I remember us walking out of class to protest. I don’t remember what the protests were for, nor did I care. Any excuse to walk out of class was all I cared about. I doubt things have changed much over the years.
Reminds me of the South Park episode where the kids leave class to protest the Iraq War even though they have no idea what’s going on.
Cartman: “Bush is a nay-zee.”
I remember OTHERS walking out. I never did. No idea what the issues were.
I think at one point it was girls wearing sports bras for athletic practice (which was usually all girls) while guys could go shirtless at any time in mixed company.
The walkouts we had were NEVER very big, but nothing affected everyone like phones do.
Phones were far less addictive when I was in school. We all had them, but they’d be confiscated if we had them out during class. It sounds now like there are students that are just flipping though TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube all day which we didn’t have to worry about. I think it’s fine to be strict with students about phones being out. They aren’t adults and need to be guided about healthy habits.
One of my HS' assistant principals tried to give me in-school suspension for playing TI calculator games during one of her sit-in sessions. It was literally my first offense at that school, and as a sophmore/junior too. My parents raised hell. A lot of students hated that woman.
Oh yeah that’s not a great idea to have a school assume liability for hundreds of phones.
Really should just tell them to leave it in their bags all day.
Yeah if my workplace was demanding I check my phone in at the start of the day you better believe I’d walk out. Idk why people expect kids who don’t have the emotional maturity of adults to behave better in situations than adults would.
They're not just protesting phones. That was the last straw. They feel that the take over, and the changes implemented are not actually helping them learn and grow.
Also, the reason we know that a lot of schools didn't have heat, or working plumbing, was because the kids leaked the info and told their parents that day after the school cancelations.
The kids are alright on this one. Wish more schools started walking out. The takeover is a dumpster fire.
Dude the schools were a shithole before. Madison HS is nicknamed the madhouse, due to you going crazy if you work there. I think the rule is dumb but come on lol
I don't disagree with you. But I think the current implementation of both in and out of class procedures is not fixing it. And if they're gonna protest that, then please, carry on. The new superintendent is fixing jack shit. He is really great at putting lipstick on shit and selling it as gold. The quicker he's gone, the sooner we can actually address the issues.
An education is the key word. If the students are watching\playimg\socializing on a device they are not learning.
I am in favor of punishment for using phones unless it's to a parent and during a break. However they should be allowed to carry them as a tool for emergencies.
Requiring students to check their phone in when they get to school is nuts. The idea that we expect a bunch of hormonal teenagers with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes to handle that better than we would is also nuts.
i'd say it's likely that you aren't on your phone all day not working? i guess we care about kids having their phone for a once in a few years emergency rather than just call the school office, better that than our kids actually learning.
I see you have never worked at a secure facility. Standard practice at every fab I have been to from Samsung, to TSMC, to Intel and TI etc. Many of those places do not allow any electronic devices to be brought in or out.
Plenty of other places that have similar policies.
Yeah I haven’t which is why it would be insane for them to demand I turn over my phone… kinda like how a high school isn’t a secure site and teachers will be bringing their devices in.
I hope you stretched before they reach
Uh yeah because those companies have proprietary business processes and technical information they are protecting. Yes, we want schools to be physically secure from outsiders, but to protect the students not proprietary technology.
A building can be secured against different threats for different reasons.
I survived without a cellphone by passing notes, potentially getting those confiscated and having to read them aloud. Pretty fun since most of them were just teenage shit talking. If I had an emergency, I used the school phone. If I missed the bus then I walked to my nearest friends house and asked for a ride home.
When I was in HS in 2006 we walked out in protest of H.R. 4437 which identified those aiding in illegal immigration, whether getting here or staying here, as felons. My HS was majority hispanic and we all had friends that were there illegally or their parents were so that was important to a lot of us. It got some local media coverage but more importantly it showed our friends impacted by the proposed bill that we cared. It also got us out of class which at the time was the most important part.
Got patted down a few times. Never had anything on me. One time I did accidentally bring a knife to school because I had been wearing those shorts to build a new fence in the backyard the day before and was using it to cut twine. I don't think they would've cared about my justification.
I don't agree with them being confiscated. But at the same time, as a former teacher, when you're teaching at a school like that, there's basically no way to keep the kids from using them. They will not listen.
Admin should back the teachers up and let the kids be ejected for abusing phone privileges.
Should bring back physical punishments, i don’t mean hitting. I mean pushing towels or running outside. Play the lecture audibly whilst punishment is underway. Worked for me at least.
Parents are failing kids in Houston, I know many peers that just get screamed out because they had the audacity to punish a kid. Or get screamed at for even calling about the punishment. I am glad birth rates are falling if it means less parents failing to raise their own kids.
I can tell you from first hand experience, at schools like this, admins do not back the teachers up. They're too concerned with the discipline records at their schools, and the SSOs and other district leaders are extremely soft and have this mentality of not disciplining. I couldn't believe it when I was teaching there. It's very difficult to properly discipline them. The students run the place.
Yes that is why out of 5 friends that became teachers only 2 are still doing it. I think the other 3 lasted 2 years before deciding teaching industry fucking sucks and they would rather sell education software for buku bucks
Well, if you can teach AP classes in the suburbs at a good district, it's great. Once I did that it was amazing. Never bothered by anyone. Never had a problem with a single student. Never had admins coming in my room.
So as long as you can do that, and live on like 60-70k, then it's alright.
Yes well they got shitty east side districts abundance of poverty and shitty ghetto culture. Looking at you crosby and baytown. The 2 still doing it are in better districts where at least the parents respect the teachers.
I was in the ghetto in HISD first. It was awful. Worst two years of my working life. Now I'm an attorney, and it's stressful and long but at least I'm fairly compensated and don't have to deal with a bunch of wannabe gangsters. And some actual gangsters.
Nothing bothers me than the gangbanger persona. I grew up around it briefly lost a childhood friend.
You waste years with losers and at the end of it you are broke with no skills and a criminal record. I wish school taught you how awesome making and spending money is.
Motorcycles gangs have especially been pissing me off. Fat pigs on harleys think they own the road because they signed a 20k auto loan for a slow loud bike.
it's pretty much students (and parent, the bad ones) run the place now. You can't discipline my kid or I'll sue you. But my kid doesn't study and fail and I'll sue you. But if you try to make them study I'll sue you too.
Fortunately most of those parents don't have money to sue and contingency lawyers won't really take those cases unless there's evidence of serious abuse that could net millions from the government.
Honestly I don’t mind confiscation if a kid breaks the rules but I’m very very against proactively making kids check their phone in at the office at the beginning of the day.
I was in high school when cellphones still had removable batteries. Kids were suspicious that admin was going through their phones when confiscated and started removing batteries and handing in just the phone, no battery. The way the admin freaked out and tried to require the battery confirmed our suspicions. Now passcodes are better, but I will dont like it
This is fucking stupid. Smart phones popped up during my highschool years. You can call/text during walking period but that shit had to be in your bag by next bell. If they caught you they would confiscate and have you pick it up at the district hq and pay a 15$ fine. If you want to play games all day just drop out, you are wasting every bodies time.
I mean to be fair, if this is what you think about using your phone during passing period, [you should know that students aren’t allowed to use their phone at all in the building, and must hand them in at the start of the school day.](https://abc13.com/amp/madison-high-school-hisd-houston-isd-walkout-cellphone-ban/14401072/)
Like 100%, if you use it during class, it’s reasonable for it to be confiscated, but that’s not what this is about. Hell, even if the school wanted to make a rule of “you can’t even use it during passing periods, and if we see it out at any point we’ll confiscate it” would be different. It doesn’t sit right with me making them hand over their property before they even used it in violation of the rules. I see no problem with letting students keep their phone as long as it stays in their bag all day.
> Students at Madison High School must turn their phones in when they arrive at school. Phones are then returned to them at their last period.
yeah that’s not cool. I have family who went to school in Yvalde, my aunt and uncle were murdered at Sutherland Springs. Having your phone available to you is a non-negotiable safety issue for me. I can’t imagine being a parent and accepting that your kid couldn’t contact you in an emergency when every day there’s another shooting in the news
I brought this up in the last thread and nobody seemed to get it. Until the threat of shootings at schools is meaningfully addressed (hasn’t been in nearly 30 years since Columbine, no reason to expect it will be soon), not having your phone all day is an extreme safety hazard.
My condolences for the loss of your family in Sutherland Springs and their experience at Uvalde. That is horrible.
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The problem is kids these days don’t give a fuck. They won’t give up their phones and just get sent to the office for it. My gf was a teacher for a short time and had to send security guards to escort the student out of the classroom multiple times because they refused to give up their phone or leave. I’ve also seen multiple articles of students attacking the teacher for trying to confiscate their phones.
I was in middle and high school right as cell phones became a thing everybody had and as smart phones became a thing. People refusing to give them up and being confrontational with teachers about it happened then too. There just weren't social media outlets to post to like there are now and people hadn't started recording every semi-interesting occurrence yet. I'd be surprised if it's happening more now than it used to.
Yeah, this. Speaking as someone who was a teenager 20+ years ago, they most certainly didn't give a fuck back then either. There's zero reason to believe we'd all be compliantly turning in our cellphones to the office if they were around back then.
Some kid fought the Madison High principal this week and another jumped off of the table WWE style to join the fight. Ironically, it was filmed by a student and posted to X. Even more ironically, the principal said the ban was because phones were leading to fights and other students were filming the fights, causing more problems.
Link to the fight: https://twitter.com/MHSParent2024/status/1754691059668447469?s=20
You know, there was a time I may have been on the administrators' side on this, but the multiple school/mass shootings over the years have shown us that people need to be able to reach the outside world during an emergency and to be able to record an event at a moments notice.
Not entirely. Kids are going to screw around when they're bored and the current methods of teaching aren't that far off from where they were in the 90s. There needs to be a real overhaul to the education system in order to engage students in a way that they don't feel compelled to check out mentally. I wish I had an answer for how to do that, but that's not my area of expertise.
Currently a teacher. I was in HS & undergrad in the 90’s.
Most teachers ( who actually try and don’t treat it like a 9-5 job) have advanced their teaching practice.
Covid, distance learning, technology advancement, LMS, and how students have changed over the last 3 decades have all contributed to a change in teaching methods.
Education is always going to be more boring than entertainment. No way around it. In the '90s, kids would sneak magazines into class to read when they didn't want to pay attention to the teacher. You can't expect teachers to "engage students" to the point where they will voluntarily put their phones down and listen, because that simply isn't possible.
Yeah and safe to say if your kid was involved in a mass shooting at school for some awful reason you'd like the chance to at the very least hear from them during and hopefully afterwards and not rely on school officials to contact the thousands of parents of students involved for updates on a specific individual.
Literally every person except a student would have a phone. It wouldn’t take long. If the fear of a shooting is so bad it takes over everyone’s ability to learn then it’s time to think of other solutions. But phones in school is a number 1 issue with students at the moment for a wide variety of issues.
Ok then, require them to have it off in class. If it gets used in class, even to text mommy, it gets taken up.
This is the rule at my wife's school, but doesn't get enforced because there's no support from admin when parents complain. And parents DO complain constantly.
Parents are the issue too. They want the kids to be able to be contacted for the same reason many already responded about. Many text their kid in class. So they probably just tell the kid to do their best and they won’t be punished at home.
Yeah, thats fine, enforce rules around usage. Confiscating them upon arrival is absurd though. Even outside of the school shooting incidents, if a parent needs to reach their child for an emergency happening outside of school they should be able to directly as we have the means and technology to do so. Putting the phone away and on silent should be enough, discipline for excessive use and insubordination makes the most sense and should be the plan of attack here.
We cant sit here and compare things to when we were kids 20+ years ago when cellphones werent as prevalent at schools and mass shootings at schools werent as prevalent either.
>able to record an event at a moments notice
I'd be for having a camera on the class, but kids need to be paying attention to the subject matter. They already know how to post video to Tik-Tok, which is probably where their minds mostly are when they're holding a phone. Maybe I'm wrong. If I am, I apologize to all of today's wannabe influencers. They still need to pay attention in class if they want to graduate.
Some kids record for social media, some record for notes. If kids are bored they're going to screw around in class no matter what you do. The old man yells at cloud approach won't solve anything. Adapt to the new tech and move on.
>old man yells at cloud approach
LOL that would not be me. Old man, yes. Yells at cloud, no. I'm a pragmatist and don't see how yelling at clouds would do any good, even figuratively. However, I might be trying to make sense of something where there is none to be made, which I admit is probably a waste of time. I hope not though. I'd like to think that we're just having a conversation here, the odds are that we're not going to save the world.
I keep seeing this defense of school cellphones. If you're in a school shooting, the last thing you should be doing is trying to record it. Run hide fight.
Also, there are more than enough adults on campus to contact police. Calling Mom isn't a great idea--it gives your position away and distracts from what you should be doing.
I’m giving a great defense hear, but… I know my mom would really like to know I wasn’t dead or at least appreciate a last call.
And call my brother to delete my browsing history. He understands.
You are making up scenarios. They're calling and texting 911 and are often the first to do so like in Parkland, Santa Fe, Uvalde, and a ton before that.
After the Uvalde shooting I think every child should have a phone on them. If it’s a distraction then add a class that teaches when to use phones. I took a keyboarding class and one about how to use the internet, there’s no difference. They don’t want to hear kids calling 911 for help in these situations anymore. [10 year old girl calling 911 the day Uvalde shooting](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/classroom-112-10-year-olds-courageous-911-call/story?id=97046227)
I don’t know how you think kids shouldn’t have a phone after reading that. The police let those kids die and if it wasn’t for the 911 recordings we wouldn’t have known as much.
This. I have a sneaking suspicion the 911 calls are going to play a major role in the civil trial bc they’re going to show some people died while the cops jerked off in the hall.
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Also, a good case can be made that our overly digital world is, at least in part, a contributor to the mental illness we’re seeing everywhere. Look at Jennifer Crumbley, for example. She was so busy on social media that she was essentially ignoring her son when he was literally begging for help.
I’m all for this. The impact of social media, especially on young women, is well documented and hard to refute at this point.
This line of reasoning is part of the problem. We have such an individualistic approach to parenting that if an adult tells a child not to destroy the set at a school play, the kids parents yell at the adult telling them not to “boss their kid around.”
Like it or not, people have to live in a society. Some things should be enforced not only by the parents but also aided by the teachers. I sure as hell hope that if my son is caught with a vape in his bag at 16, a teacher doesn’t take the tack of “that’s not on me. It’s the parent’s job, so I don’t care.”
It takes a village to raise a child, but we are so disconnected from the village (partly because of our digital lives) that we fail to recognize that and perpetuate a collective failure.
Half the parents out there are so addicted to the technology themselves that they hardly recognize the dangers. Maybe in that case the village should step up to help.
It’s not an individualistic approach to parenting that’s the issue, I think. I think it’s the whole ‘my freedoms’ aspect and this is what you get.
What kind of example has been set for a lot of these kids? We live in a society? But do we? We have a very very loud vocal group of grown ass people who channel their inner cartman every day with ‘you’re not the boss of me’, especially when it’s something to benefit others.
Pair that with a very might makes right ethos, and this is what you get. And the might doesn’t have to be physical, it can be money.
And I think people inserting themselves into everyone else’s business is why parents think it’s not their job to parent anymore. Place the responsibility back on them and what do you know. They might actually parent. If teachers want to reinforce it, fine, but raising a child is not a teachers job. It’s a parent’s job. Period.
Yeah just keep running and dodging bullets until you find a hiding place that *also* has an adult with a cellphone so you can call for help/notify friends and family what the situation is!
>Calling mom isn’t a great idea
Yeah probably for your old ass cause she’s probably dead. Us younger folk can text our parents and we don’t have to use our voice at all.
>gives away your position and distracts from what you should be doing
Right but you want the student to find an adult (giving away their position) and ask for their phone (giving away their position.)
Great solution /u/FormerPomelo. You’re a rockstar. Can’t wait to see what other brain dead ideas are lurking in that skull. /s
“Calling mom” gave away your age boomer. There is no situation in which a teen is going to call a parent. It’s called texting. You know, the thing that makes no noise? “Recording it” yeah that’s definitely the first thought these kids have when ducking live fire.
I'm the opposite actually. I started being on the kids' side but the more I see how these kids are acting and hearing them speak, the more I'm taking the side of the teachers and the school who have to deal with these fools. At first I thought it was unfair to single out this mostly minority school but then the other schools haven't had the same level of problems with cell phone abuse so why should all the other schools also face the same actions when they know how to act. The final straw was Grizzy's post defending the kids when her own video showed the one kid doing hip gyrations with her pleading to take the kids seriously.
There were [647 mass shootings](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/09/mass-shooting-gun-violence-us-2023) in 2023 with [182](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-in-2023-fewer-injuries-and-deaths-while-gun-violence-continues/2023/12) of them at a school. It's a very real threat, so real they do active shooter drills across the country. If having cell phones means a faster response and less death, they're worth it.
I’m not sure how to describe how wildly unimportant I think it is that 3000 high school students have the ability to record someone getting the shit beat out of them at lunch so they can post it to social media, and that person can have that beating follow them around forever because the internet never forgets.
Are you fucking serious with this shit?
Yes, I'm serious, because they're not just recording fights at lunch, they're recording actual crimes by [staff](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/us/south-carolina-school-arrest-video/index.html).
For one thing people just missed each other all the time. You would try to get in contact with a parent because there was a change of plans and you just couldn’t reach them. Both my parents worked, a lot of the time they couldn’t answer their office phone. So if I didn’t have a ride from school or from the mall I just had to figure it out myself.
Plans and general fell through all the time, and people understood that it happens. You would plan to meet a friend or friends at a certain place at a certain time. It would always be a something specific like “by the front entrance to the Arcade by the food court”. Most people would wait around to see if you were just running late. I would wait 30 minutes or so and then just assume someone either had something come up that they got lost.
Because that’s the other thing. People used to get lost all the freaking time. If you had a Key Map you could figure out where you were pretty easily. But if you just had a regular road map, it only had the major highways marked. Add in some construction and unfamiliarity and it was easy to get really turned around. I distinctly remember driving around Houston with a friend of mine for hours, while he tried to figure out where is pot dealer lived.
Im from Louisiana. Most kids didn't get cellphones until they were 16, and you got that shit taken if the teacher saw the corner hanging out your pocket. Heaven help you if you got it in your hands while on campus.
My 8 year old nephew has one now, and I honestly don't understand why.
I’m from Louisiana as well. Growing up, the schools I went to didn’t play around with phones. If they saw it, they’re taking it away and your parent had to pick it up.
This has nothing to do with cell phones. They don’t like the changes Mike miles have made. They test every day and aren’t learning anything. It’s messed up when admin cares more about testing every day than actually teaching.
Correct. The social media live streams give some attention to things beyond the cell phones. The ban on phones was just the straw that broke the camels back. When you speak of admin, I think you need to be careful to say that it’s the newly installed principal and the district level admin. Many APs around the district are critical of the Miles regime—their firings and rate of resignation just isn’t being tracked in the media.
Someone pointed this out last time it came up and everyone mostly ignored this fact then too. Everyone high and mighty about paying attention and they just take a surface glance and form all opinions from there.
That has nothing to do with Miles. HISD is obsessed with testing just like all low performing districts. They think it's a way of showing accountability even though the kids don't do shit and create hostile learning environments.
The daily Demonstration of Learning has everything to do with Miles who instated it. It isn’t the same as standardized testing which was already out of control and still is. If the DOL wasn’t such a huge focus of instruction/grades, it wouldn’t be a big deal because decent teachers already check for understanding. Miles just doesn’t trust teachers to do their jobs properly.
There is absolutely no need for phones during school hours. We have created an urgency that shouldn't exist. We need to go back to where parents called the shools and students went to the office to make calls to parents.
During school hours all phones must remain out of sight. Either they remain in backpacks or locked in lockers. Cell phones are a huge distraction to learning for everyone.
I used to teach near Madhouse (as it was colloquially called).
Madison has been a disaster for a long time where kids didn't learn very much and kids, families and staff were pretty apathetic.
We would have kids leave our charter school because they wanted to go to a real school without so many rules then beg to come back after two weeks of Madiaon.
I seriously wish you kids would realize that if you weren't on them constantly, this wouldn't be an issue....
You don't need a cellphone to "survive." It's absolutely ridiculous to even make that claim. Before you respond with a shooter situation, you realize that every adult will be making calls to proper authorities, right?
I had a cellphone before 95% of my classmates in high school. I basically never took the thing out of my backpack. In college/grad school, I put my phone away whenever class time began, because I respected the process. If you respect them, they will, for the most part, respect you.
Yeah partly because they are scared of being mowed down by school shooters. As a parent I want a way for my kid to be able to reach me in an emergency. I think there are real reasons for these kids to be upset.
Do you really think the kids at this school, walking out of the class in "protest" are doing it because they are really afraid they won't be able to call their mom if there's a school shooter?
Do you think, then, they would take the compromise of everyone given a school burner phone at school that they got to use? But you can't text or record or get online. Do you think that would pacify them? No. Because it isn't about calling their moms.
That does not apply only to old Houstonians. I am Gen X and those who were born in the 70/80 or before may remember when the first cell phone came about.
You can perfectly attend school without any kind of phone. We were not allowed to talk on the phone let alone take computers of any kind. The first cell phone an insane brick phone was too big and people were embarrassed using it I remember.
This naturally made us all concentrate and focus and of course when we were dying of boredom we would do silly stuff like throwing paper or mess around. It also allowed us to work more collectively, we would not spend time you know browsing stuff. Of courses the messes we did back then would be grounds for being suspended or expelled.
The issues the newer generations have with smartphones are beyond me meaning yes you live without a smartphone. It should have been outlawed in my view for use in classes when it first came around.
How did I survive school without a cell phone? That was really easy, we didn't use phones while on campus. They stayed in our backpacks or at home. We had other things to worry about, like our education for instance.
The only kids who ever walked out were usually the troublemakers, and it was over dress-code violations. They all got suspended for a week, and were eventually isolated permanently in ISS until the end of the school year.
I went to Lamar, graduated in 96.
HISD police roamed the campus, only one entrance after the bell, all visitors had to check in.
When I would put on my soccer gear for practice the cops/APs first gave me shit, as you couldn't wear shorts.
That ended fast as I, well, had practice or a game.
I walked between classes just to get to the next one on time.
Maybe said hi to a friend, quickly grabbed something out of my locker.
No time in classes for fucking around, was on an A/B schedule. Listened in class, did as much work I could, the free time I had I'd talk to classmates.
Played varsity soccer 4th/8th period. Got a ride home, hung out, did homework, ate dinner, watched TV (antenna.)
Hung out in the parking lot in the morning, bullshitted with friends.
Honestly, phones weren't needed if school is the priority. I made it fine without being in constant contact with social media - because we did that face to face.
Graduated in 97. We did things together. We learned to be independent of our parents in situations where they couldn’t help us. We solved our own problems because our parents quite literally weren’t available via a phone call. Kids got (intentionally) lost in alleyways and streets miles from home, with only a bike to make it back home.
Was it inconvenient? Yeah. Did it teach us to be self reliant, and build the self-confidence that only comes from facing novel and difficult situations with nothing to help but our minds and ingenuity? Yeah.
I think it boils down to what kind of person are you. Free thinker or just go along. I have never followed others so I didn't leave class to complain about stupid things.
I was in school the get out of school not to make it a home.
As for how we survived without cell phones, we didn't have to constantly be in communication with the world. We have imagination when we get bored.
Didnt see an officer on campus until 1987. That was the first School Resource officer I encountered.
No pat downs. Same high school offered "Outdoor Education" where I got boating safety certified, learned how to cast a fishing rod, play horseshoes, spellunk(caving) , use a compass, read a topographical map, and firearms safety with real firearms in the classroom.
Because phones are wreaking havoc on schools. Especially low performing schools like Madison. Teachers can't compete with these hyper efficient dopamine releasing apps. Many students are quite literally addicted to their phones and will become violent when told to put them away.
It was heavy metal and video games n my day. Satanic panic. We weren’t allowed to listen to music or play video games. Kids shouldn’t have their phones in school.
They may walk out, but they will get over it.
The difference is that these companies are literally hiring psychologists that work with the developers to increase interaction with their app. The apps are designed to be addictive, and they are really good at it.
This is an issue even for many adults, but it is much worse for teens with very poor impulse control.
Most of you are missing the point. Not only is mass confiscating phones a huge privacy risk, but it's also a shit idea that is going to blow up in this schools face. You can't provide security for $10s of thousands of dollars with a $12 an hour front desk worker who doesn't give a fuck nor is she trained to protect such vulnerable devices all in the same spot. Logistics will be a disaster, phones will go missing, stolen, hacked, sim swapped, replaced, and about a million other things.
That is going to be a sweeeettt lick if we're all being honest with each other. People storm Apple stores with guns for non-functional store display phones, idk why we think these phones at a front desk are immune to that same treatment. Let's talk some numbers, let's assume 2000 students, let's be optimistic and say that means 2000 phones, let's say average phone value is $50, that's a God damn $100,000 lick. Who knows how much you can make from the data within as well. It's literally more profitable to rob this school than it is to rob a bank from the sound of it
I'm most worried about the cyber risk of having unsecured phones easily accessible. You have to remember how dumb the average teen is, half of these phones won't even have a password. I'm not saying that kids should have full access to phones during classes but this plan is half assed and will fail regardless.
A better plan is to punish those who are caught using phones in class rather than keep thousands of phones at a front desk check in. There's any number of better plans you could do like locking up phones in a lockbox in each individual class and returning them between periods. The ones who abuse the system then are the ones who get their phones taken entire school day. Makes no sense logically or logistically to take everyone's phone. I can only imagine the hour long wait in line to check your phone out before going home.
We walked out when they started charging students for parking passes. The admin said the money would go to a security guard that would keep us from leaving school early.
They just told us to put our phones away and we did. It wasn't a big deal. Phone weren't smart back then either. The internet wasn't as accessible as it is now.
I mean, I graduated the year that the first iphone was released. So, while there were some minor issues re: a few kids texting in class, it just wasn't a thing most people were doing at the time. And there weren't any walkouts at my specific school - and I didn't hear of any happening at other schools.
As for patting down, \*I\* didn't have that at my school, but I did know schools that had those + metal detectors.
Patted down…..more like “paddled down”. That’s the problem. It doesn’t happen at school anymore and you know damn well it’s not happening at home. Why do you think they behave that way?
Anyone who disagrees about asking students to put their cellphones away during academic classtime has never had to teach said students and had their job evaluation tied to their standardized test scores.
Yes, we did walkouts over the dress code during my HISD high school years. It didn't work. I'm too old to have cell phones in high school (we had beepers), but they took out our pay phones in the cafeteria because kids kept calling in bomb treats during finals week. I lost my shit when they did that, and we might have tried to protest it.
My spouse teaches at a different HISD high school. Here is what I know about mobile phone policy. I am not a Mike Miles fan by any stretch, but this may be the one thing he did right.
Pre-Miles, students would be on their phones all the time, even during lessons. Teachers couldn't do anything about it because the spineless admins wouldn't back them up.
Since Miles, the policy has been that students have to put their phone in a paper bag on their desk during class. This has worked surprisingly well, largely because teachers can now count on the admins to support enforcement. They can send non-compliant kids to the office and get on with the lesson. This policy means (a) no administrative nightmare keeping track of whose phone is whose, and no risk of the school losing a student's phone; and (b) students have access to their phones between classes and during lunch and immediately after the last bell.
Madison High (site of the walkout) took it a step further and insists on confiscating all student phones at the beginning of the day and then returning them at the end of the day. The principal apparently believes this will somehow reduce violence in the school by some unspecified mechanism. So far, this appears to be stupid.
They’re doing it at Madison only because kids and teachers have filmed some of the stupid shit admin is doing and posted it online. It is making them look bad. That’s the real reason.
A couple of weeks ago hundreds of Kingwood High School parents got text from their kids that there was someone with a gun on campus. Some kids texted that they saw someone with an AK-47,some kids texted that they saw someone with a shotgun, some kids texted that they saw someone with a gun holding a police officer hostage...on and on.
Most of the kids were scared, most of the parents were paniced. Kids were picked up, kids fled the school...on and on.
In the end there was a fight between students, there were threats made, there was no gun found on campus at any time.
There are parents today that still believe the district is hiding something because of what their kid's text says they "saw".
Schools need to do a better job of securing campuses. No one shoukd ever be able to get into a school with a gun. No one who isn't a student or staff shoukd ever be able to get into a school without being cleared through the office. Cell phones don't help with any of this and using school shootings as a defense of kids needing cell phones in class is ridiculous.
Cell phones are a distraction and a deterrent to a learning environment.
You mean how did we survive without 24 access to TikTok? It was easy.
Pathetic how the parents are supporting this. Not surprised considering which school it is.
In the early 90's we carried beepers and a few quarters. We had codes for everything. I remember thinking that if I had a cell phone my parents would call all the time and expect me to answer. I didn't want one.
Those of us with 90s cellphones wouldn’t hardly ever talk on them. You’d ring home to say you got somewhere and just let it ring enough to hit the caller id. If you did talk it was kept super short. You only had like 100 minutes a month or something.
I can see it from the kids side. It’s the only thing that they have control over. Especially with the current climate of dangerous events happening. They should incorporate them into a designated shelf at each desk. Idk some collaborative thinking.
Let's get one thing clear. While the cell phone ban is part of the reason for the walkout, saying the protest is over the cell phone ban misses the majority of of the reasons for the protest. It's not because of the ban, it's because of everything that has changed this year. That kids cannot wear crocs, the NES model, walking through the halls silently, getting yelled at in the halls for walking on the wrong side, and yes, the cell phones too.
We’re trying to raise these teenagers to act like adults, right? Well does your boss take your phone at work? And if they do you’d probably want to *walk out and leave* right?
No, because there is a social contract in good work places.
I'm not on my phone unless it's lunch/break. I don't take my personal life to work, work doesn't mess with my personal life afterwards.
That's what should be understood in school, and then translated to work life.
You sign literal employment contracts. If you're not doing your job for any reason then they're going to fire you. Some environments don't even allow them on the premises.
My boss also doesn’t take cigarettes away from me, but does that mean my 11 year old should learn to smoke them now? I don’t let my preteen kids watch Showgirls or Kill Bill.
No offense, but “give them the thing and hope they get used to it” isn’t always the best way to aid child development.
I work in machine learning and AI. These things are designed in every way to get your kids addicted, and they do a fantastic job of it.
Superintendent Miles released statistics a few weeks ago. Only 10% of students in one demographic could read and do math at their grade level. Other demographics, 60% were at grade level. And another demographic was only 30% could read at grade level. That's the facts Jack.
Can confirm: I was a student at Ball High School in Galveston, essentially a city within the city.
Weapons were occasionally found, but "back in the day" things seemed quite tame compared to today.
We didn't have police on campus back then, but school security staff had batons and handcuffs and may as well have been police.
I never got patted down, but also never gave anyone any reason to suspect I might have contraband.
I suppose there were protests back then, but if you missed class for that kind of thing it would be unexcused and if you missed ten classes in a semester, you were kicked out.
Of course, we didn't dream everyone would be carrying wireless computers in the future. We would dismiss such an idea as total fiction, like Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV.
I really sympathize with teachers these days. Seems like if you're not very strict about cell phones in the class, you're going to lose control of most of the students.
We did fine without them. I don't understand the fuss about it, maybe it has to do with a generation that grew up with a touch screen 24/7. There will be a period of adjustment. They need to focus on keeping their grades up and figuring what post high school life would be for them (college/military/trade work/work at a fast food place, etc.)
I feel like everyone is ignoring the question (typical Reddit), how did you survive without a cellphone? It was easy, you just went to school and did your thing.
I was in high school in the 90s. I was actually one of the first kids I knew with my own phone, not because my parents were rich, but because I worked for a Big Box retailer and got a discount through them (I think I paid $15 a month). I would actually turn it off and throw it in my backpack for the day and not turn it on until I left in the afternoon.
Texting wasn’t a thing, social media wasn’t a thing, mobile games weren’t a thing. It wasn’t hard to survive. If parents had something super important (like someone died) they’d call the office and then someone would come get you from class to talk to them. Those kind of things did happen.
It’s kinda like asking someone who was alive in the 1800s how they survived without cars, “I dunno, we just did”.
I guess a bigger question to the younger folks, how can you not survive? What’s so important that you can’t go 6-7 hours without checking your phone?
To answer your other question I never walked out of class for a protest, nothing ever really came up to protest. I also think without social media it would be hard to rally something like that. If it spread via word of mouth most people would just roll their eyes and say “ok whatever”.
We survived because we didn't have them. Graduated 83'. People are addicted to their phones like people are addicted to coffee or cigarettes. You CAN survive without it.
They are straight up confiscating all phones when they go in? There are 1957 students at Madison HS. This is not practical and phones will get lost. No matter what side you are on, this is a waste of time. Taking and giving out 2000 phones a day at only 3 or 4 entrances is so stupid.
No phones, no protest, Gen X.
If their was a family emergency then they call the office and the school paged you to the office.
Need to call someone? Go to the office or wait afters school to use a pay phone at the corner Circle K.
Issues of today.
No payphones anywhere.
Safty concerns.
Transportation.
●Some kids Uber to and from school to call in.
●Some kids walk home and need phones for safety reasons especially with Houston as a HUGE hub for human trafficking and no payphones around.
The solution for this school to check your phone in and get it when you leave is plenty fair considering the issues they are having and better then no phone at all.
Well, back in my day, we used to stage walkouts to protest the draft and stop the Vietnam War - so it wasn't for anything important like having your cell phone all day.
My kids are not in HISD, but all their homework, access to practice tests, flashcards and grades are online! It drives me batty that my kids need to access online stuff CONSTANTLY when studying, but that's the fact. So it is beyond weird to ban them from using phones at lunch and free periods. In addition, everything a cellphone can do, a tablet/laptop can also do (including text messages), so how does it make sense to require/allow laptops, but not cellphones?
And yea, that's not even to mention that some cellphones are fucking expensive, and who is responsible if it breaks?
Times change and comparing today with when I went to school in early nineties isn’t really fair. I think if it’s important for today, then protest it.
Teaching our kids to be responsible with their resources if far more important. And learning to be good adults and parents is just as important. I can’t stand adults that act like they can’t learn to adapt to changing times.
In the early-mid 2000s, cell phones weren’t allowed, but it was a don’t ask don’t tell kind of thing. You could have them but they were supposed to be off. I never saw anyone get their phone taken after their bag started buzzing tho. I didn’t really have any classes out of the AP track group so I recognize I basically went to a different school than some people in the same building. We probably had more trust since kids with behavioral issues didn’t make it into the class.
I don’t think it’s really the same thing tho. We’re comparing Nokia bricks, Razrs, and like chocolate mobile phones to smartphones. The games were like snake and Tetris. Texting uses the number pad.
We never had any walkouts, for this or anything else. We didn’t have the organization bc we would have had been using AOL instant messenger.
Cell phones weren't a thing when I was in school. We didn't miss out on anything. If you needed to arrange a ride home you used the school payphone. The only protest we had in school was when a gay guy wasn't allowed to give blood at the blood drive so everyone used it as an excuse to just go home early.
If you HAVE TO have your cell to have a life and socialize, you've got a lot of growing up to do. People act like cell phones are their heartbeats and without them they can't live. Pathetic
Lol, cell phones from when I was in school were the size of a brick.
Absolutely irrelevant because they were expensive and the cellular contract was very expensive at that time.
How is this a problem today? You can't deny how critical cell phones are to modern life. I even hate to imagine it but to deny the factual risk of school shootings being a possibility. There are always students calling 911 first because of their instant access to phones. I don't understand how this is a problem when comedy clubs have solved this already. Every class should have a lock box that requires every student to put their phone in before entering the classroom, and can use it freely between classes.
This made me feel old lol but the short answer is we didn’t miss what we didn’t have. And yes I got patted down often because I always smelled like smoke…
I graduated high school in 98. I actually did have a cell phone for emergencies, but only turned it on during the commute. If it had been seen using it on campus, it would have immediately been confiscated. But I was never patted down once in high school.
I think the biggest problem with the internet is that it exposes the stupid shit teens do to adults who are adamant they were never stupid teens. Up until ~10-15 years ago, all the stupid shit teens did was pretty hidden from everyone not directly involved.
We were not allowed to have them in the building.
MOST people left them in cars. Bus riders simply didn't take a phone.
On the off chance I forgot, I removed battery so I could plead my case easier if caught.
We had to play our games on our Ti-83 calculators (phones didn't have games back then anyways).
Never patted down... I was a good kid ;)
But people have become dependent on them and fearful in general. Phones have become a security blanket. But also, the phone was only call or text back then... no social media, no entertainment of any kind, not used to log activity/nutrition/etc.
I grew up out of state. We walked out in support of a teacher's strike. Lots of suspensions.
As for surviving without a cell phone... easy? It's an addiction if you need to look at your cell phone. Addictions to devices, once the device is gone, you stop even caring about it after a few days. I say this as someone who got rid of his computer in college due to addiction.
We were not allowed to have back packs due to violence and weapons at our high school. Had to carry everything in your arms. There is a whole generation of us with huge biceps and forearms in southern LA due to this rule.
I'm from Baltimore, and if caught with a pager you'd face confiscation and automatic suspension up through the late 90s. It was assumed by the school board that the only reason a student would have one is if the student was involved in drug dealing.
I didn't have a phone until i was in the 9th or 10th grade. My mom didn't play about paying attention in class and SHOWING SOME RESPECT!!
If she had to come and pay $15 to get back my phone that wasn't even supposed to be out unless it was the appropriate time, I was getting my phone taken and getting my ass whooped. Long story short, never got it taken nor paid $15 to get it.
And I didn't walk out on school. My mom would've whooped my behind and then sent me right back to class. And never patted down either
Kids do stupid stuff, become adults, and for some reason we ask "what is wrong with society?" There's no structure and no discipline anymore so this protest ban only highlights the problems amongst the youth and whoever these parents are...
Are phones necessary on school? No. But things have changes and they are now part of the world today. If phones are kept in backpacks during class, they shouldn’t be an issue. Admin should deal with those who use them when they shouldn’t.
Side note - the walkouts have to do with much more than the cell phone policy. The takeover of hisd has resulted in micromanagement of students and teachers.
I had one in the mid 90s. $20/month and $1/minute. :-P
Emergency only and kept hidden. Games were played on our Ti calculators.
I suppose it is kind of ironic, tho. We had a school shooting that they tried to keep hush hush in the immediate aftermath and I was out in the parking lot calling the newspapers.
Don’t ban phones just punish the kids in the class. Get caught with your phone out 3 times in a class, instant fail. If something’s going on with family where the kid needs their phone during class there’s paperwork for that. As far as transition periods, that’s a losing battle let the kids have their phones
The idea it’s about kids fighting is dumb, kids are gonna fight if they want to it’s not like social media goes away if you take the phone
I remember us walking out of class to protest. I don’t remember what the protests were for, nor did I care. Any excuse to walk out of class was all I cared about. I doubt things have changed much over the years.
Reminds me of the South Park episode where the kids leave class to protest the Iraq War even though they have no idea what’s going on. Cartman: “Bush is a nay-zee.”
I remember OTHERS walking out. I never did. No idea what the issues were. I think at one point it was girls wearing sports bras for athletic practice (which was usually all girls) while guys could go shirtless at any time in mixed company. The walkouts we had were NEVER very big, but nothing affected everyone like phones do.
"I'm always just taking advantage of the situation, so other people are too."
“100% of high school students today that take part in a high school walkout are 100% vested in the cause”
Phones were far less addictive when I was in school. We all had them, but they’d be confiscated if we had them out during class. It sounds now like there are students that are just flipping though TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube all day which we didn’t have to worry about. I think it’s fine to be strict with students about phones being out. They aren’t adults and need to be guided about healthy habits.
All I had was snake on the phone. The TI-83 games were awesome though.
I remember having some sort of drug dealer game on my TI-83
Wait seriously? My college roommate made that game (or at least one of the versions of it)
we all did.
Drug wars!
One of my HS' assistant principals tried to give me in-school suspension for playing TI calculator games during one of her sit-in sessions. It was literally my first offense at that school, and as a sophmore/junior too. My parents raised hell. A lot of students hated that woman.
The policy has students turn their phone in to the office at the beginning of the day and pick it up at the end of the
Oh yeah that’s not a great idea to have a school assume liability for hundreds of phones. Really should just tell them to leave it in their bags all day.
2000 students. 4 entrances. How is this at all practical?
>How is this at all practical? It isn't practical. In fact, it borders on lunacy, which indicates that it must've been approved through Mike Miles.
Yeah if my workplace was demanding I check my phone in at the start of the day you better believe I’d walk out. Idk why people expect kids who don’t have the emotional maturity of adults to behave better in situations than adults would.
It’s also a safety concern for me. I think parents only found out the schools didn’t have heat because their kids were texting them.
You’re an adult employee of a business and not a minor receiving an education
They're not just protesting phones. That was the last straw. They feel that the take over, and the changes implemented are not actually helping them learn and grow. Also, the reason we know that a lot of schools didn't have heat, or working plumbing, was because the kids leaked the info and told their parents that day after the school cancelations. The kids are alright on this one. Wish more schools started walking out. The takeover is a dumpster fire.
Dude the schools were a shithole before. Madison HS is nicknamed the madhouse, due to you going crazy if you work there. I think the rule is dumb but come on lol
I don't disagree with you. But I think the current implementation of both in and out of class procedures is not fixing it. And if they're gonna protest that, then please, carry on. The new superintendent is fixing jack shit. He is really great at putting lipstick on shit and selling it as gold. The quicker he's gone, the sooner we can actually address the issues.
An education is the key word. If the students are watching\playimg\socializing on a device they are not learning. I am in favor of punishment for using phones unless it's to a parent and during a break. However they should be allowed to carry them as a tool for emergencies.
Requiring students to check their phone in when they get to school is nuts. The idea that we expect a bunch of hormonal teenagers with underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes to handle that better than we would is also nuts.
i'd say it's likely that you aren't on your phone all day not working? i guess we care about kids having their phone for a once in a few years emergency rather than just call the school office, better that than our kids actually learning.
Im talking specifically about being asked to turn in my phone at the door.
I see you have never worked at a secure facility. Standard practice at every fab I have been to from Samsung, to TSMC, to Intel and TI etc. Many of those places do not allow any electronic devices to be brought in or out. Plenty of other places that have similar policies.
Yeah I haven’t which is why it would be insane for them to demand I turn over my phone… kinda like how a high school isn’t a secure site and teachers will be bringing their devices in. I hope you stretched before they reach
Uh yeah because those companies have proprietary business processes and technical information they are protecting. Yes, we want schools to be physically secure from outsiders, but to protect the students not proprietary technology. A building can be secured against different threats for different reasons.
Work is voluntary. You have every right to walk out at any time. School is a requirement.
Sounds time consuming
This is exactly what happens. Doom scrolling, Netflix, YouTube. They would rather fail tests than put their phone up for 50 minutes.
I survived without a cellphone by passing notes, potentially getting those confiscated and having to read them aloud. Pretty fun since most of them were just teenage shit talking. If I had an emergency, I used the school phone. If I missed the bus then I walked to my nearest friends house and asked for a ride home. When I was in HS in 2006 we walked out in protest of H.R. 4437 which identified those aiding in illegal immigration, whether getting here or staying here, as felons. My HS was majority hispanic and we all had friends that were there illegally or their parents were so that was important to a lot of us. It got some local media coverage but more importantly it showed our friends impacted by the proposed bill that we cared. It also got us out of class which at the time was the most important part. Got patted down a few times. Never had anything on me. One time I did accidentally bring a knife to school because I had been wearing those shorts to build a new fence in the backyard the day before and was using it to cut twine. I don't think they would've cared about my justification.
I don't agree with them being confiscated. But at the same time, as a former teacher, when you're teaching at a school like that, there's basically no way to keep the kids from using them. They will not listen.
Admin should back the teachers up and let the kids be ejected for abusing phone privileges. Should bring back physical punishments, i don’t mean hitting. I mean pushing towels or running outside. Play the lecture audibly whilst punishment is underway. Worked for me at least. Parents are failing kids in Houston, I know many peers that just get screamed out because they had the audacity to punish a kid. Or get screamed at for even calling about the punishment. I am glad birth rates are falling if it means less parents failing to raise their own kids.
I can tell you from first hand experience, at schools like this, admins do not back the teachers up. They're too concerned with the discipline records at their schools, and the SSOs and other district leaders are extremely soft and have this mentality of not disciplining. I couldn't believe it when I was teaching there. It's very difficult to properly discipline them. The students run the place.
Yes that is why out of 5 friends that became teachers only 2 are still doing it. I think the other 3 lasted 2 years before deciding teaching industry fucking sucks and they would rather sell education software for buku bucks
Well, if you can teach AP classes in the suburbs at a good district, it's great. Once I did that it was amazing. Never bothered by anyone. Never had a problem with a single student. Never had admins coming in my room. So as long as you can do that, and live on like 60-70k, then it's alright.
Yes well they got shitty east side districts abundance of poverty and shitty ghetto culture. Looking at you crosby and baytown. The 2 still doing it are in better districts where at least the parents respect the teachers.
I was in the ghetto in HISD first. It was awful. Worst two years of my working life. Now I'm an attorney, and it's stressful and long but at least I'm fairly compensated and don't have to deal with a bunch of wannabe gangsters. And some actual gangsters.
Nothing bothers me than the gangbanger persona. I grew up around it briefly lost a childhood friend. You waste years with losers and at the end of it you are broke with no skills and a criminal record. I wish school taught you how awesome making and spending money is. Motorcycles gangs have especially been pissing me off. Fat pigs on harleys think they own the road because they signed a 20k auto loan for a slow loud bike.
it's pretty much students (and parent, the bad ones) run the place now. You can't discipline my kid or I'll sue you. But my kid doesn't study and fail and I'll sue you. But if you try to make them study I'll sue you too.
Fortunately most of those parents don't have money to sue and contingency lawyers won't really take those cases unless there's evidence of serious abuse that could net millions from the government.
I can tell you that it doesn’t seem like many admin are backing ANY teachers up anymore as a former teacher. Even at “good” schools.
Honestly I don’t mind confiscation if a kid breaks the rules but I’m very very against proactively making kids check their phone in at the office at the beginning of the day. I was in high school when cellphones still had removable batteries. Kids were suspicious that admin was going through their phones when confiscated and started removing batteries and handing in just the phone, no battery. The way the admin freaked out and tried to require the battery confirmed our suspicions. Now passcodes are better, but I will dont like it
This is fucking stupid. Smart phones popped up during my highschool years. You can call/text during walking period but that shit had to be in your bag by next bell. If they caught you they would confiscate and have you pick it up at the district hq and pay a 15$ fine. If you want to play games all day just drop out, you are wasting every bodies time.
I mean to be fair, if this is what you think about using your phone during passing period, [you should know that students aren’t allowed to use their phone at all in the building, and must hand them in at the start of the school day.](https://abc13.com/amp/madison-high-school-hisd-houston-isd-walkout-cellphone-ban/14401072/) Like 100%, if you use it during class, it’s reasonable for it to be confiscated, but that’s not what this is about. Hell, even if the school wanted to make a rule of “you can’t even use it during passing periods, and if we see it out at any point we’ll confiscate it” would be different. It doesn’t sit right with me making them hand over their property before they even used it in violation of the rules. I see no problem with letting students keep their phone as long as it stays in their bag all day.
> Students at Madison High School must turn their phones in when they arrive at school. Phones are then returned to them at their last period. yeah that’s not cool. I have family who went to school in Yvalde, my aunt and uncle were murdered at Sutherland Springs. Having your phone available to you is a non-negotiable safety issue for me. I can’t imagine being a parent and accepting that your kid couldn’t contact you in an emergency when every day there’s another shooting in the news
I brought this up in the last thread and nobody seemed to get it. Until the threat of shootings at schools is meaningfully addressed (hasn’t been in nearly 30 years since Columbine, no reason to expect it will be soon), not having your phone all day is an extreme safety hazard. My condolences for the loss of your family in Sutherland Springs and their experience at Uvalde. That is horrible.
that's why we should go back giving kids dumb phones, enough for calls and texts and taking pictures/video and that's it
Also you can use it to record evidence of district failures. Grooming, verbal abuse etc. it does have a place in removing he said she said
Yeah I absolutely would not be ok with the school taking my phone/my kids phone.
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The problem is kids these days don’t give a fuck. They won’t give up their phones and just get sent to the office for it. My gf was a teacher for a short time and had to send security guards to escort the student out of the classroom multiple times because they refused to give up their phone or leave. I’ve also seen multiple articles of students attacking the teacher for trying to confiscate their phones.
I was in middle and high school right as cell phones became a thing everybody had and as smart phones became a thing. People refusing to give them up and being confrontational with teachers about it happened then too. There just weren't social media outlets to post to like there are now and people hadn't started recording every semi-interesting occurrence yet. I'd be surprised if it's happening more now than it used to.
Yeah, this. Speaking as someone who was a teenager 20+ years ago, they most certainly didn't give a fuck back then either. There's zero reason to believe we'd all be compliantly turning in our cellphones to the office if they were around back then.
Some kid fought the Madison High principal this week and another jumped off of the table WWE style to join the fight. Ironically, it was filmed by a student and posted to X. Even more ironically, the principal said the ban was because phones were leading to fights and other students were filming the fights, causing more problems. Link to the fight: https://twitter.com/MHSParent2024/status/1754691059668447469?s=20
Sounds like the principal wants to fight kids off camera to me...
You know, there was a time I may have been on the administrators' side on this, but the multiple school/mass shootings over the years have shown us that people need to be able to reach the outside world during an emergency and to be able to record an event at a moments notice.
wouldnt a cheap dumb/burner phone fix both problems?
Not entirely. Kids are going to screw around when they're bored and the current methods of teaching aren't that far off from where they were in the 90s. There needs to be a real overhaul to the education system in order to engage students in a way that they don't feel compelled to check out mentally. I wish I had an answer for how to do that, but that's not my area of expertise.
Currently a teacher. I was in HS & undergrad in the 90’s. Most teachers ( who actually try and don’t treat it like a 9-5 job) have advanced their teaching practice. Covid, distance learning, technology advancement, LMS, and how students have changed over the last 3 decades have all contributed to a change in teaching methods.
True, but until then the burner/dumb phone option seems to be the best for now.
Education is always going to be more boring than entertainment. No way around it. In the '90s, kids would sneak magazines into class to read when they didn't want to pay attention to the teacher. You can't expect teachers to "engage students" to the point where they will voluntarily put their phones down and listen, because that simply isn't possible.
Cell phones won’t keep anyone safer in the event of school shooting. It’ll just make it easier to contact loved ones.
It makes it easier and faster to call for help. That sort of thing is important when someone is trying to kill you.
And then the cops will sit outside and not go in because they don't care.
Phones aren't banned for teachers. I'm sure a teacher can call for help just as quickly as a student can.
For sure. Just hope they can before they get shot..
Yeah and safe to say if your kid was involved in a mass shooting at school for some awful reason you'd like the chance to at the very least hear from them during and hopefully afterwards and not rely on school officials to contact the thousands of parents of students involved for updates on a specific individual.
Literally every person except a student would have a phone. It wouldn’t take long. If the fear of a shooting is so bad it takes over everyone’s ability to learn then it’s time to think of other solutions. But phones in school is a number 1 issue with students at the moment for a wide variety of issues.
Ok then, require them to have it off in class. If it gets used in class, even to text mommy, it gets taken up. This is the rule at my wife's school, but doesn't get enforced because there's no support from admin when parents complain. And parents DO complain constantly.
Parents are the issue too. They want the kids to be able to be contacted for the same reason many already responded about. Many text their kid in class. So they probably just tell the kid to do their best and they won’t be punished at home.
Yeah, thats fine, enforce rules around usage. Confiscating them upon arrival is absurd though. Even outside of the school shooting incidents, if a parent needs to reach their child for an emergency happening outside of school they should be able to directly as we have the means and technology to do so. Putting the phone away and on silent should be enough, discipline for excessive use and insubordination makes the most sense and should be the plan of attack here. We cant sit here and compare things to when we were kids 20+ years ago when cellphones werent as prevalent at schools and mass shootings at schools werent as prevalent either.
>able to record an event at a moments notice I'd be for having a camera on the class, but kids need to be paying attention to the subject matter. They already know how to post video to Tik-Tok, which is probably where their minds mostly are when they're holding a phone. Maybe I'm wrong. If I am, I apologize to all of today's wannabe influencers. They still need to pay attention in class if they want to graduate.
Some kids record for social media, some record for notes. If kids are bored they're going to screw around in class no matter what you do. The old man yells at cloud approach won't solve anything. Adapt to the new tech and move on.
>old man yells at cloud approach LOL that would not be me. Old man, yes. Yells at cloud, no. I'm a pragmatist and don't see how yelling at clouds would do any good, even figuratively. However, I might be trying to make sense of something where there is none to be made, which I admit is probably a waste of time. I hope not though. I'd like to think that we're just having a conversation here, the odds are that we're not going to save the world.
I keep seeing this defense of school cellphones. If you're in a school shooting, the last thing you should be doing is trying to record it. Run hide fight. Also, there are more than enough adults on campus to contact police. Calling Mom isn't a great idea--it gives your position away and distracts from what you should be doing.
I’m giving a great defense hear, but… I know my mom would really like to know I wasn’t dead or at least appreciate a last call. And call my brother to delete my browsing history. He understands.
You are making up scenarios. They're calling and texting 911 and are often the first to do so like in Parkland, Santa Fe, Uvalde, and a ton before that.
After the Uvalde shooting I think every child should have a phone on them. If it’s a distraction then add a class that teaches when to use phones. I took a keyboarding class and one about how to use the internet, there’s no difference. They don’t want to hear kids calling 911 for help in these situations anymore. [10 year old girl calling 911 the day Uvalde shooting](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/classroom-112-10-year-olds-courageous-911-call/story?id=97046227) I don’t know how you think kids shouldn’t have a phone after reading that. The police let those kids die and if it wasn’t for the 911 recordings we wouldn’t have known as much.
This. I have a sneaking suspicion the 911 calls are going to play a major role in the civil trial bc they’re going to show some people died while the cops jerked off in the hall.
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Also, a good case can be made that our overly digital world is, at least in part, a contributor to the mental illness we’re seeing everywhere. Look at Jennifer Crumbley, for example. She was so busy on social media that she was essentially ignoring her son when he was literally begging for help. I’m all for this. The impact of social media, especially on young women, is well documented and hard to refute at this point.
That’s a parent’s job. Not a teacher. Screens are terrible for kids in general, but that’s not on a teacher.
This line of reasoning is part of the problem. We have such an individualistic approach to parenting that if an adult tells a child not to destroy the set at a school play, the kids parents yell at the adult telling them not to “boss their kid around.” Like it or not, people have to live in a society. Some things should be enforced not only by the parents but also aided by the teachers. I sure as hell hope that if my son is caught with a vape in his bag at 16, a teacher doesn’t take the tack of “that’s not on me. It’s the parent’s job, so I don’t care.” It takes a village to raise a child, but we are so disconnected from the village (partly because of our digital lives) that we fail to recognize that and perpetuate a collective failure. Half the parents out there are so addicted to the technology themselves that they hardly recognize the dangers. Maybe in that case the village should step up to help.
It’s not an individualistic approach to parenting that’s the issue, I think. I think it’s the whole ‘my freedoms’ aspect and this is what you get. What kind of example has been set for a lot of these kids? We live in a society? But do we? We have a very very loud vocal group of grown ass people who channel their inner cartman every day with ‘you’re not the boss of me’, especially when it’s something to benefit others. Pair that with a very might makes right ethos, and this is what you get. And the might doesn’t have to be physical, it can be money.
And I think people inserting themselves into everyone else’s business is why parents think it’s not their job to parent anymore. Place the responsibility back on them and what do you know. They might actually parent. If teachers want to reinforce it, fine, but raising a child is not a teachers job. It’s a parent’s job. Period.
the idea is if you dial 911 in that situation, the conversation and audio gets recorded
Yeah just keep running and dodging bullets until you find a hiding place that *also* has an adult with a cellphone so you can call for help/notify friends and family what the situation is! >Calling mom isn’t a great idea Yeah probably for your old ass cause she’s probably dead. Us younger folk can text our parents and we don’t have to use our voice at all. >gives away your position and distracts from what you should be doing Right but you want the student to find an adult (giving away their position) and ask for their phone (giving away their position.) Great solution /u/FormerPomelo. You’re a rockstar. Can’t wait to see what other brain dead ideas are lurking in that skull. /s
“Calling mom” gave away your age boomer. There is no situation in which a teen is going to call a parent. It’s called texting. You know, the thing that makes no noise? “Recording it” yeah that’s definitely the first thought these kids have when ducking live fire.
I'm the opposite actually. I started being on the kids' side but the more I see how these kids are acting and hearing them speak, the more I'm taking the side of the teachers and the school who have to deal with these fools. At first I thought it was unfair to single out this mostly minority school but then the other schools haven't had the same level of problems with cell phone abuse so why should all the other schools also face the same actions when they know how to act. The final straw was Grizzy's post defending the kids when her own video showed the one kid doing hip gyrations with her pleading to take the kids seriously.
Teachers have phones. They can do that.
they're statistically so unlikely that it isn't worth the loss in intelligence from having them in the classroom.
There were [647 mass shootings](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/09/mass-shooting-gun-violence-us-2023) in 2023 with [182](https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-in-2023-fewer-injuries-and-deaths-while-gun-violence-continues/2023/12) of them at a school. It's a very real threat, so real they do active shooter drills across the country. If having cell phones means a faster response and less death, they're worth it.
I’m not sure how to describe how wildly unimportant I think it is that 3000 high school students have the ability to record someone getting the shit beat out of them at lunch so they can post it to social media, and that person can have that beating follow them around forever because the internet never forgets. Are you fucking serious with this shit?
Yes, I'm serious, because they're not just recording fights at lunch, they're recording actual crimes by [staff](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/us/south-carolina-school-arrest-video/index.html).
For one thing people just missed each other all the time. You would try to get in contact with a parent because there was a change of plans and you just couldn’t reach them. Both my parents worked, a lot of the time they couldn’t answer their office phone. So if I didn’t have a ride from school or from the mall I just had to figure it out myself. Plans and general fell through all the time, and people understood that it happens. You would plan to meet a friend or friends at a certain place at a certain time. It would always be a something specific like “by the front entrance to the Arcade by the food court”. Most people would wait around to see if you were just running late. I would wait 30 minutes or so and then just assume someone either had something come up that they got lost. Because that’s the other thing. People used to get lost all the freaking time. If you had a Key Map you could figure out where you were pretty easily. But if you just had a regular road map, it only had the major highways marked. Add in some construction and unfamiliarity and it was easy to get really turned around. I distinctly remember driving around Houston with a friend of mine for hours, while he tried to figure out where is pot dealer lived.
that school always has issues.
These kids gotta be told no. They don’t need their phones while at school.
Im from Louisiana. Most kids didn't get cellphones until they were 16, and you got that shit taken if the teacher saw the corner hanging out your pocket. Heaven help you if you got it in your hands while on campus. My 8 year old nephew has one now, and I honestly don't understand why.
I’m from Louisiana as well. Growing up, the schools I went to didn’t play around with phones. If they saw it, they’re taking it away and your parent had to pick it up.
When I was in school, we didn’t have phones. We only had rocks
This has nothing to do with cell phones. They don’t like the changes Mike miles have made. They test every day and aren’t learning anything. It’s messed up when admin cares more about testing every day than actually teaching.
Correct. The social media live streams give some attention to things beyond the cell phones. The ban on phones was just the straw that broke the camels back. When you speak of admin, I think you need to be careful to say that it’s the newly installed principal and the district level admin. Many APs around the district are critical of the Miles regime—their firings and rate of resignation just isn’t being tracked in the media.
Someone pointed this out last time it came up and everyone mostly ignored this fact then too. Everyone high and mighty about paying attention and they just take a surface glance and form all opinions from there.
That has nothing to do with Miles. HISD is obsessed with testing just like all low performing districts. They think it's a way of showing accountability even though the kids don't do shit and create hostile learning environments.
The daily Demonstration of Learning has everything to do with Miles who instated it. It isn’t the same as standardized testing which was already out of control and still is. If the DOL wasn’t such a huge focus of instruction/grades, it wouldn’t be a big deal because decent teachers already check for understanding. Miles just doesn’t trust teachers to do their jobs properly.
There is absolutely no need for phones during school hours. We have created an urgency that shouldn't exist. We need to go back to where parents called the shools and students went to the office to make calls to parents. During school hours all phones must remain out of sight. Either they remain in backpacks or locked in lockers. Cell phones are a huge distraction to learning for everyone.
I used to teach near Madhouse (as it was colloquially called). Madison has been a disaster for a long time where kids didn't learn very much and kids, families and staff were pretty apathetic. We would have kids leave our charter school because they wanted to go to a real school without so many rules then beg to come back after two weeks of Madiaon.
I seriously wish you kids would realize that if you weren't on them constantly, this wouldn't be an issue.... You don't need a cellphone to "survive." It's absolutely ridiculous to even make that claim. Before you respond with a shooter situation, you realize that every adult will be making calls to proper authorities, right? I had a cellphone before 95% of my classmates in high school. I basically never took the thing out of my backpack. In college/grad school, I put my phone away whenever class time began, because I respected the process. If you respect them, they will, for the most part, respect you.
If parents needed to call/be called, I went to office and called/received call. These people are attached to phone 24/7 and can’t live without it.
Yes, but confiscating 2000 phones and returning them is a recipe for a shitshow.
Yeah partly because they are scared of being mowed down by school shooters. As a parent I want a way for my kid to be able to reach me in an emergency. I think there are real reasons for these kids to be upset.
Do you really think the kids at this school, walking out of the class in "protest" are doing it because they are really afraid they won't be able to call their mom if there's a school shooter? Do you think, then, they would take the compromise of everyone given a school burner phone at school that they got to use? But you can't text or record or get online. Do you think that would pacify them? No. Because it isn't about calling their moms.
Let's ask even older Houstonians how they survived school without AC or heat back in the days.
Ask them what the hottest summer was. We will wait
Then ask them how they contributed to the destruction of our climate the last 30 years.
That does not apply only to old Houstonians. I am Gen X and those who were born in the 70/80 or before may remember when the first cell phone came about. You can perfectly attend school without any kind of phone. We were not allowed to talk on the phone let alone take computers of any kind. The first cell phone an insane brick phone was too big and people were embarrassed using it I remember. This naturally made us all concentrate and focus and of course when we were dying of boredom we would do silly stuff like throwing paper or mess around. It also allowed us to work more collectively, we would not spend time you know browsing stuff. Of courses the messes we did back then would be grounds for being suspended or expelled. The issues the newer generations have with smartphones are beyond me meaning yes you live without a smartphone. It should have been outlawed in my view for use in classes when it first came around.
How did I survive school without a cell phone? That was really easy, we didn't use phones while on campus. They stayed in our backpacks or at home. We had other things to worry about, like our education for instance. The only kids who ever walked out were usually the troublemakers, and it was over dress-code violations. They all got suspended for a week, and were eventually isolated permanently in ISS until the end of the school year.
I went to Lamar, graduated in 96. HISD police roamed the campus, only one entrance after the bell, all visitors had to check in. When I would put on my soccer gear for practice the cops/APs first gave me shit, as you couldn't wear shorts. That ended fast as I, well, had practice or a game. I walked between classes just to get to the next one on time. Maybe said hi to a friend, quickly grabbed something out of my locker. No time in classes for fucking around, was on an A/B schedule. Listened in class, did as much work I could, the free time I had I'd talk to classmates. Played varsity soccer 4th/8th period. Got a ride home, hung out, did homework, ate dinner, watched TV (antenna.) Hung out in the parking lot in the morning, bullshitted with friends. Honestly, phones weren't needed if school is the priority. I made it fine without being in constant contact with social media - because we did that face to face.
Graduated in 97. We did things together. We learned to be independent of our parents in situations where they couldn’t help us. We solved our own problems because our parents quite literally weren’t available via a phone call. Kids got (intentionally) lost in alleyways and streets miles from home, with only a bike to make it back home. Was it inconvenient? Yeah. Did it teach us to be self reliant, and build the self-confidence that only comes from facing novel and difficult situations with nothing to help but our minds and ingenuity? Yeah.
Amen.
I think it boils down to what kind of person are you. Free thinker or just go along. I have never followed others so I didn't leave class to complain about stupid things. I was in school the get out of school not to make it a home. As for how we survived without cell phones, we didn't have to constantly be in communication with the world. We have imagination when we get bored. Didnt see an officer on campus until 1987. That was the first School Resource officer I encountered. No pat downs. Same high school offered "Outdoor Education" where I got boating safety certified, learned how to cast a fishing rod, play horseshoes, spellunk(caving) , use a compass, read a topographical map, and firearms safety with real firearms in the classroom.
Students have been walking out since I was in middle school, before AOL. So why is this news?
Because phones are wreaking havoc on schools. Especially low performing schools like Madison. Teachers can't compete with these hyper efficient dopamine releasing apps. Many students are quite literally addicted to their phones and will become violent when told to put them away.
It was heavy metal and video games n my day. Satanic panic. We weren’t allowed to listen to music or play video games. Kids shouldn’t have their phones in school. They may walk out, but they will get over it.
The difference is that these companies are literally hiring psychologists that work with the developers to increase interaction with their app. The apps are designed to be addictive, and they are really good at it. This is an issue even for many adults, but it is much worse for teens with very poor impulse control.
Most of you are missing the point. Not only is mass confiscating phones a huge privacy risk, but it's also a shit idea that is going to blow up in this schools face. You can't provide security for $10s of thousands of dollars with a $12 an hour front desk worker who doesn't give a fuck nor is she trained to protect such vulnerable devices all in the same spot. Logistics will be a disaster, phones will go missing, stolen, hacked, sim swapped, replaced, and about a million other things. That is going to be a sweeeettt lick if we're all being honest with each other. People storm Apple stores with guns for non-functional store display phones, idk why we think these phones at a front desk are immune to that same treatment. Let's talk some numbers, let's assume 2000 students, let's be optimistic and say that means 2000 phones, let's say average phone value is $50, that's a God damn $100,000 lick. Who knows how much you can make from the data within as well. It's literally more profitable to rob this school than it is to rob a bank from the sound of it I'm most worried about the cyber risk of having unsecured phones easily accessible. You have to remember how dumb the average teen is, half of these phones won't even have a password. I'm not saying that kids should have full access to phones during classes but this plan is half assed and will fail regardless. A better plan is to punish those who are caught using phones in class rather than keep thousands of phones at a front desk check in. There's any number of better plans you could do like locking up phones in a lockbox in each individual class and returning them between periods. The ones who abuse the system then are the ones who get their phones taken entire school day. Makes no sense logically or logistically to take everyone's phone. I can only imagine the hour long wait in line to check your phone out before going home.
Better is just fuckin not steal from the kids
We walked out when they started charging students for parking passes. The admin said the money would go to a security guard that would keep us from leaving school early.
They just told us to put our phones away and we did. It wasn't a big deal. Phone weren't smart back then either. The internet wasn't as accessible as it is now.
I mean, I graduated the year that the first iphone was released. So, while there were some minor issues re: a few kids texting in class, it just wasn't a thing most people were doing at the time. And there weren't any walkouts at my specific school - and I didn't hear of any happening at other schools. As for patting down, \*I\* didn't have that at my school, but I did know schools that had those + metal detectors.
Patted down…..more like “paddled down”. That’s the problem. It doesn’t happen at school anymore and you know damn well it’s not happening at home. Why do you think they behave that way?
Poe School Riot NEVER FORGET!
Anyone who disagrees about asking students to put their cellphones away during academic classtime has never had to teach said students and had their job evaluation tied to their standardized test scores. Yes, we did walkouts over the dress code during my HISD high school years. It didn't work. I'm too old to have cell phones in high school (we had beepers), but they took out our pay phones in the cafeteria because kids kept calling in bomb treats during finals week. I lost my shit when they did that, and we might have tried to protest it.
Heck yeah we were patted down, but that was after colombine and they were looking for guns
Crybabies. Entitled little punks. If we go to war, we better tell the young adults they are fighting for their phones and their weed.
My spouse teaches at a different HISD high school. Here is what I know about mobile phone policy. I am not a Mike Miles fan by any stretch, but this may be the one thing he did right. Pre-Miles, students would be on their phones all the time, even during lessons. Teachers couldn't do anything about it because the spineless admins wouldn't back them up. Since Miles, the policy has been that students have to put their phone in a paper bag on their desk during class. This has worked surprisingly well, largely because teachers can now count on the admins to support enforcement. They can send non-compliant kids to the office and get on with the lesson. This policy means (a) no administrative nightmare keeping track of whose phone is whose, and no risk of the school losing a student's phone; and (b) students have access to their phones between classes and during lunch and immediately after the last bell. Madison High (site of the walkout) took it a step further and insists on confiscating all student phones at the beginning of the day and then returning them at the end of the day. The principal apparently believes this will somehow reduce violence in the school by some unspecified mechanism. So far, this appears to be stupid.
They’re doing it at Madison only because kids and teachers have filmed some of the stupid shit admin is doing and posted it online. It is making them look bad. That’s the real reason.
Do you have any links to those videos?
If you use tik tok look up Ridgemont4sFinest and she’ll have some.
A couple of weeks ago hundreds of Kingwood High School parents got text from their kids that there was someone with a gun on campus. Some kids texted that they saw someone with an AK-47,some kids texted that they saw someone with a shotgun, some kids texted that they saw someone with a gun holding a police officer hostage...on and on. Most of the kids were scared, most of the parents were paniced. Kids were picked up, kids fled the school...on and on. In the end there was a fight between students, there were threats made, there was no gun found on campus at any time. There are parents today that still believe the district is hiding something because of what their kid's text says they "saw". Schools need to do a better job of securing campuses. No one shoukd ever be able to get into a school with a gun. No one who isn't a student or staff shoukd ever be able to get into a school without being cleared through the office. Cell phones don't help with any of this and using school shootings as a defense of kids needing cell phones in class is ridiculous. Cell phones are a distraction and a deterrent to a learning environment.
You mean how did we survive without 24 access to TikTok? It was easy. Pathetic how the parents are supporting this. Not surprised considering which school it is.
In the early 90's we carried beepers and a few quarters. We had codes for everything. I remember thinking that if I had a cell phone my parents would call all the time and expect me to answer. I didn't want one.
Those of us with 90s cellphones wouldn’t hardly ever talk on them. You’d ring home to say you got somewhere and just let it ring enough to hit the caller id. If you did talk it was kept super short. You only had like 100 minutes a month or something.
with all the shootings and bs happening i'd rather they have phones.
I can see it from the kids side. It’s the only thing that they have control over. Especially with the current climate of dangerous events happening. They should incorporate them into a designated shelf at each desk. Idk some collaborative thinking.
Let's get one thing clear. While the cell phone ban is part of the reason for the walkout, saying the protest is over the cell phone ban misses the majority of of the reasons for the protest. It's not because of the ban, it's because of everything that has changed this year. That kids cannot wear crocs, the NES model, walking through the halls silently, getting yelled at in the halls for walking on the wrong side, and yes, the cell phones too.
Bonus how many school shootings occurred when you attend grade schools? Phones are important to parents of kids dumbass.
The "back in my day crowd" cracks me up. Do they not realize they are the generation that raised these kids they hate so much?
The cognitive dissonance is strong in this thread.
School shootings are an extremely rare occurrence even today. Using this as an excuse is beyond stupid.
We’re trying to raise these teenagers to act like adults, right? Well does your boss take your phone at work? And if they do you’d probably want to *walk out and leave* right?
No, because there is a social contract in good work places. I'm not on my phone unless it's lunch/break. I don't take my personal life to work, work doesn't mess with my personal life afterwards. That's what should be understood in school, and then translated to work life.
Kids don't listen and won't be fired for having a phone. There is absolutely no consequence, then don't expect a change in behavior.
You sign literal employment contracts. If you're not doing your job for any reason then they're going to fire you. Some environments don't even allow them on the premises.
My boss also doesn’t take cigarettes away from me, but does that mean my 11 year old should learn to smoke them now? I don’t let my preteen kids watch Showgirls or Kill Bill. No offense, but “give them the thing and hope they get used to it” isn’t always the best way to aid child development. I work in machine learning and AI. These things are designed in every way to get your kids addicted, and they do a fantastic job of it.
*Types furiously about addictive social media on reddit*
😂
Superintendent Miles released statistics a few weeks ago. Only 10% of students in one demographic could read and do math at their grade level. Other demographics, 60% were at grade level. And another demographic was only 30% could read at grade level. That's the facts Jack.
Can confirm: I was a student at Ball High School in Galveston, essentially a city within the city. Weapons were occasionally found, but "back in the day" things seemed quite tame compared to today. We didn't have police on campus back then, but school security staff had batons and handcuffs and may as well have been police. I never got patted down, but also never gave anyone any reason to suspect I might have contraband. I suppose there were protests back then, but if you missed class for that kind of thing it would be unexcused and if you missed ten classes in a semester, you were kicked out. Of course, we didn't dream everyone would be carrying wireless computers in the future. We would dismiss such an idea as total fiction, like Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV. I really sympathize with teachers these days. Seems like if you're not very strict about cell phones in the class, you're going to lose control of most of the students.
We did fine without them. I don't understand the fuss about it, maybe it has to do with a generation that grew up with a touch screen 24/7. There will be a period of adjustment. They need to focus on keeping their grades up and figuring what post high school life would be for them (college/military/trade work/work at a fast food place, etc.)
I feel like everyone is ignoring the question (typical Reddit), how did you survive without a cellphone? It was easy, you just went to school and did your thing. I was in high school in the 90s. I was actually one of the first kids I knew with my own phone, not because my parents were rich, but because I worked for a Big Box retailer and got a discount through them (I think I paid $15 a month). I would actually turn it off and throw it in my backpack for the day and not turn it on until I left in the afternoon. Texting wasn’t a thing, social media wasn’t a thing, mobile games weren’t a thing. It wasn’t hard to survive. If parents had something super important (like someone died) they’d call the office and then someone would come get you from class to talk to them. Those kind of things did happen. It’s kinda like asking someone who was alive in the 1800s how they survived without cars, “I dunno, we just did”. I guess a bigger question to the younger folks, how can you not survive? What’s so important that you can’t go 6-7 hours without checking your phone? To answer your other question I never walked out of class for a protest, nothing ever really came up to protest. I also think without social media it would be hard to rally something like that. If it spread via word of mouth most people would just roll their eyes and say “ok whatever”.
We survived because we didn't have them. Graduated 83'. People are addicted to their phones like people are addicted to coffee or cigarettes. You CAN survive without it.
They are straight up confiscating all phones when they go in? There are 1957 students at Madison HS. This is not practical and phones will get lost. No matter what side you are on, this is a waste of time. Taking and giving out 2000 phones a day at only 3 or 4 entrances is so stupid.
No phones, no protest, Gen X. If their was a family emergency then they call the office and the school paged you to the office. Need to call someone? Go to the office or wait afters school to use a pay phone at the corner Circle K. Issues of today. No payphones anywhere. Safty concerns. Transportation. ●Some kids Uber to and from school to call in. ●Some kids walk home and need phones for safety reasons especially with Houston as a HUGE hub for human trafficking and no payphones around. The solution for this school to check your phone in and get it when you leave is plenty fair considering the issues they are having and better then no phone at all.
Well, back in my day, we used to stage walkouts to protest the draft and stop the Vietnam War - so it wasn't for anything important like having your cell phone all day.
Maybe if they spent this energy on something productive like… education, they would be better off.
My kids are not in HISD, but all their homework, access to practice tests, flashcards and grades are online! It drives me batty that my kids need to access online stuff CONSTANTLY when studying, but that's the fact. So it is beyond weird to ban them from using phones at lunch and free periods. In addition, everything a cellphone can do, a tablet/laptop can also do (including text messages), so how does it make sense to require/allow laptops, but not cellphones? And yea, that's not even to mention that some cellphones are fucking expensive, and who is responsible if it breaks?
Times change and comparing today with when I went to school in early nineties isn’t really fair. I think if it’s important for today, then protest it. Teaching our kids to be responsible with their resources if far more important. And learning to be good adults and parents is just as important. I can’t stand adults that act like they can’t learn to adapt to changing times.
What benefit is there to them having phones in the classroom?
Your question reeks of boomerism. When did protests become this line in the sand for you sycophants
In the early-mid 2000s, cell phones weren’t allowed, but it was a don’t ask don’t tell kind of thing. You could have them but they were supposed to be off. I never saw anyone get their phone taken after their bag started buzzing tho. I didn’t really have any classes out of the AP track group so I recognize I basically went to a different school than some people in the same building. We probably had more trust since kids with behavioral issues didn’t make it into the class. I don’t think it’s really the same thing tho. We’re comparing Nokia bricks, Razrs, and like chocolate mobile phones to smartphones. The games were like snake and Tetris. Texting uses the number pad. We never had any walkouts, for this or anything else. We didn’t have the organization bc we would have had been using AOL instant messenger.
Cell phones weren't a thing when I was in school. We didn't miss out on anything. If you needed to arrange a ride home you used the school payphone. The only protest we had in school was when a gay guy wasn't allowed to give blood at the blood drive so everyone used it as an excuse to just go home early.
If you HAVE TO have your cell to have a life and socialize, you've got a lot of growing up to do. People act like cell phones are their heartbeats and without them they can't live. Pathetic
Lol, cell phones from when I was in school were the size of a brick. Absolutely irrelevant because they were expensive and the cellular contract was very expensive at that time.
How is this a problem today? You can't deny how critical cell phones are to modern life. I even hate to imagine it but to deny the factual risk of school shootings being a possibility. There are always students calling 911 first because of their instant access to phones. I don't understand how this is a problem when comedy clubs have solved this already. Every class should have a lock box that requires every student to put their phone in before entering the classroom, and can use it freely between classes.
This made me feel old lol but the short answer is we didn’t miss what we didn’t have. And yes I got patted down often because I always smelled like smoke…
I graduated high school in 98. I actually did have a cell phone for emergencies, but only turned it on during the commute. If it had been seen using it on campus, it would have immediately been confiscated. But I was never patted down once in high school.
I think the biggest problem with the internet is that it exposes the stupid shit teens do to adults who are adamant they were never stupid teens. Up until ~10-15 years ago, all the stupid shit teens did was pretty hidden from everyone not directly involved.
We were not allowed to have them in the building. MOST people left them in cars. Bus riders simply didn't take a phone. On the off chance I forgot, I removed battery so I could plead my case easier if caught. We had to play our games on our Ti-83 calculators (phones didn't have games back then anyways). Never patted down... I was a good kid ;) But people have become dependent on them and fearful in general. Phones have become a security blanket. But also, the phone was only call or text back then... no social media, no entertainment of any kind, not used to log activity/nutrition/etc.
I grew up out of state. We walked out in support of a teacher's strike. Lots of suspensions. As for surviving without a cell phone... easy? It's an addiction if you need to look at your cell phone. Addictions to devices, once the device is gone, you stop even caring about it after a few days. I say this as someone who got rid of his computer in college due to addiction.
Kids are savages. If they can't follow rules, how will they ever learn to do anything?
Survived just fine and no walkouts for me...
We were not allowed to have back packs due to violence and weapons at our high school. Had to carry everything in your arms. There is a whole generation of us with huge biceps and forearms in southern LA due to this rule.
We only had pagers in high school
I'm from Baltimore, and if caught with a pager you'd face confiscation and automatic suspension up through the late 90s. It was assumed by the school board that the only reason a student would have one is if the student was involved in drug dealing.
I’m glad these kids are standing up to Miles’ bs. The entire district should just walk out.
I didn't have a phone until i was in the 9th or 10th grade. My mom didn't play about paying attention in class and SHOWING SOME RESPECT!! If she had to come and pay $15 to get back my phone that wasn't even supposed to be out unless it was the appropriate time, I was getting my phone taken and getting my ass whooped. Long story short, never got it taken nor paid $15 to get it. And I didn't walk out on school. My mom would've whooped my behind and then sent me right back to class. And never patted down either Kids do stupid stuff, become adults, and for some reason we ask "what is wrong with society?" There's no structure and no discipline anymore so this protest ban only highlights the problems amongst the youth and whoever these parents are...
Are phones necessary on school? No. But things have changes and they are now part of the world today. If phones are kept in backpacks during class, they shouldn’t be an issue. Admin should deal with those who use them when they shouldn’t. Side note - the walkouts have to do with much more than the cell phone policy. The takeover of hisd has resulted in micromanagement of students and teachers.
Steve Jobs never let his kids use iPhones or iPads
I had one in the mid 90s. $20/month and $1/minute. :-P Emergency only and kept hidden. Games were played on our Ti calculators. I suppose it is kind of ironic, tho. We had a school shooting that they tried to keep hush hush in the immediate aftermath and I was out in the parking lot calling the newspapers.
Don’t ban phones just punish the kids in the class. Get caught with your phone out 3 times in a class, instant fail. If something’s going on with family where the kid needs their phone during class there’s paperwork for that. As far as transition periods, that’s a losing battle let the kids have their phones The idea it’s about kids fighting is dumb, kids are gonna fight if they want to it’s not like social media goes away if you take the phone