually you get lazy and won't do any work because you get a 'treat' from the smartphone for free whereas if you play sports or hang out with your friends you only get the 'treat' for doing something.
Then explain that very smart people have taught the smartphone how to make the 'treat' tastier and tastier until you spend most of your time chasing treats instead of doing and enjoying things.
It certainly did not appear to me that way, here in Germany. There was a lot of time spend sitting in a room and "learning", yet I basically learned nothing. For the other things you described I do not think they were ever considered.
All around school was a giant waste of time.
So some self proclaimed smart person “learned nothing”, and therefore school is a waste of time. At the same time, ignoring that maybe a school or system is indeed not prepared to handle some individuals (which is not good), or that maybe some teachers are bad, or maybe the system does not support their staff enough. But that can’t be the case because they learned nothing. Whole school system must be a scam.
I am sure you want to blame me for this, but somehow I went to university and got a degree in (applied) mathematics. So I doubt it was some fundamental problem with me.
Everybody is upset when someone tells them they fail at their jobs and teachers are an entire industry of total failure. In a single semester of university I learned so much more than in 12 years of school. If teachers aren't at fault, who is? By any metric I was a successful student.
I know a high school teacher with a PhD and has tutored and lectured at the university level. But they are a teacher now. Guess I’ll paint them with the same brush as all teachers.
Where did I say that the intentions were bad?
>Because you had a bad time, then the whole system is malicious right?
No. In university the expectations were drastically higher. If the goal of the school was to prepare me for university, then it failed at that for everyone. The mismatch can not be attributed to me.
>But they are a teacher now. Guess I’ll paint them with the same brush as all teachers.
We had one of these as well. Average teacher, learned basically nothing in her class.
In any normal (private sector) job, if you can't perform the basic job requirements you get fired or retrained. Maybe you're moved to a different area that better suits your skill set. But you don't just sit in a position for 20 years screwing it up day after day as you see in government / lower education.
Some teachers start with high spirits but most turn into regular slobs trying to get to the end of the month once they realise that their job is to mind the children while the parents work.
I was lucky enough to meet just a handful of teachers that tought me some values, the rest were just ... forgetable people.
And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it often fades into the background and nobody notices. But it still makes a difference.
I agree that this is probably the most important thing for children to learn. My point is that sitting in a room for 8 hours does very little to accomplish that.
>And telling if time spent learning is wasted is actually quite hard - if you know something and everyone else knows something it often fades into the background and nobody notices. But it still makes a difference.
I had the direct comparison when I went to university. It became very clear that I was learning much more and faster.
To talk about schooling we first have to make clear what the goal is. Sure everybody needs to learn how to read, write and do basic arithmetic, but that is not a 12 year endeavor. Even including basic general knowledge is not a 12 year endeavor. And we should not be wasting children's time on things, just because we can't be bothered to have them do something actually meaningful.
Sure, but this should be expected. If you filtered out all children with low interest/performance/support in preschool and just threw them onto a playground, learning rate could also be much faster in school for the rest.
But if you want a solid baseline of reading/writing/math/general education for everyone in society, those twelve years are already barely enough.
I'm very confident that early discrimination/segregation ("gifted" and "idiot" tracks in school) is a net negative for society and encourages unethical outcomes on top.
Optional programs for faster/more targetted learning are much better and can be very positive IMO, but even there you need to be careful with how you set things up to avoid problems.
In Germany you have schools for students targeting university. I was in such a school. Every student there was there to get into university.
Yes, but if half the class was not smarter than you (by whatever standard), then that segregation was too low to really hit the spot anyway.
My personal experience was the completely opposite: I learned more useful knowledge in school than in university, despite wasting like a year of math on trigonometric sum formulas and similar nonsense; but the baseline for physics/electronics, programming and math was much more applicable and necessary than anything I learned in university (frequently overspecialized and barely useful).
Sure, I also learned a lot during university on my own, but mostly thanks to sufficient free time and personal interest; university itself did not contribute too much there, and this was somewhat similar during school already anyway (most specifically with programming).
To me, it sounds like you suffered from mediocre teachers in school and learn better on your own-- but neither is universal enough to draw system-wide conclusions IMO.
I'm curious about this, can you elaborate more? My feeling is that in a class of 25 kids grouped by age being taught by 1 single teacher, it's basically impossible that the teaching pace and style is adequate for more than a handful of them. You're going to have kids bored out of their minds learning nothing and being unengaged, and you're going to have kids that can't keep up and would need extra support / a different kind of support. You're not doing either of those any favours.
By doing "early segregation" you make this more difficult because that "common baseline" no longer exists; you'd expect to get significantly more people that struggle with language and basic math as a result (in exchange for better outcomes in your "gifted" track).
Furthermore, you are sorting people into social buckets in a way that is really bad for social cohesion (inevitable, all the white kids with rich parents are gonna end up in the "gifted" schools). Everyone is gonna grow up in a echochamber, basically.
Finally, this is going to lead to restrictions on a young adults options, that I find really unpalatable to blame on the affected children: Can you honestly argue that people don't deserve the chance to study medicine at university just because their parents did not tutor, push and mentor them sufficiently? Equality of opportunity as a principle is gonna be nigh impossible to preserve in such a system.
I do not dispute that you could teach children faster and better with individual tutoring and customized programs, but that would be cost-prohibitive, and I see currently no realistic way to get there without above consequences.
Maybe AI will solve it :P
What can I say; I like arguing. We don't actually have to choose a single goal - everyone can have different goals. If schooling isn't compulsory then you could have a mass of different people doing different things for different reasons and it all gets called 'schooling'.
If schooling is state managed ... the same interest groups exist, they just have to fight over the curriculum in parliament or the Department of Schooling. The end result will be a weird hodge-podge of compromises that nobody can confidently say satisfies them completely and doesn't have a clear goal.
It happens that we cannot say that there is a goal of schooling. Some people may have one goal, but other people may have alternative goals. There are some really tricky edge cases, like History - should Mongolian schoolchildren be taught that Ghengis Khan was a hero, a scumbag, a disaster, a triumph, a fact, a national symbol or someone best forgotten? That is not a question where a reliable and enduring consensus can be reached because real life is too complicated to take a final universal stand on something that happened 1,000 years ago.
The goal is wide and open ended, but there is a goal. Likely others can word it better than me, but it goes something like this: "to produce kids that grow up to be productive adults that contribute to society and make the world a better place."
We all are not the same, and even if we were there are many different needs. I need someone to haul my trash to the wherever it is handled, but my city only needs a few hundred such people (thousand?). A few other people need to ensure I have clean water. A lot of people need to ensure I have food. Some of them need to provide medical care. Thus we need to have multiple different outcomes (if you are just hauling trash you need less education than the medical doctors, while the person designing the dump needs more education than a basic nurse).
Because of the different needs in society there will and must be debate over what the curriculum should be. There is no way to teach everything. Time spend teaching one subject is time that cannot be used for a different one. There are many different ideas how to teach, and we need better science to figure out what really works.
I completely agree. If I wanted anything from current schooling it would be giving students more abilities to develop themselves. Obviously that doesn't mean a 16 year old playing videogames for 12 hours a day, but students who like doing sports should be doing much more of it and those who like learning should be doing much more of that and so on.
Kids learning how to develop themselves is a good thing ONLY if they choose the "right thing" to develop. You can get really good at video games, but as you already said probably not a good only investment (a fine hobby, but keep it a limited time hobby). There are some sports that because of injuries should really be banned (but I won't list them because as soon as I do there will be a lot screaming from people who live that sport). What we need is kids who develop themselves into something that makes them good productive adults - for some jobs we need adults to do this is boring and so kids won't do it unless forced.
In a single semester of university I learned more than in 12 years of school.
The uni taught you more real-world expected skills but I‘m certain you learned more before uni.
Was that not offered at your school? It was at mine.
University level courses do presume you have some basic skills. But in many places, schools do offer university level courses for those who are prepared.
I think it would have been theoretically possible, but obviously logistically difficult as I would have had to skip multiple classes in other fields to attend.
It's also not like I was particularly interested in mathematics at that point in my life. I essentially chose my field of study based on what I had the best grades in. Only during my studies, when the material actually became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged in the subject.
> Only during my studies, when the material actually became difficult, I started to be interested and engaged in the subject.
Many schools solve this by having different difficulty-levels of courses. My school, in the US, had three.
I learned more in a single year on the job than I did in 3 years of university. That doesn’t make university useless
It takes people twelve years to learn to read and write at a 12th grade level.
You could study it for another 4 or more years at university if you wanted to develop your skills further.
> What made me good at reading was reading books outside of school.
This is your personal experience. I learned to read and write quite well at school and was well-prepared for university.
I understand Spanish only goes up to a 5th grade level while Japanese to 9th. This is a reflection on how complex the writing systems are, and not the kids, intelligence, or school systems.
The years after you have your basic reading down are used to learn other skills that are of general use in life for everyone.
Nah. You are mixing up the skill 'writing glyphs on a piece of paper and retrieving that information via optical means' with 'being well-grounded in a wide array of subjects so you can express an idea in a way that is mentally stimulating to a potential reader'.
Neither takes 12 years to learn. The first, we teach within a year, at most. The second we do not teach at all, and the best 'writers' often are those who were challenged outside of school, by parents who gave them a rich, intellectually interesting environment, not within it.
You keep saying this but I have a hard time believing this is true; in fact I'm not even sure what "more" means (objectively) in this context.
Let's see, in the 12 years of schooling you've learned at the very least: how to read and write, how to interpret texts, how to read literature, how to compose an essay, how to speak, read, and write a second language, a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths, several topics of physics and chemistry, biology, geology, and other natural sciences (in more or less detail), several years of history, and mandatory physical exercise to top it off. What magical university did you go to that in a single semester you learned more than that :D Unless I'm missing something.
In university I actually had to study, take notes, research the subject, study for many hours, etc.
>a ton of mathematics from basic arithmetic to I guess something like calculus and trigonometry and algebra and some discrete maths
Hilarious to say this. As it turned out, my first semester of university mathematics was spent on learning everything I did not learn in school. And it made it extremely clear to me how badly school had prepared me.
You would think that school would put me in a position where university mathematics were just a continuation. Nothing further could be from the truth, nearly everything taught in school was taught in a way which made it useless for actual mathematics.
In school we learned nothing about: Sets, logic, deductions, Axioms or Proofs (which turn out to be really important!), we did however spend years solving integrals, which turned out extremely unhelpful for actual mathematics.
Do you honestly believe that is you were sent to University (or some other educational institution) with absolutely zero school knowledge, not even literacy and grade school math, you would be able to learn everything you learned at school in less than one semester?
Not necessarily causative, but we'd want to be very sure the educational fence isn't contributory before we tear it down.
Bavaria, Saxony, Baden-Württemberg? Preferrably Gymnasium? Preferrably a state school, not a city school? Hell, you have good chances!
Any other Land? Something on a lower tier? Nah, easy going. There are schools in Germany which are famous for breeding 16-year-olds who can barely read.
Disclaimer: Writer is German, Württemberger, visited a state gymnasium
Not my experience.
>But yes, it is possible to slack through it all if you want to slack.
I was a good student though and did really well. I never learned for anything though and was bored in basically every subject.
There never were any expectations on me which I didn't trivially meet.
Overwhelming majority of people is not like that, they do not get highest grades, they do not get into gymnasium without effort, don't pass tests without effort.
Do you think that was because their methods were bad, you didn't bother and they couldn't force you, or that their methods were not adapted to the way you learn?
Also, I'd find it surprising if you really learned nothing. From what I know of German schooling from people who went through it, you certainly learned at least a bit about the depths to which humans can go to and how to prevent them (Holocaust and wider Nazi atrocities). Also, you probably learned social skills, basic project management and collaboration, and some knowledge which is probably useless other than maybe as a basis of understanding the world and various things you might encounter. I don't recall much from my biology or chemistry classes, but I recall vague outlines, which is enough.
It was because they had nothing to teach. I still remember trying to learn fractions from a teacher who clearly did not understand fractions either.
Just to be clear, I did very well in school. Given their standards I would be considered a "successful student" and I went on to get a university degree.
>Also, you probably learned social skills, basic project management and collaboration, and some knowledge which is probably useless other than maybe as a basis of understanding the world
None of that I learned while sitting in class. I learned it despite the school activities I had to do.
School is about more than the part where you sit in class. The social skills, time and project management navigation etc. is all stuff you learn and do because of school but outside of class.
See Germany-Palestine relations. One third of weapons used in the Gaza war are paid for by Germany, and the remaining two thirds by the USA. Other countries contribute negligibly.
When I was younger I imagined a world in which computing devices would be a boon to (young) people everywhere.
But many apps appear to be detrimental to people's mental health, both young and old.
Possibly this can be changed. Maybe separate app stores are a solution (think f-droid)? Or maybe we need to start looking a lot harder at apps that might actually be user hostile.
We were often encouraged to use them, in fact. If there was ever a question someone asked that the teachers couldn't answer, or they heard an argument between students about something that could be solved by looking up hard data, they would invite us to take out our phones and look it up. One of the teachers would occasionally make little websites and apps related to whatever we were learning at the time. Sometimes we were shown interesting blog posts, educational youtube videos (before it was an industry), personal sites from people who make things. It was reinforced again and again that they were for discovery first, creation second, and anything else third.
I feel very lucky for that to be how I learned to interact with them. The fact that we have magic machines that can answer any question in our pocket, that can take photos and connect us to people and teach us languages, yet we've corrupted them to the point that people are willingly giving them up and banning them from educational settings, is one of the greatest failings of modern society in my view. Or rather, an indication of even deeper and more troubling problems.
It’s a horrible way to optimize technology for addictiveness.
Not sure if there is a fix for that.
They can call their parents if required from the main office.
This is fantastic and once again shows why Finland is a pioneer in childhood education and why Americans and other countries are so far behind.
The amount of anxiety on show is really saddening.
https://thetvdb.com/series/social-studies-452444
* no phones during classes or during breaks (with the exception of lunch break, I think)
* phone can be allowed by teachers for a particular class and purpose
* if a student uses a phone while it's not allowed, the phone will be confiscated until the end of the school day
* (there might be a more severe rule for repeat offenders)
IMHO this strikes a pretty good balance between allowing phones for coordinating transit to school and back home, and no distraction in the class room.
Over here, at the other end of the Baltic sea, there's an ongoing debate about phones in the classroom and some schools have regulations in place regarding the use of electronic devices, but these are largely toothless as otherwise they would infringe on the right to property.
I graduated high school before the smartphone era, so I don't have much of a point of reference, but I'm leaning on disallowing at least Wi-Fi/mobile data - that's the largest source of distraction in my view.
Can children bring in portable hifi systems? What about those squeaky chicken toys? Or a water pistol?
My classmate brought a super-sized calculator to class for tests, as he had a medical condition which allowed him to bring "a calculator". The buttons made a lot of noise but, again, it was not confiscated.
So I fear if we do not want them to be addicted we have to prohibit things (it does not need to be smartphones, it could be mechanisms on these devices).
Why would you be expecting better results for this ?
There are no material stakes to the child other than losing their entertainment device. Might as well break the rules.
Yes!
> ...without banning stuff?
What incentive do companies have to do this? It seems quite profitable for them?
I am quite strict here with my comment; but honestly, I can't see much reason other than making new products that are made as an "anti" movement, but companies will just find new ways to get people hooked -- because it is profitable for them to do so.
But at the same time, I think banning smartphones is perfectly fine because you can still use computers and stuff. It's not like they're going back to quills and ink.
Smartphones fry your attention span and enable bullying. And if parents want to have emergency contact, you can always have a simple mobile phone with texting/calling.
Absolutely smartphones should be banned, at least during lessons, and at best during the whole time in the school, recess, etc.
Giving a child a dumb-phone in an environment where everybody else uses a smartphone doesn't work. If smarphones are not banned then _all_ will end up with a smartphone, and socialisation difficulties, etc...
This is a case where individual freedoms end up in collective damage. Maybe I'm an outlier here but I'd ban all kinds of social media all the time.
They are failing spectacularly on that front anyways. You don't learn useful skills by being handed a remotely administered tablet or Chromebook, which is what schools provide.
Actually </s> they were learnig vital skills like Agile Sprint management! (I don't know if they ever physically met for standup meeetings)
1. Educational is not vocational training. Schools should give kids skills and a foundation, not teach them how to use particular technology.
2. Not all jobs require much knowledge of how to use technology.
2. True, though less true over time. Even in the non-tech jobs you're now constantly using technology. In the trades, you need to know how to operate a CNC machine. As a nurse, you're operating medical devices that are getting more and more powered by technology.
You pose this as a question, but I find it's quite easy to say "we need to achieve this some other way" but then not having a concrete suggestion what that other way could be.
As much as we would like to tout some individualised solution for this, there's no way for all individuals to be trained to resist products designed for maximising its usage. There are armies of smart people being paid to think about ways that will make users be "engaged" with their products for as long as possible for it to be profitable, armies of experts in user behaviour, developers that can churn out good quality digital products, designers who can make the experience feel smooth. It's all geared to be addictive since the incentive is to capture as much attention as possible.
Is it possible to fight gambling addiction, alcohol addiction, nicotine addiction, drugs addiction, without banning them? Yup, it's costly, relies on a lot of regulation, control from the State on what kind of behaviour these companies can engage, and so on.
The addictive thing is not the smartphone but what it gives access to, without a conversation about what kind of regulations could curtail the addictive side of the real culprit, social media, there's no way out on an individual basis.
Banning smartphones in schools is akin to banning cigarettes' commercials, you aren't banning the stuff completely but at least trying to curtail its reach. We need more of this, social media has a lot of benefits so I don't think it should ever be outright banned, we do need more talk about its downsides and potential mitigations on a societal level.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/commission-cellphone...
There's seriously no alternative to banning them, and I don't even see the interest in trying.
In America they started off banned as soon as kids started getting them in the early 00s, but then some years later the bans became unenforced or even undone because, apparently, parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
But that shouldn't apply in Finland at all.
Considering the US is a country where two dozen cops stay out of a school with an active school shooter until they have run out of bullets ... yeah, it is. No-one wants to hear the local TV station run the dying screams of their children. Better not give them phones so they can call for help (or give the cops information, which would be pointless to begin with).
"There is substantial evidence to suggest that education influences intelligence.[3]" (From Wikipedia)
[3] Baltes, P., & Reinert, G. (1969). Cohort effects in cognitive development in children as revealed by cross sectional sequences. Developmental Psychology, 1, 169-177.
I am saying that school is terrible at teaching. If the goal of schooling is that students learn then the school system I was in was a total failure.
The moment I entered university I learned much more and much faster.
Is it not possible that schooling prepared you for this and enabled you to learn much more and faster?
Why couldn't the school have prepared me for that when I was 16? Why does preparation take precisely 12 years and only then I can really learn anything.
>Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
I think that this is different between children.
Actually I think it could be extremely valuable to learn, but then the child's activities should actually focus on learning effectively. And sitting in a classroom with children not that interested in learning and a teacher trying to find some middle ground is not helping that.
Personally I believe that with a good school system I would have been perfectly fine doing university courses at 16 and a good school system would have encouraged me to accomplish exactly that.
It really is a dumb argument. Your primary concern in a school shooting should be getting out safely not messing around with your phone. One more 911 call won't make police any more effective. The phone isn't making you any safer. If anything, it's a distraction putting you in danger. Once you've made it to safety, you won't have any trouble contacting your parents whether or not you have a smartphone.
Dutch Government research: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2024/07/12...
https://www.hs.fi/suomi/art-2000011201797.html
Total fuck up.
What is the point of school? Why do children have to spend 12 years of their lives learning basically nothing and coming out anything but well formed adults.
At grade school, the rest of us learned: to read and write, a little arithmetic, some biology, some physics, some history, maybe a second language, and much more.
What a blessing it would be, as an adult, to have free access to a tutor for such a variety of courses.
The point of school is to grow up not to be an ignoramus.
School is very inefficient in terms of the student time spent to learn. It optimises for minimising teacher time and other costs.
> What a blessing it would be, as an adult, to have free access to a tutor for such a variety of courses.
You have paid access. Do you value it enough to pay?
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In other comments you've made the point that we could have children do something else other than 12 years of schooling. And so I want to turn the question to you instead. What would be an example of an alternative to schooling? What would you have preferred, especially since you seem to have gotten what you need from university education.
the modern public school system was designed during the height of the industrial revolution to pump out laborers. by adulthood it seems natural to show up in the morning, complete tasks assigned by authority figures, receive discipline or praise, then go home for dinner.
My school was an average school for students targeting a university degree and I did quite well compared to my peers.
Should schools be reformed to better align to contemporary ways of living? Of course, I'm all onboard to have a better education system, finding ways to foster kids inherent curiosities in a less strict and authoritarian way, finding new systems that are both scalable while being more free for kids to pursue their interests at their own rate, and finding a way where every kid might have a decent shared baseline of knowledge to go on into their adult lives.
It doesn't mean tearing down all education, or that current education is useless and teaches nothing. It's inadequate but it's the most valuable asset any society can have, finding better ways to do it is a natural progression to improve it.
I wish the education system had allowed me to not waste countless hours in classrooms listening to lectures that I either had already learned through autodidacticism, or that I wasn't interested in at that moment in time, I had to "re-learn" a bunch of material that was presented in classrooms but I was too uninterested to focus on it at that moment. Still, I don't think it was a total failure, just an education model with flaws that needs to be fixed.
To be clear, I am not against "learning", quite the opposite. I want children to learn effectively.
I guess you should first define which countrys curriculum in your opinion fails to deliver an education.
Are you implying we should school them the Spartan way rather then? Would that prepare them for life in a better way? Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
There are definitely better alternatives to the current school system.
So that every kid has a uniform and common base of knowledge that helps them understand the world around them, and enables them to go further by learning more or starting to work.
With no mandatory schooling, most kids would be illiterate and ignorant. A lot of countries, even developed ones, already struggle with the second (antivaxers, flat earthers, voting for dumb populists, etc.). Which indicates the need to improve, not remove.
If there was no schooling, how would kids becoming young adults even know what they're interested in to do? Would they know that e.g. chemistry or physics are things that exist if nobody explained the basics to them? Or would they just continue doing what their parents did, condemning them to a vicious cycle and almost zero social mobility? From history, the latter.
Generally people who went to school.
> With no mandatory schooling, most kids would be illiterate and ignorant.
School is not mandatory in a lot of countries. In the UK education is mandatory but school is not and educating kids out of school leads to much better results in my experience.
Oh, I must have missed that class.