Why must we be done this way?

Well, you can quickly search up some information. I don't remember what it was, but I remember that once in middle school teacher said something I wasn't quite sure about, but also I wouldn't ask if I wasn't more sure. So I looked it up, seeing that I was right, I asked if it rather wasn't meant to be that other thing, he checked too and indeed he was wrong.

Also, my mind often wanders off. And it may happen that I suddenly can't remember something. Could just be some word I could look up on my phone in less than a minute. Option B: Keep thinking about it till the rest of the class. I can't stop thinking about that until I either remember or find it.

Next, spine. I am currently in high school. Phones are allowed here. Any time. So, I utilized my scanner and digitized one 500 or so page book I couldn't find on the internet, and then used it as PDF instead of a physical book. It is less likely that I would forget my phone. I wish schools would have options for e-ink tablets instead of having to carry many heavy physical books. That used to be problem mostly in elementary school and middle school. Same goes for note taking.

Obviously, the last example can be easily solved by modernization.

Fast talking teachers. I can't write that fast. I mean, I can, but then I can't decipher my handwriting, which is already hard anyway. Voice recorder is a quick solution. Obviously, it is easier to look through notes than audio, but IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE A REPLACEMENT FOR NOTES, just a help.

But do take that with a pinch of salt. Especially in elementary school, I used to be one of those weird kids who greatly preferred being liked by the teacher over having friends. So even though I had a phone at the time, I never used it during classes because teachers disliked it.

But at least during breaks it should be allowed. Otherwise kids will find much more dangerous ways to entertain themselves.

Well, by their teenage years, why not all the reasons adults need smartphones fully accessible? Looking up information from authoritative sources? Emergency contact? Coordinating schedules for office hours?

Schools often simultaneously demand more from children than workplaces do adults, and give them less opportunity to excel.

I'm not saying work-inappropriate phone use should be accepted, but taking them away entirely is downright irresponsible. Just like schools who still demand students write on a notebook instead of using a laptop. Raise your hand if you had RSI-related issues for a decade or more after high school? We old people tend to forget how bad school used to be (and can be) for physical and mental health AND for learning.

Schools should just be one huge faraday cage. Kids have to learn to focus and pay attention.

And they need to learn the curriculum

We've been so busy fighting extremists and gross fetish porn that we forgot to quarantine the annoying children.

Im also saddened that this is at the top of my feed. I want to laugh not be annoyed by some shitpost badly hidden as a meme.

I actually doubt that phones are the major reason for a post like this. There are many reasons that you could fill in that only happen to some schools but phones happen to be the only one that applies to nearly every school. For example, at my school, our lunches have been cut down to shit 15 minutes at most, and if you buy lunch, it's much less. We usually have them call 5 minutes left. Sometimes they will say the kitchen is closed, sometimes they can't because people are still ordering.

Well said. Social media is designed specifically to hold attention and encourage addictive behavior. There's no way to compete.

My school solved it by existing before smartphones did

Maybe if they used blender(the software) to explain it.

not treat students like indentured servants? productively encourage them to pay attention instead of imposing austere zero tolerance policies? do you really think that people in ancient greece paid attention to every second of lecture because there weren't any phones?

could you, yes you, in your day to day life, handle being forced to go through school again? to learn something new every hour of every weekday and being given obligatory deadlines, not even being paid for the work, having to be there at like 7:30am, having even less control over your personhood and freedom just a few years after being born?

school didn't have to suck as much as it did.

I don't think OP is thinking that far into their future. I don't think OP has any plans for higher education either. It's been a few decades for me, but when I was an undergrad, if your pager went off in class --cell phones weren't really a thing yet-- most professors would ask you to leave, which was not a good thing in the small upper division classes as they were very difficult and you had to pass with a B or better to move on in my major.

I just wanted to be able to listen to my music while doing work.

but if you're watching Overwatch

You can just take away their phone in that case, no?
Not sure about OP, but my point is that phones can be useful. But if they're clearly not...

Says the neurotypical teacher to the kid who can't concentrate without music during study time.

You can increase motivation to learn by making lessons more engaging even if it's a subject they're not personally interested in. But making lessons more interesting and engaging is not easy and we can't expect all teachers to have the skills and resources to do the research and development needed to produce lesson plans that are really interesting. I think it could be improved by putting more money into developing interesting lesson plans centrally and distributing the materials to teachers to follow instead of just producing dry curriculums. Teachers need support.

That aren't motivated and are bored as hell; the average motivation level for schools where I live is a 2.9... out of 10. If kids aren't motivated and they have devices on them, what do you think they would do in class?

Does it though? That kind of sounds like buzzword science to me. Especially since I can't find anything that actually says that it is technology being at fault here.

read up on dopamine if you didn't understand

While you're on that, you could research how things don't become more interesting by the absence of more interesting things and how dopamine is required for attention and information retention.

Doing nothing to motivate except removing potential distractions from unengaging school work doesn't work and can even hurt students' mental health as they experience issues of guilt and inadequacy from being unable to do what's required of them.

It's not the job of the the school staff to make the material extremely interesting, it's their job to remove every more interesting thing from the reach of students.

And this is how we reached the point where sleep is more common in a classroom than anything else. They should make the material interesting enough that people won't have to resort to other stuff

Read up on dopamine if you didn't understand that.

I know what dopamine (the joy hormone which the body uses as a "reward") is. Since the body uses it as a "reward" if school gives students that, then students will like school

staring at a wall is more interesting then (badly done) school

it's called having discipline

As a former young person that came from poverty and is finally buying a house in a high cost of living area, go read "so good they can't ignore you" it might help with the figuring out!

Your teacher will never be as entertaining as an influencer.

Those influencers are entertaining?

I don't think it's just a feeling of futility - it's true phones can be distracting and offer more potential entertainment, and it's true learning can sometimes be a slog. At the same time, learning can be fun and engaging, and phones can offer access to a wealth of information (of highly varying quality, admittedly).

Concentrating too hard on mere academic success as gauged by metrics like school grades is undoubtedly discouraging for a student who only goes to school if they are told they must.

people learn things all the time despite phones existing. the issue is not solely being more entertaining. people need to find their learning meaningful and aligned with their own interests and goals. students don't, and so they go on their phones. go to a college classroom and you'll see people more engaged on average. still far from perfect, and that system is broken in many ways too, but people are at least studying something they chose and are presumably interested in.

"I'm really rooting for you to figure this out" rings hollow. we all need to be part of the solution. gen Z feels like it's carrying the expectation of fixing literally every societal problem right now and it sucks.

When I look at home prices I know that school never has been good. People don't understand what they have to do to drive down prices.

Why can't Tiktok be used to find the best courses? There is no need for teachers to teach when Tiktok can do it better. Let teachers become mentors.

Well, at least you gave them a chance. Thank you.

It would be funny if people were forced to do something akin to mandatory military service but for working at a school as a paraprofessional or other aide for a little while. I feel like most people really have no idea how much teachers have to juggle and deal with on a daily basis. Come see how my kids behave when left to their own devices and then judge me.

Like flight mode there should be school mode where students can only use a provided wlan that comes with content filters.

I would still disagree about phone usage.

Even when in school, phone helped me quite a bit with education. Having a way to do a quick fact-check is invaluable.

Now as I'm finishing getting my degree such devices became an inseparable part of the process.

Yes, you may not always listen to what's being said whilst using them, but lets be frank, you wouldn't be listening to those parts either way.

School education in a lot of places is fundamentally flawed. It's extremely difficult to learn when you're expected to absorb information just by listening and writing.

I'd agree with OPs sentiment here, off-topic smartphone usage isn't the cause for worse education, but instead is a result of poor engagement in the first place. Should people be more engaged in the topic then suddenly smartphones start being used as a studying tool and not for entertainment. There are many ways of achieving that, but that's a whole different story.

Are there schools that don't teach calculator usage? Even 10-15 years ago German schools (at least in the states I looked at) had the option to teach math with either basic calculators, scientific calculators, or computer algebra systems in grades 9-13 (I think) with most schools picking scientific calculators even back then. I would expect that to have moved into earlier grades and more advanced devices nowadays.

I second this.

Obviously by letting them use computer and mobile phones

.

Heh, "Motivate", sounds mostly impossible. At least with some subjects. But maybe there could be some improvements. Here's some of my dumb and likely useless thoughts:

1. If it's in your competence, allow phones during breaks. I believe that could make classes without them much easier.
2. Fresh air: Helps alot. I don't know why some teachers absolutely hate open windows. All you can do on those classes is try to not fall asleep with your heart pounding.
3. Allow water during classes: Similar to above, dehydration helps no one.
4. Engage with students: Try to have conversations with them, give them questions, let them give questions to you (on topic). I've had a few teachers that would just do 45 minute monotone monologues.
5. If possible, give some demonstration or real life use examples. This works well especially with chemistry and physics.
6. Positive and negative points: For example, 5 pluses may be A, and 5 minuses F. I prefer the system where pluses and minuses null out each other, otherwise a plus may make your grades worse, leading to lack of activity. Someone not paying attention or not knowing answer to questions, minus. Someone being positively active during classes, answering questions, plus. You can decide what makes plus and what minus and how many are needed for the grade.
7. Quick activities (like optional tests): Math teachers did this since elementary school. Teachers would give a math problem and some time to solve it. First x students to solve it correctly got a good grade, others could get pluses. For example, first 3 students to solve a math problem within 15 minutes get A, the next students get a plus. Those who did nothing get nothing. Like a small optional exam. It makes it worth being prepared. Just don't make the window too small, like "First student to solve this within 5 minutes gets A, next ones get nothing", because most will just give up.
8. Announce exams in advance: This gives students time to study before each exam. The likelihood that someone will study AFTER a surprise exam is quite low.
9. Give option to re-do an exam: Got a bad grade? Don't give up yet. Put in some more effort to get a better grade. I've seen different approaches on this. Sometimes it would replace previous grade, sometimes you'd just get another. Sometimes unconditionally, sometimes only if it's better. I'd choose a second grade conditionally. If it replaced the grade, you wouldn't see as many studying for first exam, relying on "fixing it later". Conditionally because if there's a chance of getting worse grade, I may just as well not try, just in case.
10. Movies or shows: Applies to foreign language classes. If it catches their interest, they may not even realize they're learning. You could occasionally do that as a reward. Reward = motivation. Tip: Subtitles may be helpful. The problem with this is finding something universally interesting.
11. Try to not treat the whole class as 1 person: Punishing whole class for actions of 1 student will make YOU more disliked than that student.
12. Respect: I don't know how you could do this. But some teachers may gain respect among students. I believe this is more valuable than using power. But again, no idea what you could do for that.
13. Outside?: My middle school geography teacher did her classes outside during summer. Nothing changed about those classes, it was just outside. Better environment.
14. Minimize homework: Homework is one good way to absolutely hate a subject. This could be partially replaced with optional projects. If it's optional, it doesn't feel as bad anymore.
15. Ask students for feedback: There's a small chance you may get some useful answers.

But you probably can't do much past trying to be nice. Biggest problem is the extra unnecessary information being taught, but if you can't determine what precisely will be useful in the future, you can't know what to omit. Missing knowledge is probably worse.

Edit: Fixed some typos

first one to ring pays the bill

Always eating for free 😁
Always eating for free 🥲

Seems likes Billy just inherited a bunch of abusers who like free meals

Neither one really has anything to do with the other.

In fact, I'd say getting rid of phones could help improve motivation because when students are more focused on school, they're more motivated and perform better.

This meme was made by a middle schooler who doesn't understand the higher-level decisions being made by educators.

This does seem like a pretty good idea.

I don't think so tbh. If students are motivated enough, then this policy wouldn't need to be pursued.

Why does anyone buy this bullshit?

Oh yeah I totally needed to learn about what a writer might have thought 200 years ago while writing EVERY SINGLE PAGE of his book, when I already knew that I wanted to do something with technology.

But we didnt have enough teachers for biology and physics and chemistry, so instead we got more literature.

I wonder where I (and our whole society) would be now if schools werent meant for preparing kids to transition into work, but instead about getting the full potential out of every kid.

Im German and I did learn English in school, but not really, because it was taught in a way that made me lose interest immediately.

I actually learned English when I started to watch Minecraft Youtubers in English because they had some interesting contraptions in their videos or something like that (Its been a while, I dont know exactly why I started watching them)

"learn"? We are talking about schools, you know.

education is a benefit in and of itself. Maths helps develop your brain to solve problems, english makes you more able to appreciate culture which in turn will make you more interesting and better able to socialise, history helps you understand how the world is and that it used to and can be different.

These things are worth learning even if you don't do them for work

I know a place that does great deals on tablets bundled with the latest education software that has doubled test score performance in Louisiana.

I own the place.

I have children paste apple logos on the cheapest tablets I can find.

The test score performance is doubled by flagging the outliers dragging down the average and feeding them to alligators.

But on the upside I'm only partially funded by the Gates Foundation.

Maybe the US could incorporate the silent kids to parole with guns and motivate the other kids to learn. It would be a win-win-win situation wouldn't it?