"You agreed to this! You signed this!" - forced arbitration at schools.

[TechLord]

Regarding the toxic schooling systems: Another trick they use to get students to become obedient slaves is forcing them to sign contracts, so that they can later say "you agreed to this! You have signed this!"

This actually happened when my school outruled the usage of smartphones and other electronics. On the first day of that new school year, they handed out papers that we were forced to sign, stating the new rule, along with "any violations will be logged in a disciplinary file, and repeated violations or the refusal to give a teacher your electronic device upon request can have punishments ranging from temporary suspension to expulsion from the school and even being barred from other public schools" (not the exact wording). This means the public schools are coordinated.

But public schools nowadays are trash anyway, see The dangers of education. I will not be sending my future children to them.

Students are in many places forced to go to school, so they can hardly opt out of it. Even private schools might have draconian rules. Students are forced by external circumstances to agree to rules they don't actually want.

Whenever I hear school directors promoting their schools as "democracy is one of our core values" or some promotional crap like that, this can immediately be dismissed with "How many of your students wanted a smartphone ban?" This makes it an oligarchy by definition, not a democracy.

It is somewhat like pointing a weapon at someone to force them to sign a contract, albeit not that extreme. Did they really agree to it, or were they rather forced to by external circumstances?

[LoadingXML]

DELETED BY USER.

[qualia]

Didn't think I'd see this day but I actually agree with LoadingXML on something for once. There's a lot of flaws in the current schooling system but in my perfect system the students would also be not allowed to use electronics. The use of smartphones (and similar devices) in schools is actively turning a generation of people into bumbling retards. From https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-alp ... 24-12?op=1

Joshua McGoun, a K-12 public-school teacher in Frederick, Maryland, first noticed a change in his students about 10 years ago. They began to struggle with focus.

Increasingly, younger kids were not nailing basic reading skills before third grade — a crucial window. Those who miss it have a tough road ahead in middle and high school. Even adept readers in their tweens and teens have become afraid of complex or extended reading tasks and more comfortable with short texts or bite-size summaries.

The article doesn't mention this but the literacy crisis in America extends to adults. The majority of adults in some states are functionally illiterate (as in able to read words but not comprehend basic text like a short PSA or instruction manual).

This is not unusual. Across the US, kids are struggling to read. Last year, reading performance for fourth graders hit its lowest level since 2005, and teachers expect that number to keep tumbling.

Students, McGoun said, have “fallen out of love” with the written word because the march of technology has made it seem “alien” and “outmoded” to them.

Parents know tearing a school-age child away from a phone is no easy feat. No matter what literacy technique you employ, the pull of screens tends to be stronger.

There are efforts to leverage technology to help with literacy. Some artificial-intelligence programs, already appearing in classrooms, listen to students read aloud and give them instant feedback on pronunciation and comprehension, an alternative to having students play a reading game for 10 minutes on their own.

Jeff Jarvis, a public-school teacher in Los Angeles, is skeptical about the tech method. Sure, it might work in small groups, “but you’d almost definitely be struggling to use it effectively in a large class with 25 kids,” he said.

Educational digital media is “often attached to visuals, not texts,” Jarvis said, adding: “They’re getting quick blurbs from Snapchat and TikTok but nothing in-depth.”

Despite this happening all over America, in major US cities electronic device use in school is not banned but *mandatory*, for example https://www.techspot.com/news/110521-pa ... rades.html :

In context: Child behavior experts have long warned about the harmful effects of excessive screen time and have urged parents to limit their children's smartphone use. Now, parents in California are starting to heed those warnings and are pushing back against the Los Angeles Unified School District over what they see as excessive reliance on technology in the classroom.

The movement to reduce screen time for school children is being led by a parent coalition called Schools Beyond Screens, founded by concerned mother Lila Byock. The group is campaigning against the mandatory use of iPads, Chromebooks, and other electronic devices in classrooms, arguing that they are negatively affecting students' academic performance.

Angry parents also claim that their children have developed behavioral problems after prolonged use of school-issued devices, often because the kids spend time playing video games or watching YouTube instead of doing schoolwork. Others warn that students are using the devices to access inappropriate content, including pornography and gratuitous violence.

Strangely:

She also questioned why schools distribute iPads while banning smartphones, noting that "kids are using the school-issued devices in exactly the same way."

This is very interesting, I wonder what the purpose of this is? Surely, it's not controlling what they do on the devices because they clearly don't do that.

Also, obviously:

Teachers have also raised concerns about over-reliance on technology, especially as many students are allegedly using AI tools such as ChatGPT to complete their assignments.

[TechLord]

Didn't think I'd see this day but I actually agree with LoadingXML on something for once. There's a lot of flaws in the current schooling system but in my perfect system the students would also be not allowed to use electronics. The use of smartphones (and similar devices) in schools is actively turning a generation of people into bumbling retards.

Some classmates (mainly female) indeed used their phones for pointless snapchatting prior to the ban, but I don't like having my rights taken away collaterally because someone else behaves poorly.

Surely, it's not controlling what they do on the devices because they clearly don't do that.

Possibly spyware. Also, devices provided by the school probably are severly locked down. See also The time I got suspended from school... - MattKC - For dual-booting Windows 7 with the school's Windows XP.

[moeloli]

As for the smartphone ban topic, I feel a bit conflicted about that. As Smartphone Hater #1 my immediate reaction is "based", but it is "cringe" because they're oppressing students in a way. I guess it would be fair if the school staff were also banned from using smartphones. But really, the best solution is a nation-wide ban on smartphones, or better yet, a global one.

ec26a292deb01472a972c4e0b84d4c490bff52a0a6df964fe1a05ebd5a36617a.jpg (24.18 KiB) Viewed 197 times

Possibly spyware. Also, devices provided by the school probably are severly locked down. See also The time I got suspended from school... - MattKC - For dual-booting Windows 7 with the school's Windows XP.

That video reminded me of one time back in high school when I live booted a Linux USB in an IT-related class (it was on one of their computer lab desktop computers), and I didn't do anything "bad" like actually installing the OS on the computer's drive or anything else in particular, but the teacher saw that, and she saw the Systemd shutdown screen in particular, and she (she was a woman, so that kind of explains it) asked me if I was "hacking the school network", and after that, USB drives were banned in computer labs in my school for a long time with the ridiculous justification that "students are distributing viruses from USB drives on the computers" (read: one student live booted Linux without even installing it), and we had to use a "cloud" service for storing our assignments and stuff (as if you can't sneak viruses into a cloud service, or just generally download them from the internet...).

I can remember other things like that as well, such as when I installed a reputable ad blocker add-on on the default browser on a computer, and the teacher (it was the same teacher, so, figures) said that I can't install add-ons because they may contain malware (as if (((ads))) aren't the real malware...), but other students installed shady Chinese spyware browsers on the computers and I guess she was fine with that? Maybe she just had a grudge against me because I "hacked the school network" back then.

Public school teachers are so retarded it's unreal.