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 commute from an unmanned station and more than once I have had to help someone without a internet enabled phone replan their journey. Once when the train switched to express in to Manchester and the lady needed to get off at an earlier stop to look after a sick grandchild and was in quite a panic. I found her which trains went from Manchester to the station she needed and what platform she needed.
Another time a woman had accidentally got on the wrong train and was on the way to the airport. The train conductors advice was to stay on the train until the next city turn around go back to the city she had just come from and then get on another train to the airport. If she did this she probably would have come close to missing her plane of come close to doing so. I arranged a taxi to pick her up and waited with her until it arrive giving her plenty of time to get the plane. On both occasions there was a platform full of people who completely ignored them and they were both visibly anxious. I think this would be the same or worse for a young person. I don't mind looking things up for people but buying tickets or allowing them to make phone calls or send messages would be a no. The ticket machine in our unmanned station is often not working and to buy a ticket from the conductor without the risk of a £100 fine you have to ask them for a ticket before you board the train. I haven't seen anyone fined but regularly hear people getting a dressing down for not using the app to buy a ticket before getting on the train and if they see them doing it again they will be issued with the fine.

I went to secondary when there was a mix of kids with mobiles and kids without.

There were payphones in the school hallway for pupils to use during lunch/break and well maintained public payphones dotted around on the streets.

All the payphones I see now are so grimy and smashed up that they look like you'd give yourself tetanus just getting close enough to see if the damn thing works.

It's all very well saying "ask someone", but it's hard for shy kids to approach strangers for help, and some people may think the teenager just wants to steal their phone.

I've also noticed some bus shelters don't even have their routes and schedules displayed so if you miss your bus and are trying to figure out when the next one is or if there's another route that will take you some of the way, what are you meant to do?

The non-smart phone allows them to contact someone, who will likely use the internet to advise on an alternative route. The smart phone allows them to do this themselves, in real-time, by refreshing and reacting to changes in a dynamic situation. Stations and lines open and close all the time. A alternative route might no longer be viable because of a closure, and equally a better route might become possible.

A non-smart phone only addresses part of the problem - they can tell their parents that they are delayed - but doesn’t help them find their way home.

Thats exactly what @ButterCrackers suggested - all communication in paper!

I think it's about time we went back to paper instructions in stations so you can see which trains go where and we stopped telling people to use the app they do not have. What a cheek to tell a passenger how to buy their ticket!

It’s not irrelevant to the matter in hand. I’m saying the stance that I would take if my kids school banned phones. I’d say ok but then all communication must be on paper and I can be reached in working hours on a landline.

Paper instructions don't help when trains are so delayed they switch from off book (stopping at scheduled stops) to express (only stopping at the terminal destination) in order to make up lost time which happens fairly frequently to reduce delay fines

You have to have a ticket before boarding a train, if you are at a station with no ticket office, unmanned, as mine is and as network rail is proposing most stations move to, and the ticket machines regularly don't work you are pretty stuffed if you don't have the ability to buy your tickets online ahead of travel and carrying a print out of your ticket or using the app. Every time someone brings up the lack of time at the station -if there is a queue for the ticket machine or it's going on a go slow or they were late for whatever reason the person is always told. Download the app get the ticket from home. It is your responsibility to board the train with a valid ticket not our responsibility to sell you a ticket. They get 2p per tap when scanning a ticket and a % of ticket sales as commission so to the conductor it's more money in their pockets to sell you a ticket. There are times when the trains are so rammed that the conductor doesn't get to you I'm which case you can't buy a ticket on the train and then get fined at the barriers in the city as you can't leave the station without valid ticket. Just 12% of train tickets are bought in ticket offices now and if network rail gets there way it will be the minority of train stations that have a ticket office at all. A consultation was opened up last summer after they proposed closing the vast majority of the stations.
Not relevant for this discussion but it won't be long before pay machines at car parks won't exist. I was listening to one provider say it would be cheaper to provide those unable to have a smart phone a free parking permit than to keep the parking meters and before long there will be car parks where you can only pay by app. When it comes to the use of internet enabled phones we are very much frogs that are just realising how hot the water has become!

I know people want to indulge in nostalgia about how things used to be and the world has moved on. You can't go backwards and part of what we need to do is help teenagers manage smart phones to be a tool they use in a way that is appropriate and helpful for them.

It's like the ridiculous idea of limiting sex education.

Shambles.

This is not how public transport works in a serious country.

Well it's how it works in the UK. Even 30 years ago when I started the daily commute if the trains were delayed they'd suddenly announce the trains cancelled or the next train is an express. They'd always be some dafty who wasn't listening - boom you at the end of the line - I need to get back to x Station

You also need to consider the day the kid falls asleep on the train or just misses their stop.