American Educational System

[KI Dock Bar]

You were right under that rope during the demonstration weren’t you?

https://youtu.be/bBAOp3LMb-c?si=NOKQcB0Oi2BdblBI

That is hilarious...we had ropes that were attached to the ceiling when I got to my middle school in 2000. I knew better than to think that the students had any interest in doing that.

[Farfromgeneva]

I have read that almost 90% of US students attend public schools, which is hard to believe living in Maryland. Anyway, if we are to compete with the rest of the civilized world, we need to make our public schools better and worry less about sending a few studeoto private schools.
Having spent more than 40 years in public education, I’m aware that the task is daunting and frustrating, but it is imperative that we do not abandon our responsibility. Changes that would affect who becomes a teacher would be a first step. I’m not optimistic,

Also a career educator & high school coach, I see how a few unruly students determine the level of learning in the classroom everyday. Believe me, I am not the only teacher who feels this way. My daughter who serves as a counselor at a summer camp just came home and told me how one student occupies so much of her time due to inappropriate behaviors. I thought to myself, you are preaching to the choir sister! In the public schools you call home, most of the time nothing changes. The administration gets involves, most of the time nothing changes. Many times there is only so much anyone can do. I feel for the students who are being affected in a negative way.

Best thing they could do....yet it costs money.......give the power of expulsion back to teachers. You don't want to learn? At SOME POINT, you need to be removed.

Worse still, are the kids who threaten teachers, but are allowed to stay. What other workplace allows such behavior?

What puzzles me is that we get plenty of valued professional development but rarely is is based on classroom management skills. In my mind, the ability to diffuse a situation before it can elevate is a skill many teachers do not possess. I am a PE teacher so my classroom has much less structure than the content area classrooms. Having said that, the students know what the standards and expectations are when they come through those doors. They also know that I am not out to get them, but rather I have their best interest at heart. We need to do better at preparing teachers in that regard.

I remember being in the 6th grade….For gym everyone had to line up on a number that ran along the end of the basketball court. A couple of kids weren’t on their number and were goofing off when Mr. Adams began class…..so he blew his whistle and told everyone to line up outside his office. He gave everyone 3 whacks with his paddle. I thought he was going to let me off because I was a hooper. He got me last. Everyone got it.

You were right under that rope during the demonstration weren’t you?

https://youtu.be/bBAOp3LMb-c?si=NOKQcB0Oi2BdblBI

Actually that would be my 7th grade coach!!! we knew he was “off”… We laughed at a teammate that got a cramp in his hamstring and old coach leaned over him to “rub it out”…. I had forgotten about him until I was home from college as a junior….I saw he was arrested on the news for child molestation.

Geneva PD did a good job of burying it but a cop was a little league coach in even a for years and messed a bunch of kids up. One who had messed up parents who left town he took in for middle/high school. That kid blew up FR years at Bart and got tossed but thankfully went to
Ranger school and is ok now.

Robert “Bob” Hazel is the guy. Should’ve hung him self by now hopefully.

This is why I never gave nor will give gps respect after I learned that. They can all suck a pickle. Scumbags.

[Seacoaster(1)]

The scourge of the smartphone, dumbing down our kids while making them anxious:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ol/679340/

"In the early 1960s, when my parents were in high school, they received free sampler packs of cigarettes on their cafeteria trays. To the cigarette companies, it made sense: Where better to find new customers than at schools, whose students, being children, hadn’t yet established brand loyalties? This is hard to fathom in 2024.

I believe that future generations will look back with the same incredulity at our acceptance of phones in schools. The research is clear: The dramatic rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide correlates closely with the widespread adoption of smartphones over the past 15 years. Although causation is debated, as a school head for 14 years, I know what I have seen: Unfettered phone usage at school hurts our kids. It makes them less connected, less attentive, less resilient, and less happy. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written for this magazine, smartphone-based life “alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.” It is time to remove phones from schools.

At the entrance to our high school is an indoor amphitheater we call the Forum. The space acts simultaneously as a living room, dining room, library, and town square. When making my rounds during the school day, I will often stand at the top of the Forum and observe our students in their natural habitat. A group of sophomores plays hacky sack in one corner while a lone senior leans against the wall reading Moby-Dick, highlighter in hand. Students share a pizza. A duo prepares for an upcoming chemistry quiz. It is a hive of activity—one visitor to our school described the atmosphere as having an “intellectual crackle.”

That was a decade ago. I still make my rounds, and yes, many of the above activities still unfold in the Forum, but they are being crowded out by students looking at their phones. The students are sitting next to one another. They may even be interacting. But more and more, their attention is on their screens. Watching phones take over the Forum brings to mind a beetle infestation in a forest. At first, just one or two trees show signs of damage. Then, the next thing you know, the forest is a less healthy, less vibrant place than it once was.

I’ve watched students who struggle to make friends not learn how to, because they can retreat into the short-term safety of their phones rather than tolerate the discomfort that often precedes finding one’s way into a conversation. I’ve watched some of the spontaneity that makes school fun diminish, because students are less tuned in to what’s happening around them. I’ve watched our community become weakened by the ubiquitous presence of phones.

Good conversations are hard—they are messy and complex and require attention and careful listening. Phones teach our students to abandon the eyes of the person they’re speaking to in order to glance at a newly arrived text or Snapchat message. They privilege simplistic dichotomies that can garner “likes” rather than nuanced understanding, which requires the patience to turn to a topic again and again, suspending judgment. They undermine the very skills we aim to impart: the ability to engage deeply, to hold complexity, to build meaningful community.

I am not a Luddite—I believe in the ability of technology to enrich our lives. And yet I believe that those who are responsible for the well-being of children can no longer ignore the reality that phones in schools are doing more harm than good—distracting students, isolating them, and creating unhealthy echo chambers that undermine critical thinking.

To be clear, adults are not setting a great example. In a middle-school graduation speech a few years ago, I encouraged our students to put down their phones. Their parents applauded. And then, without missing a beat, the students called out, “You put down yours!” We, too, are often glued to our devices, distracted at meals, at sporting events, while standing in line. Adults would do well to set their own limits on phone use.

Some people argue that phones prepare students for the pressures of our digital world—one they’ll eventually have to navigate anyway. Even if this is true—and I am not sure it is—it is an unintentional aftereffect that happens at the expense of building community. Others argue that in an age of school shootings, it’s important for parents to be able to reach their children at a moment’s notice. When we practice lockdown drills, like most other schools, our security team instructs students to sit quietly—to silence and put down their phones. School shootings are a growing and terrifying reality. At the same time, far more young people die by suicide each year than in school shootings.

While I understand the parental impulse to know you can communicate with your child instantly and constantly, protecting children’s mental health is far more urgent than keeping tabs on them. (In fact, developmentally appropriate freedom from parental oversight is vital for healthy adolescence—but that’s a topic for another day.) And giving them a respite from technology so that they can more deeply connect with themselves and with others is one crucial way to protect their mental health.

In a world in which information is readily available and AI is evolving at a stunning pace, schools must focus on teaching attention, navigating ambiguity, encouraging independent thinking, and nurturing communities. These essential tasks are hindered by phones, which fragment attention and weaken our capacity for genuine connection.

Our school already bans phones for pre-K through eighth graders, and starting this fall we will no longer allow phones in the high school. I expect that some of our students (and even some parents) will vigorously protest this change. And yet I believe that most will grow to embrace it, discovering that their experience of school takes on a new depth and vitality.

For too long, children all over the world have been guinea pigs in a dangerous experiment. The results are in. We need to take phones out of schools. Let’s reclaim our school spaces and ensure that our students learn not just from devices but from one another and the world around them. So much of the magic of childhood happens in unmediated community. We must not deprive our children of that gift."

Russell Shaw is the head of school at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C.

[DMac]

Good article but I question this:

"In the early 1960s, when my parents were in high school, they received free sampler packs of cigarettes on their cafeteria trays.

Was around then, never saw that.
There are a couple here who were
around then too, ever see that?
Weren't allowed to smoke on school
grounds in the early 60s...well, 'cept
in the teacher's lounge.

[youthathletics]

The scourge of the smartphone, dumbing down our kids while making them anxious:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ol/679340/

+1

My wife deals with this all the time with kids as young 3 in Pre-K specialneeds programs. She and parents have noticed significant positive improvements in many of these children when she prescribes limited / structured screen time. She also encourages them to amend their diets by asking them document what the child eats on a daily bases and what time. The later, when the parent(s) see this in writing, soon realize just easy it is to fall into the snack trap.

[old salt]

Good article but I question this:

"In the early 1960s, when my parents were in high school, they received free sampler packs of cigarettes on their cafeteria trays.

Was around then, never saw that.
There are a couple here who were
around then too, ever see that?
Weren't allowed to smoke on school
grounds in the early 60s...well, 'cept
in the teacher's lounge.

They were in K-rations during WW-II

[DMac]

Sure were, cool little five packs.
Got those in Vietnam too.

You ever see that in HS in the 60s?

[KI Dock Bar]

Tuition at Georgetown Day School is 48K for grades 1-4 & $53K for high school. If Russell Shaw can get those affluent parents to agree to this, why can't we do the same in our public schools? In my school, I, along with many other teachers have been calling for this for a couple years now. Our administration was on board with that and the request got turned down at the BOE. Apparently a few "influential parents" did not approve. Thank you for posting, we have a new Principal & Assistant Principal coming in this year and I am not giving up the fight!

I was on lunch recess last year and a fight ensued between two of our middle school students. I was the first teacher to get there. The next day our Principal brought it to my attention that a video had been posted of me and the individuals involved. My Principal indicated that a parent of one of the students had contacted her and suggested that I had not acted fast enough to break up the fight. The student had broken his hand by punching the other student. I first asked my Principal if they has gotten my good side. I then said that if I had attempted to break up the fight by putting my hands on one of the students and in doing so I had in any way harmed the student then we would be talking about something completely different, wouldn't we? She agree, and she provided her full support.

If the students phones were in their lockers and not their pocket that would not have ever happened!

[DMac]

So I send my sophomore son and junior daughter, who just got back from Quebec after her travel team's wlax tourney, off to school along with a check for 106K? Gonna get some balking from a whole lot of parents with that.

[youthathletics]

I was on lunch recess last year and a fight ensued between two of our middle school students. I was the first teacher to get there. The next day our Principal brought it to my attention that a video had been posted of me and the individuals involved. My Principal indicated that a parent of one of the students had contacted her and suggested that I had not acted fast enough to break up the fight. The student had broken his hand by punching the other student. I first asked my Principal if they has gotten my good side. I then said that if I had attempted to break up the fight by putting my hands on one of the students and in doing so I had in any way harmed the student then we would be talking about something completely different, wouldn't we? She agree, and she provided her full support.

Curious...what is the new CPI standard for breaking up fights? My wife just attended her re-cert and they did not address it when asked....'risky move' regardless, they focused on singular student issues/restraint; maybe call admin or the SRO, if there is one? They also are trained on Ukeru technique, but again, this is primarily for individual scenario.

[KI Dock Bar]

I was on lunch recess last year and a fight ensued between two of our middle school students. I was the first teacher to get there. The next day our Principal brought it to my attention that a video had been posted of me and the individuals involved. My Principal indicated that a parent of one of the students had contacted her and suggested that I had not acted fast enough to break up the fight. The student had broken his hand by punching the other student. I first asked my Principal if they has gotten my good side. I then said that if I had attempted to break up the fight by putting my hands on one of the students and in doing so I had in any way harmed the student then we would be talking about something completely different, wouldn't we? She agree, and she provided her full support.

Curious...what is the new CPI standard for breaking up fights? My wife just attended her re-cert and they did not address it when asked....'risky move' regardless, they focused on singular student issues/restraint; maybe call admin or the SRO, if there is one? They also are trained on Ukeru technique, but again, this is primarily for individual scenario.

I have never received any guidance concerning these types of confrontations. I am surprised how little professional development is provided for classroom management strategies, etc. After this happened I spoke to our faculty at the next meeting, explaining what had happened and making it clear that they have no obligation to intercede in any circumstance such as that. I am 6' 1", 200 lbs, and most importantly 63 years old, I will never compromise my health or my position as a teacher by jumping into an altercation between students. I made it perfectly clear to the other teachers that they should take the same approach.

[KI Dock Bar]

The public schools in Maryland went full day kindergarten in 2011-12 and they are in the process of going full day pre-k. In my district we are on track to accomplish that in 2 years, 2026-27. Many of the students in pre-k now are need based socio-economically or developmentally, or both.

[Typical Lax Dad]

I was on lunch recess last year and a fight ensued between two of our middle school students. I was the first teacher to get there. The next day our Principal brought it to my attention that a video had been posted of me and the individuals involved. My Principal indicated that a parent of one of the students had contacted her and suggested that I had not acted fast enough to break up the fight. The student had broken his hand by punching the other student. I first asked my Principal if they has gotten my good side. I then said that if I had attempted to break up the fight by putting my hands on one of the students and in doing so I had in any way harmed the student then we would be talking about something completely different, wouldn't we? She agree, and she provided her full support.

Curious...what is the new CPI standard for breaking up fights? My wife just attended her re-cert and they did not address it when asked....'risky move' regardless, they focused on singular student issues/restraint; maybe call admin or the SRO, if there is one? They also are trained on Ukeru technique, but again, this is primarily for individual scenario.

I have never received any guidance concerning these types of confrontations. I am surprised how little professional development is provided for classroom management strategies, etc. After this happened I spoke to our faculty at the next meeting, explaining what had happened and making it clear that they have no obligation to intercede in any circumstance such as that. I am 6' 1", 200 lbs, and most importantly 63 years old, I will never compromise my health or my position as a teacher by jumping into an altercation between students. I made it perfectly clear to the other teachers that they should take the same approach.

I don’t recall ever seeing a teacher break up a fight in high school or middle school. I have seen teachers actually physically assault students though. As for student fights, way back when, usually the kids eventually resolve it. A friend and I were just laughing about a teammate that got into a fight after school in the cafeteria…..the dude was getting the best of him until my teammate reached for a mustard bottle and squeezed it in the guys face!! We almost pissed our pants laughing.

[old salt]

Everyone wants to go to college in the South now.

The number of Northerners going to Southern public schools went up 84% over the last two decades, a WSJ analysis of the latest available Education Department data found. Students say they’re drawn to the fun they see in the South on social media, while parents like the lower tuition. College counselors also say teens are eager to trade the political polarization found on New England campuses for the camaraderie epitomized by football Saturdays at schools like Clemson and Georgia Tech. This flow of students promises to impact the region’s economy for years.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/s ... jem10point

Sorry, Harvard. Everyone Wants to Go to College in the South Now.
The likes of Georgia Tech, Clemson and Ole Miss are drawing students from the North who want to have fun and save on tuition. The shift is boosting the economies of cities across the region.
by Douglas Belkin and Andrea Fuller, Sept. 27, 2024

A growing number of high-school seniors in the North are making an unexpected choice for college: They are heading to Clemson, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Alabama and other universities in the South.

Students say they are searching for the fun and school spirit emanating from the South on their social-media feeds. Their parents cite lower tuition and less debt, and warmer weather. College counselors also say many teens are eager to trade the political polarization ripping apart campuses in New England and New York for the sense of community epitomized by the South’s football Saturdays. Promising job prospects after graduation can sweeten the pot.

The number of Northerners going to Southern public schools went up 84% over the past two decades, and jumped 30% from 2018 to 2022, a Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest available Education Department data found.

At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, total freshmen from the Northeast jumped to nearly 600 in a class of about 6,800, up from around 50 in 2002. At the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, they increased from 11 to more than 200 in a class of about 4,500 in 2022. At the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, 11% of students came from the Northeast in 2022, compared with less than 1% two decades prior.

This flow of students to Southern colleges promises to impact the region’s economy for years. About two-thirds of college graduates go on to work in the same state where they graduate, according to a recent study from researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and others. The transplants are well-educated, motivated young workers at the least expensive points in their careers.

For most of American history, many high-school seniors have aspired to go to college in the Northeast, home to the Ivy League. Southern academic stalwarts, such as Duke, Tulane, Emory and Vanderbilt, have long drawn their share of students from up North, but the recent uptick of students going to the South is fueled by attendance at public universities.

Though far more students apply to Ivy League schools than in 2002, some of the hottest Southern public schools—including Clemson and Georgia Institute of Technology—have seen even a bigger spike in interest. At Alabama, applications were up more than 600% in the same period—about three times as much as bids to attend Harvard.

Saturday is football
Mitch Savalli drove 15 hours with his parents in a rented white Lincoln Navigator from his home in North Bellmore, N.Y., on Long Island, to Atlanta for his freshman year at Georgia Tech.

A few weeks later he was walking from the grocery store to his dorm with a bouquet of flowers for the woman he was taking to a fraternity event when the reality of his new surroundings dawned on him.
“Five people stopped me and told me how kind it was and what a sweet gesture I was making,” he said. “No way would that have happened in New York.”

At the University of South Carolina in Columbia, Alicia Caracciolo, a junior, said it takes her about two weeks to acclimate to the pace of the South every time she returns from her home in New York. At the grocery store she reminds herself to pause and slow down.
“If you go and you don’t end up learning something about the cashier, you did it wrong,” she said.
“Saturdays down South are a real thing,” she said. “The whole world kind of shuts down in Columbia when there’s a home football game.”

The increase in the number of students heading South grew for years and then accelerated suddenly after the pandemic, federal data show.

“You had students home in their basement in Connecticut looking at their phone seeing most of the Northeast closed down and not much happening,” said Rick Clark, executive director of strategic student access at Georgia Tech. “At the same time they are seeing sororities at Alabama and football games in Georgia and Florida. Life is happening.”

Savalli’s path to Georgia Tech was paved by two years listening to his older brother complain about college in Upstate New York.

During the pandemic, Mitch’s brother had regular lockdowns at his college after he had been exposed to Covid. There were social-distancing rules, mask requirements and online classes from his dorm room.

Meanwhile, both the Savalli boys were watching students on television cheering at university football games down South.

“There were more freedoms in the Southern schools and that really started to drive applications,” Vincent Pisano, an assistant principal in the Long Island school district Savalli attended. “Then the outreach really started to grow from the Southern schools. Schools like LSU and South Carolina started attracting huge groups of kids.”

Applications to some Southern universities from Savalli’s school district on Long Island have tripled compared with a few years before the pandemic, according to data provided by the school district.
Savalli wanted to attend a college with a strong engineering program and a competitive lacrosse team. He considered two Boston-area schools—the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University, his top choice, as well as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

He applied to Georgia Tech without knowing anyone who had gone there. When he realized his out-of-pocket cost at Tufts would be about $80,000 and Georgia Tech would be half of that, he decided to fly down for a visit. That sealed the deal.

Tuition bargains
For out-of-state students, Southern schools are often a bargain, according to figures from roughly 100 of the nation’s top public research universities. Last school year, such Southern schools charged students from other states a median $29,000 in tuition and fees, the least of top public colleges in any region.

*Excluding students from South Carolina

Scholarships often make it cheaper.
Caracciolo first heard of the University of South Carolina from her cousin who attended medical school there. She knew she wanted to study marketing and her ambition was to go to Syracuse University, which has one of the most respected communications programs in the country.

The Long Island native was admitted to Syracuse with a $15,000 merit scholarship knocking her out-of-pocket expense down to $65,000, she said.

She applied to South Carolina as an afterthought. When Caracciolo earned admission to the honors program and won a scholarship, she realized it would cost her about half as much as Syracuse and she would be more likely to attend classes in person. The year after she started, around a dozen students from her private Catholic school followed her down, she said.

South Carolina is home to several magnets for Northern students. The University of South Carolina, the state flagship, and Clemson University, in Clemson, each enrolled hundreds of freshmen from the Northeast in 2022. At USC, that was a 659% jump in 20 years; at Clemson, the spike was 456% over the same period.

The pipeline from New York is particularly robust. In 2022, South Carolina public universities were the No. 2 out-of-state destination for public-college-bound freshmen from New York, after Pennsylvania.

#Rushtok
In addition to Saturday’s football bonanzas, there is typically a vibrant Greek fraternity and sorority life on Southern college campuses—all documented by undergrads on Instagram and TikTok. Search #rushtok for a glimpse. Every Saturday, thousands of students attend tailgate parties and football games across the South. “Bama Rush,” a Max hit television show, chronicles sorority rush at the University of Alabama.

At many Northern schools, by contrast, television news showed campuses beset by protests last year. This juxtaposition is one reason the flow of Northerners heading South could continue in the coming years, say college counselors.

Students who have moved to the South for college pay less attention to politics than students who have moved to the Northeast, said Colby College sociology professor Neil Gross, citing a survey he took this summer.
“Some students are saying, ‘I don’t want to be in a super political environment,’ and they are opting into an atmosphere where they can focus on things other than politics,” he said.

The hit show ‘Bama Rush’ chronicles sorority rush at the University of Alabama. PHOTO: MAX
Southern schools have, by and large, better track records on free speech, according to rankings by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit civil liberties group which has defended faculty and students in cases regarding speech issues. This year, most of the top 25 schools are located in the South. The six schools with the worst ratings were in the Northeast.

Following student protests over the war in Gaza, some Jewish and Southeast Asian students declined to apply to some highly selective schools in the Northeast because the environment is so tense, said Rachel Rubin, co-founder of Spark Admissions, a private college-counseling company.
“They are being much more careful about which Ivies they are applying to and are expanding their search to the rest of the country,” she said.

Postcards from the beach
At Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C., more than 1,000 freshmen came from the Northeast in 2022—41% of the class and a bigger share than at any other public Southeastern school. That’s up from 26% four years prior.

The school has focused recruiting efforts along the I-95 corridor as far north as Boston, said Amanda Craddock, vice president of enrollment. When winter weather blankets the Northeast with snow, the school sends marketing emails to prospective students featuring pictures of the sunny campus and its many palm trees.

Sometimes, a student from New York or New England gets interested in Coastal Carolina on a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, near the school, Craddock said. On a cloudy or rainy day, families swing over to the campus just to check it out. When they take a tour or talk to students, they learn about the huge concentration of Northern students in the school’s business program. They find out the cost is cheaper than their public flagship where they live.

Then, if a parent works remotely, the family realizes they could buy a home in the area and live more cheaply in South Carolina than in Massachusetts, Rhode Island or New Jersey. So many families relocate after their child enrolls that the phenomenon has its own name: Craddock and others call them trailing families.

Georgia Tech’s campus. Many students and their families are seeking out warmer weather at Southern schools. PHOTO: NICOLE CRAINE FOR WSJ
The Southern enrollment surge is taking place in some booming regional economies. The top five most promising locations to find work for newly minted college graduates are all in the South, according to a recent study by payroll provider ADP.

Growing universities create a snowball effect for local and regional economies—especially research universities, said Jason Owen-Smith, executive director of Institute for Research on Innovation and Science at the University of Michigan.

More undergraduates means more customers to patronize local businesses. They can also help underwrite graduate programs that support researchers who bring in grants. That grant money is often spent with local vendors to build out labs, which, in turn, may generate new knowledge, patents and startup businesses that hire people. Those businesses may then attract more high-paying employers to the region.

In the short term, however, more students can also create bottlenecks when it comes to adding the infrastructure to accommodate the people.
“The challenge on everybody’s mind,” said University of Mississippi Provost Noel Wilkin. “How do you accommodate the growth?”

[jhu72]

The scourge of the smartphone, dumbing down our kids while making them anxious:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ol/679340/

"In the early 1960s, when my parents were in high school, they received free sampler packs of cigarettes on their cafeteria trays. To the cigarette companies, it made sense: Where better to find new customers than at schools, whose students, being children, hadn’t yet established brand loyalties? This is hard to fathom in 2024.

I believe that future generations will look back with the same incredulity at our acceptance of phones in schools. The research is clear: The dramatic rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide correlates closely with the widespread adoption of smartphones over the past 15 years. Although causation is debated, as a school head for 14 years, I know what I have seen: Unfettered phone usage at school hurts our kids. It makes them less connected, less attentive, less resilient, and less happy. As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has written for this magazine, smartphone-based life “alters or interferes with a great number of developmental processes.” It is time to remove phones from schools.

At the entrance to our high school is an indoor amphitheater we call the Forum. The space acts simultaneously as a living room, dining room, library, and town square. When making my rounds during the school day, I will often stand at the top of the Forum and observe our students in their natural habitat. A group of sophomores plays hacky sack in one corner while a lone senior leans against the wall reading Moby-Dick, highlighter in hand. Students share a pizza. A duo prepares for an upcoming chemistry quiz. It is a hive of activity—one visitor to our school described the atmosphere as having an “intellectual crackle.”

That was a decade ago. I still make my rounds, and yes, many of the above activities still unfold in the Forum, but they are being crowded out by students looking at their phones. The students are sitting next to one another. They may even be interacting. But more and more, their attention is on their screens. Watching phones take over the Forum brings to mind a beetle infestation in a forest. At first, just one or two trees show signs of damage. Then, the next thing you know, the forest is a less healthy, less vibrant place than it once was.

I’ve watched students who struggle to make friends not learn how to, because they can retreat into the short-term safety of their phones rather than tolerate the discomfort that often precedes finding one’s way into a conversation. I’ve watched some of the spontaneity that makes school fun diminish, because students are less tuned in to what’s happening around them. I’ve watched our community become weakened by the ubiquitous presence of phones.

Good conversations are hard—they are messy and complex and require attention and careful listening. Phones teach our students to abandon the eyes of the person they’re speaking to in order to glance at a newly arrived text or Snapchat message. They privilege simplistic dichotomies that can garner “likes” rather than nuanced understanding, which requires the patience to turn to a topic again and again, suspending judgment. They undermine the very skills we aim to impart: the ability to engage deeply, to hold complexity, to build meaningful community.

I am not a Luddite—I believe in the ability of technology to enrich our lives. And yet I believe that those who are responsible for the well-being of children can no longer ignore the reality that phones in schools are doing more harm than good—distracting students, isolating them, and creating unhealthy echo chambers that undermine critical thinking.

To be clear, adults are not setting a great example. In a middle-school graduation speech a few years ago, I encouraged our students to put down their phones. Their parents applauded. And then, without missing a beat, the students called out, “You put down yours!” We, too, are often glued to our devices, distracted at meals, at sporting events, while standing in line. Adults would do well to set their own limits on phone use.

Some people argue that phones prepare students for the pressures of our digital world—one they’ll eventually have to navigate anyway. Even if this is true—and I am not sure it is—it is an unintentional aftereffect that happens at the expense of building community. Others argue that in an age of school shootings, it’s important for parents to be able to reach their children at a moment’s notice. When we practice lockdown drills, like most other schools, our security team instructs students to sit quietly—to silence and put down their phones. School shootings are a growing and terrifying reality. At the same time, far more young people die by suicide each year than in school shootings.

While I understand the parental impulse to know you can communicate with your child instantly and constantly, protecting children’s mental health is far more urgent than keeping tabs on them. (In fact, developmentally appropriate freedom from parental oversight is vital for healthy adolescence—but that’s a topic for another day.) And giving them a respite from technology so that they can more deeply connect with themselves and with others is one crucial way to protect their mental health.

In a world in which information is readily available and AI is evolving at a stunning pace, schools must focus on teaching attention, navigating ambiguity, encouraging independent thinking, and nurturing communities. These essential tasks are hindered by phones, which fragment attention and weaken our capacity for genuine connection.

Our school already bans phones for pre-K through eighth graders, and starting this fall we will no longer allow phones in the high school. I expect that some of our students (and even some parents) will vigorously protest this change. And yet I believe that most will grow to embrace it, discovering that their experience of school takes on a new depth and vitality.

For too long, children all over the world have been guinea pigs in a dangerous experiment. The results are in. We need to take phones out of schools. Let’s reclaim our school spaces and ensure that our students learn not just from devices but from one another and the world around them. So much of the magic of childhood happens in unmediated community. We must not deprive our children of that gift."

Russell Shaw is the head of school at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C.

+1000

It has been clear for so long what a bad bad idea cell phones are for children. This goes for cell phone "social apps" ported to laptop and desktop computers as well. The whole paradigm needs to be heavily regulated or outlawed if given no choice. A case of not all technology being good technology.

The problem is much less the phone function than it is the social app function!