To be annoyed by total phone ban

[TeleGardenGnome]

My child's school which is a busy city location has a total phone ban. So you aren't allowed to take any type of phone to school at all even if it stays hidden in a bag and is on silent and never used. They do bag searches and use metal detectors to find students breaking the rules.

If your child's phone is found they get a detention and you can only get it back by visiting the school in person.

So yesterday my child's phone was found in a bag search and removed. There were awful transport issues and it took them several hours to get home. In the meanwhile we had no way to contact each other.

I can't get the phone back due to work and my husband being away for work. It just stresses me out that he won't be able to get in touch if there's a problem. Expressing my feelings here as there is no point complaining to the school. They don't listen to parental feedback.

I have a letter from my grandfather to my grandmother (who was away seeing her ailing mother), blaming Grandmother's absence for my Aunt getting in trouble with some local man. Aunt would have been about 12-13 years old. It was 1935, and the letter isn't specific but I think alcohol was involved. No social media influence need apply. Oh the wickedness of absent mothers!
I'm sure your aunt wasn't spitting at teachers, throwing chairs at them and calling them fat cunts. Obviously she wouldn't have been able to video it like the kids do now.
I'm dealing with teenagers that are being suspended and excluded from school for this and much more.
I'm so sad at seeing girls aswell as lads being goaded into fights and it being uploaded on to snap chat and YouTube
I'm worn down with dealing with the fall out of young girls being forced or feel like they have to send nudes of themselves and really feel for them when the shame of these picture go round the peer group. They usually have to leave and go to a PRU until the fuss dies down.
This is only a tiny part of issues caused by mobiles in schools or on their way hime
To me mobile phones in schools do cause a lot problems.

I think back in the day being rude to teachers would have been corporal punishment.
Children just wouldn't dare.
Exclusion was also a thing.

Education was valued, more so than today. That's a society problem though. The lack of hope doesn't help.

Up until the 70s and 80s there was a reasonable amount of work. People would get work in the local factory, mine, steelworks or whatever.
Parents wanted their kids to get the better jobs which was only going to happen 'if you stuck in at school'.
Those big places closed, taking a bunch of smaller employers with them.

Now it's either NMW or going to Uni
If you aren't uni material then there isn't much hope.

This is it, my daughter (10) has a phone as she walks to and from school, and they hand it in at reception. My son (13) has one that is turned off the whole time, he'd be too scared of getting in trouble to use it during the day. The main reason I want them to have them is for the school walk. My son's school are very strict on phones, and from what he says they rarely have to implement a confiscation.

Just follow the rules, they're there for a good reason.

I took two buses, crossing London. There was no option to phone home, we did not have a phone. Child abductions were no more frequent than now. Also I, and my brothers, had it drummed into us that we did not talk to strangers, did not accept sweets and lifts from people AT ALL. If in doubt look for a woman for help (Myra Hindley was a major exception) or go to a person in a shop, or find a policeman (who were around, on foot). What was infrequent was small children not having a mother, or someone, at home. I am not suggesting that the ability of women to go out to work is bad, but I do notice the surveys that suggest up to 80% of women with young children would prefer to stay at home or work part-time. Policy is driven by the 20% who have careers, rather than jobs, who think all women must be like them and want to put their children into nursery asap after birth to get back to their proper and more interesting jobs.

Not sure what your point is really. Obviously if your parents couldn't afford a home phone and there was no one else you could contact there is nothing that they could do. It doesn't make it ideal though and I am sure your parents would have been very worried if you were an hour late getting home and they didn't know why.

My point was that we survived without mobile phones and that was not because we could all borrow a phone in a shop, but because we were taught carefully who to approach if in trouble. A mobile phone won't stop your DCs getting into a mess, or help them out of some of them. What is needed is teaching what to do if one misses the bus etc. If the bus is missed and if they are still at school the place of contact is the school office. Reliance on technology is not reliable - awareness of time (watch?) and of safe ways to get home (not a lift with friend's parent!) when there is a problem. If DCs do not understand that then all the mobiles in the world will not help. NB Outside the MC it was rare to have a phone at home in the 60s and 70s. We were taught to come straight home, unless there was another arrangement (going to a friends, sports event at school etc - my mother came to the school when I was late, once. I had gone to watch a netball match - and school did not know I had no permission. Huge row! Didn't do that again!)

It was a different era of course we survived

If something happens, child loses their purse no money to get home, what do people honestly expect a random stranger or shop worker to do about it?

We live in a world where people are very wary of being scammed.

I was on a train recently when a teen asked for money from his fare. Feeling on the spot I gave him the money. After he got of their was a conversation between me and 3 other randoms - was he genuine or was it a scam?

Shops aren't even likely to allow people to borrow their phones anymore. And the days of corner shops having pay phones in a plastic bubble are gone to.

Not all school buses are dedicated buses, lots of kids travel on public transport to and from school.
If buses are cancelled or trains are cancelled what is that child's plan B?
The obvious thing is to check the bus / train app see when the next bus / train is.

I can't remember whether we had a home phone in the 60s but it wasn't rare to have a one in the 70s. We had one as did all of my friends. Children "are taught to come straight home" nowadays too but thanks to the unreliable buses and trains that isn't always possible. I don't remember that being a problem in the 70s particularly as there were school buses in most areas. There were also pay phones so you could contact someone (who could then reach your parent) and police walking around. There just isn't that back up nowadays. It isn't just about the safety of the children, it's also about parents knowing what is going on and if they need to help or contact someone else for help. I would have been incredibly anxious one or two times when my children were unable to get home from school if they hadn't been able to contact me.
The whole "we survived" argument is ridiculous. You could say that about almosy everything when the fact is that while you survived, not everyone did.

I don't think home phone's were rare in the 70s either. Most of my friends had a phone. Schools needed emergency contact numbers in the 70s. I only remember one friend not having a phone and her mum was a single mum so probably financial issues.

The backup of phone boxes just doesn't exist. I was at secondary in the 80s. The school had a payphone in a plastic bubble (remember them) no chance was the office staff letting kids into the office to use their phone.

Also there aren't timetables on the wall in stations any more. You can't get the printed booklets. Buses rarely have timetables.
In any case, none of that helps when there are strikes, trespassers on the line, a stabbing at the station, roadworks causing a diversion, an crash shutting roads etc. All of which have happened to one of my DCs trying to get home from school on at least one occasion, but for some on multiple times.

None of that helps when there are strikes, trespassers on the line, a stabbing at the station, roadworks causing a diversion, an crash shutting roads etc.

This is it, kids and parents can all cope without phones when everything goes to plan.
It's the days when things go wrong that phones become very important. The day schools started back, the road to my end of town was closed for hours by an accident.
So you had kids using public bus for the first time coming home from high-school stuck because the buses weren't running.

I’d say to the school that all communication /homework etc would have to be via paper rather than electronic means. That would include anything being sent to my kids and myself as a parent. We would not respond to anything sent over the internet or mobile network. No phones means paper based working.

They could have a non smart phone though.

And where's the money coming from for that? Schools are strapped for cash.

Paper communication means a ream of paper per letter. Assuming 1000 kids in school and letters are going out in A5 and someone cutting each sheet of A4 into two.
The cost of the photocopier, toner and electricity.

Nobody is proposing taking smartphones, laptops or PCs off parents. There is no need for paper-based anything, and it's irrelevant to the topic at hand.

As has been pointed out many, many times on this thread, a solution is for kids to have non-smart-phones.

Stations should have timetables printed up - do they really not have this any more? I am outside the UK.

I posted earlier on this thread about how society needs to think very carefully about the risks of organizing everything in society (public transit, payments etc.) on the assumption that everyone has permanent access to a smartphone.

It will increase phone addiction in adults (because of people constantly grabbing and touching their phones and having them permanently in their hands or by their sides), it creates issues for people with broken phones or who have run out of electricity, and it puts parents in a real dilemma - they either HAVE to let their kids be wired up to internet access 24/7 or their kids can have no independence outside the home.

Do we want this as a society? The right to "do stuff without a smartphone" needs to be enshrined as part of social policy.

Perhaps the schools should think of the costs and time before banning phones. If my kids school banned phones then I would say send everything on paper as my child doesn’t have a phone/device for school. It would be the same for me. The school could contact me by a landline number in work time or by paper.

But a non- smart phone doesn't help them work out the best way to get home when their normal route is in chaos.
You get to the station and find no trains running, they use their phone to work out the best alternative route - a bus perhaps and the phone will tell them which stop to use and how to get there etc.
@user1477391263 no, train stations do not have timetables printed on the wall anymore. And even if they did, that will only tell you when the next train is timetabled to be, not much help during strike action when there is an amended timetable, or when there has been a signal failure etc. A phone will tell you what is happening in real time.

^^^ What Seeline said.

Kids don’t need full access to all social media and the wilder reaches of the web, but if they are travelling by public transport they do need access to the relevant transport apps, maps and websites to work out how to get around disruption. And to tell their parents where they are and when they expect to get home.

I would struggle to do that without a phone, as when disruption is bad there’s usually no staff around to ask, or you just get chucked off at a random station with no knowledge of local bus services. I wouldn’t expect an 11yo to manage it.

I do wonder whether any of the people saying that no one needs a smart phone ever travel on public transport?
I live at the very edge of London, so yes probably better transport than some rural areas but pretty poor compared to central London or other city centres I have travelled in.
If there is a problem on public transport here, it causes wide-spread chaos, with fewer alternative options, and without a phone it is really hard to work out the best way to get home.
There are certainly no school buses - all the kids use public transport - many use multiple modes.

If that’s the case, then the UK’s public transport services are a bloody shambles.

I guess you’ll all just have to do the pouch thing at schools then. Or accept ever-worsening mental health/academic outcomes.