Servite High School in Anaheim has gotten a jump on a state bill Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign into law that would limit or prohibit smartphones at all public schools during the school day.
When students at the all-boys Catholic high school in Anaheim reported to the first day of classes on Aug. 12, they did so without packing their latest iPhone, Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy devices.
“Overall, I approve of the no-phone policy even though it has obvious cons,” said Servite student ambassador Michael Ghebrial, Class of 2026. “I feel as if my friends are more present unlike before, where they’d be scrolling through social media and show each other random videos occasionally.”
Because of the new policy, Michael has gone “old school.”
He now carries a notepad in his pocket to keep a to-do list and to write down stuff he needs to tell his parents and siblings that he can’t text while at school.
The new Servite policy followed a summer reading assignment faculty and staff did of Jonathon Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, which details how smartphones and other devices are leading to an increase in youth mental illness….
From OC Catholic
It’s about time some school, of any type…religious, private, public, etc….got on track with this. Excellent development. We must “digitally detox” the schoolroom environment.
Phones are valuable learning devices. There are some lessons that require interactivity via phones such as responding to questions with real-time results from the class displayed on the classroom projection screen.
Teach students to use their phones wisely and responsibly instead of banning them.
Leftists want to ban guns instead of teaching people how to use them wisely and responsibly. Leftists also apparently want to ban phones.
All the kids are cheating by asking ChatGPT to do their homework for them anyway. If you think students have been dumbed down over the past two decades, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
This is disingenuous. Servite issues laptop computers to all students, and those computers are used every day, all day long in classrooms instead of textbooks and written notes. Servite is not cutting down on screen time by prohibiting cell phones. Whatever content students could view on a phone, they can still view on their laptops. There are apps for connecting their phones to the computers so they can text using a computer instead of a phone.
This is virtue signaling. Why don’t they abandon the school-issued computer program and go back to paper and pencil?
School administrators must think parents are dumb to promote this “ban” as some great leap forward.
Unlike phones, laptops connect to a monitored WiFi network. If there were any content that needed to be prevented from view (and even public schools do it), Servite would do it, especially since they issue them. Phones connect to a data network plus text, which ruins that ability to control what students can see. Plus, the world connects on laptops– even North Korea uses computers now, on limited basis. Servite’s doing a great thing. It’s a bit of pearl-clutching to make this comment, especially if you don’t actually know how schools issue technology.
I would hate to have to wear that uniform to school every day. Looks very uncomfortable.
There’s far too much technology in schools today yet the illiteracy rate is much higher too than it was in the past. When I was younger there was no such thing as cell phones in a class. Let’s get back to the good old days and learn arithmetic, writing and spelling.