r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheAeroplaneBear2906 • Jul 16 '26

Unskippable ad Clear Backpacks + Pay to Keep Your Phone

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My freinds school is now requiring these items, and is also using AI to promote this šŸ« 

17.9k Upvotes

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4.1k

u/Competitive-Dog5094 Jul 16 '26

man I'm so glad my school years are behind me.

1.6k

u/viktorrvaughnnn Jul 16 '26

For real I cannot imagine going to a school that feels like a PG13 prison everyday.

1.1k

u/PITCHFORK_MAGNET Jul 16 '26

I meanā€¦ trying to have kids stay off their phones is reasonable. The backpack part is depressing though.

512

u/commandant_ Jul 16 '26

yeah, genuinely trying to teach when everyone just is on their phones isā€¦ completely impossible. Itā€™s understandable theyā€™re desperate to fix it, but sucks everything is commercialized now

236

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

I canā€™t imagine being responsible for the performance of kids and not having any authority to do anything but stand there and talk at them.

0

u/not-the-nicest-guy Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

What authority should you have?

Getting downvoted for asking what Plane-Tiger means? I was a teacher for 15 years. I was just wondering what they couldn't do. We took phones away from students. Honest question.

73

u/Some-Show9144 Jul 16 '26

The ability to fail a student who didnā€™t learn the material would be a start.

9

u/not-the-nicest-guy Jul 16 '26

I was wondering about the topic of phones.

27

u/Roonil_Wazlib97 Jul 16 '26

For phones -- when I was in HS they got taken to the office and you could only pick up on Thursday. So yes, if you lost your phone on Friday that meant no phone for the weekend. Second offense and beyond meant you had to pay $15 to get it back, there may have also been detentions attached, I can't remember.

Basically we actually had consequences.

23

u/not-the-nicest-guy Jul 16 '26

We took them away and students could pick them up at the end of the day. If they were persistent about it, we would hold the phones for a few days. Students hated so much having their phone out of their possession for even just the day that that was usually enough to keep them in their bags.

6

u/Gloomy_Fig2138 Jul 16 '26

Those are still the consequences at my kidsā€™ school and all of my friendsā€™ kidsā€™ schools.

8

u/Every_Television_980 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I teach on one of the largest school districts in the country and they do not confiscate phones or hold them in the office. There are consequences, but just the standard call home, detention, etc.

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u/OldValariya1014 Jul 16 '26

So that is how you get sued by parents though. And thatā€™s the last thing a school system wants

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u/Mlpony2010 Jul 16 '26

Charging people for their own property is wrong

just taking it is reasonable

1

u/JalapenoPopPoop Jul 16 '26

That's not the right answer either though. Phones cost a grand and are personal property, a school doesn't have the right to steal your property and keep it for days on end. I would be surprised if that's even legal. And especially charging people to get their own legal property back definitely would be a lost law suit for the school district.

Keeping it until the end of the day to enforce no phone in school is one thing, but taking a very expensive device and one that parents use to stay in contact with their kids for 6 entire days is psycho

1

u/2ICenturySchizoidMan Jul 16 '26

lol nope they can. Ever heard of a tow truck?

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u/Physical-Cook451 Jul 17 '26

Yh that's overstepping like crazy lol

11

u/wesborland1234 Jul 16 '26

Not allow them in school. I see a phone, you fail.

Or just teach inside a giant Faraday cage ideally.

4

u/2ICenturySchizoidMan Jul 16 '26

If they have their phone out they donā€™t care about their grade lol

0

u/Drow_Femboy Jul 16 '26

Failing grades should handle that, really. Phone use in the classroom is a problem the parents should be dealing with. If their kids start coming home with shitty grades now the parents are gonna get involved. And you can say, "Yeah, I taught him all this, but he was sitting there looking at his phone during the class and not paying attention." Then the kid gets punished and stops looking at his phone in class. Problem solved.

If the kid is looking at his phone throughout class and maintains good grades, then the problem is solved a different way--by not giving a fuck. As long as the material is getting learned, it doesn't matter what the kid's doing in class.

11

u/not-the-nicest-guy Jul 16 '26

I think of a classroom more as a learning community than a group of individuals doing whatever they want, with consequences showing up or not showing up somewhere down the line. Plus an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex makes it very, very hard for kids/teens to make reasonable decisions in the moment, especially around devices specifically designed to capture attention (the more of the attention economy an app grabs, the more money it makes). There are good developmental reasons why parents and teachers set screen limits, and I believe that's important for everyone, even high achievers. As a teacher, I wanted my classroom to be as productive a learning environment as possible and a "healthy brain" environment too. There's a ton of research on the intellectual, mental health and social-emotional benefits of no-phone zones, so that's the direction I took when shaping my classroom. It helps a lot to teach students about the value of taking time away from their devices, so I would do mini-lessons on brain development too. They found it interesting and were quite cooperative.

1

u/Drow_Femboy Jul 16 '26

That sounds fair to me, I'm not a teacher and haven't been in a classroom since smartphones were new and expensive. I just remember what school was like for me personally. When I was in school, I would read all my textbooks cover to cover over the first couple weeks of the year, and then I'd just read novels throughout every class. I aced every test and everything was good... except in classrooms with teachers who took themselves very seriously, where I'd be forced to sit and listen to a bunch of stuff I already know in order to sell the illusion of putting in hard work to learn, even though I'm not doing anything except daydream and look at the clock. Those classes sucked and I still resent the (thankfully very few) teachers who treated me that way even though I'm pushing 30.

Smartphones may be fundamentally different from novels, but the act of doing a leisure activity in 'free' time is the same.

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u/vi_obsiver Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

I mean, yeah, but like at the same time that's a failure of parents and/or the system - we need to give the teachers more agency but simultaneously there needs to be much more robust systems for following up on those failures and getting them back on track - and also tbh it would probably help if we just went to pass/fail systems.

In real life failure is bad, but it doesn't always have to be a catastrophe, and if we stop making it feel like one, kids will be less afraid to try hard and learn from mistakes

Overall we will see more kids on average become educated if we stop making them so focused on getting the best scores possible. Its counter intuitive but all the focus on scores makes kids focus more on passing tests than learning, and also creates a lot of stress. It doesn't foster creativity or curiosity

1

u/Every_Television_980 Jul 16 '26

Im a teacher and fail students every year, so do all the teachers Ive ever worked with.

-4

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I donā€™t see the issue? If they take their phone out, confiscate it. Send them to the principal. Make a call to parents etc. get enough repeat violations and get suspended. Get enough past that get expelled.

But why canā€™t they keep it on them and learn to ya know be responsible and not take it out during class. Not like they are gonna have those same rules in college or work. For example, Iā€™m on phone now and my boss just walked by. He doesnā€™t give a shit. He knows Iā€™m gonna get my work done despite typing this shit on Reddit right now.

Anyway, I get you donā€™t want phones to be disruptive but thereā€™s more effective ways to deal with it in my opinion.

Edit to add:
Apparently the admin at every school is incapable of holding students accountable and so the answer is pouches.

So the admin is willing to enforce a pouch policy, but not a no phones in class policy.

Plenty of excuses below about why policing phones doesnā€™t work, yet here we have these pouches that are supposed to police phones and work. And do tell what will happen when the kid ignores the pouch rule?

Stop making excuses. Administration needs to enforce rules. If youā€™re gonna have a pouch itā€™s gotta be enforced. So why canā€™t they enforce without the pouch?

Stated better, what is the pouch going to change about enforcement of the rules? If you have a no phone policy and kids ignore it, and they arenā€™t afraid of the discipline, then why will the pouch matter?

22

u/ireneabean Jul 16 '26

At least in my experience a lot of my kids these days don't care to be responsible with it. If I had to confiscate phones during class, I'd spend all day playing phone cop instead of teaching and half of the kids will probably argue with me and just be belligerent.

1

u/01bah01 Jul 16 '26

Depends where you are it seems. I'm in Switzerland, phones are banned, I've never heard of kids having them on at school. They are in their bags turned off and it seems to work quite well.

3

u/ireneabean Jul 16 '26

Oh definitely. I'm relatively new and only been in one district so my experience is very limited. We don't have the pouches but our rule is that phones must be in lockers during school hours. There's kids in my class who'll totally be responsible having their phones with them and get their work done, but unfortunately there's just more kids who'd rather be disruptive so here we are ĀÆ_(惄)_/ĀÆ

-2

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

So donā€™t argue with them? Just send them to the principal. Suspend them. Etc.

11

u/ireneabean Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Then I'd be sending half my class to the principal's office which would also get me on the admin's shit list because the principal doesn't really care to deal with these types of things and the kids just end up wandering the halls to waste time. Suspension and expulsion requires a whole admin process here, idk about other schools, and it's often not worth risking my position nor arguing with parents just for a silly phone. Plus I've heard too many kids talk about suspension like it's vacation so I don't even know if it's even a punishment anymore.

Believe me I'd love it if these type of BS equipment isn't necessary or forced in schools.

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u/dms269 Jul 16 '26

Unfortunately, teachers (and some admin) have been completed neutered by their disciplinary problems. Confiscating phones leads to confrontation and upsets the "stakeholders". Suspension hurts the schools discipline numbers which in turn hurt funding. Schools are deathly afraid of hurting their "numbers" so they manipulate them to make them look better while also keeping parents happy (so they don't go running to complain to higher ups or file lawsuits).

Discipline has changed so much in the last 10 years.

6

u/loyalsons4evertrue Jul 16 '26

College is usually a tad different because you're usually spending a lot of money to go that school and I would sure hope someone would care enough to not be on their phone and actually learn....and well, if you're always on your phone at your job and nothing ever gets done, well have fun becoming unemployed.

2

u/soofs Jul 16 '26

For the most part but there are professors who ban electronics in classes. During law school, which I paid a SHIT LOAD to attend, I had a professor who banned all use of phones and laptops during his classes.

2

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

Whether you are paying is irrelevant. Either you learn how to exist in a professional world and not use your phone, or you get treated like an addict who is restricted from even having it on you and never have to learn self control or regulation etc.

1

u/loyalsons4evertrue Jul 16 '26

I would argue there is at least a little bit more of an incentive to try if you're the one footing the bill for education.

0

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

Nope.

1

u/loyalsons4evertrue Jul 16 '26

I work in higher ed and quite literally see the results of people paying and doing better than the alternative....but I know nothing I say will convince you otherwise so it's not worth my time..... have a great day.

2

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

No it wonā€™t convince me because it doesnā€™t matter if they are paying for it. College kids outright skip class. Have for literally decades. It has no bearing whether they are paying to be there or not.

I will say most profs I had, had the mindset that you get out of it what you put in. You want to skip etc thatā€™s fine. Youā€™re the one who is paying to be here. Itā€™s your loss if you choose to skip etc.

As long as they arenā€™t being disruptive Iā€™m sure there are entire lecture halls across this country right now that have multiple students fucking off on their phone.

Back when I was in school it wasnā€™t phones, it was handheld video games. Same shit different generation. You gonna go to class and sit there and play games, why go? Plenty didnā€™t. Some kids I only saw on test days. Itā€™s been like this forever. Stop acting like itā€™s new behavior to not give a shit about your college class.

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u/Jogurt55991 Jul 16 '26

If a teen has a meltdown it disrupts education for a good 15 minutes for the rest of class and creates a rough environment for some time afterwards.

Children flip out and have broken their phones and demands schools pay which ultimately is a loss for the family since schools will not- Parents have come flipping out over their child's things being confiscated.

Outward defiance has been higher amongst black and latin students- so even when enforcement is not targeted- more suspensions have happened around those groups of kids- which puts spotlights on 'racist schools'.

Your boss may-or-may-not give a shit, but if he was really irked he would stop paying you and you would stop reporting to work. Legal access to Free and Public Education restricts teachers and schools from this.

Ultimately children have far too many guaranteed rights in schools for the good of the entire school society to function.

That's why we are where we are today.

3

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

Why engage with them?

Itā€™s very simple. Put it away. If you donā€™t, go to the principal. If you donā€™t, weā€™ll call school security whatever to escort you. And thatā€™s your first occurrence. Hit 3 of them and youā€™re suspended for a week. Come back and have another occurrence, youā€™ll be elevated for expulsion.

Thereā€™s a real simple way to deal with it. Consequences. If they donā€™t care then kick them out.

4

u/Jogurt55991 Jul 16 '26

Students will not go to Principal.

Security is the 15 minute situation I described.

Suspension for Non-violent/drug related offenses is not permissible in almost every state now.

There are almost as few school expulsions as their are individuals getting the death penalty these days.

Consequences have been slowly removed from public schools since Arne Duncan was Sec. of Ed.

Teachers absolutely wish for those things to return- but society continues to coddle poor behavior as to not 'target specific groups.'

0

u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

Sounds like excuses

2

u/Jogurt55991 Jul 16 '26

Don't know what to tell you.
These 'excuses' are the reason that educators hands are tied at enforcing consequences.

When the ED started this -

Duncan, alongside the Department of Justice, issued U.S. Department of Education School Discipline Guidance urging schools to abandon "zero tolerance" policies and warning that racially lopsided discipline could trigger federal civil rights investigations. Duncan expanded the Civil Rights Data Collection, forcing school districts to publicly report suspension and expulsion rates by race.

Look at suspensions across the board from 2009 onward--- it's a clear indicator what happened. Exceptions : All White or Asian school districts- their numbers don't count.

2

u/honeyedbee19 Jul 16 '26

Right? That's how it was when I was in school, those of us who knew when to put our phones away got to keep them, others got it taken away during class (and everyone did during big tests/exams).

Forcing everyone into using clear bags is just icky imo. It's one thing to keep the phones with a teacher during class, but this makes no sense. No teen wants everyone able to see all their belongings all the time, especially with medications/period products, or even keeping important things hidden from bullies... who needs privacy I guess /s

1

u/MetaNovaYT Jul 16 '26

I don't think the clear bags are for the phones, I believe they are to prevent students from being able to take firearms into the building

2

u/Double_Cow_8238 Jul 16 '26

You know teachers need time to actually teach right? Being the phone police is pointless and exhausting. If they really weren't taking it out this wouldn't be an issue.

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u/RedditsFullofShit Jul 16 '26

And if policies are set in place and enforced and are punitive enough, they wonā€™t take it out.

2

u/ireneabean Jul 16 '26

Imo the pouch and policies like it are really only to make breaking the rules more tedious. I'm sure there's plenty of ways around the pouch but then you only have to deal with students who actually bother to do it. It's a bandage "solution" used for triaging, not to actually solve the root problems.

2

u/ScallionJealous Jul 16 '26

Theyā€™ve literally been trying that for the last decade and itā€™s not workingā€”they are losing the battle for our childrenā€™s hearts and minds and they need HELP. Havenā€™t had legislative support until the last few years (and still donā€™t in some states). They donā€™t have the same rules as work or college because they are children and their brains are still forming. They do not respond to impulses or stimuli in the same way.

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u/LotteTakesNoShit Jul 16 '26

They learn from their parents.

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u/alexnedea Jul 16 '26

Just, take their fucking phones? If I used a phone in certain classes, the teacher would take it until end of day. And I would probably be made to solve whatever was on the board and be made fun of.

0

u/vi_obsiver Jul 17 '26

Teachers, but much more importantly education boards and the like, need to adjust, imo. Yeah we gotta teach kids some discipline, but also we need to accept that phones are a part of our daily lives and involve them in the curriculum even if its as simple as requiring them to, say, use a calendar app to budget their homework time, or something like a kanban board for projects

Takes way more effort to stop a river than divert it

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u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

I was in high school when everyone had a smartphone but these weird pouches were not a thing, you just knew not to have it out in class and it'd be taken if you did. Its genuinely so simple, I don't get why they have to do all this.

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u/maybebaebea Jul 16 '26

When I was in high school, my school mostly let their teachers decide their phone rules. I had classes where phones had to be put in these hanging numbered pouches on the wall, and classes where the teacher did not care if your phone was out as long as you were doing well in the class. Every teacher required phones to be away during quizzes and tests, though

10

u/APreciousJemstone Jul 16 '26

This is kinda how we did it. The phone being "stolen" stuff was starting to come out during our senior years, but we were able to have our phones out if they were productive. We could listen to music while doing our physics work, for example

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u/zipline3496 Jul 16 '26

Scroll down the teacher sub for like 5 minutes and youā€™d see very quickly why theyā€™re doing this.

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u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 16 '26

"go to the principals office or give me your phone" over and over until kids learn

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u/The12Ball Jul 16 '26

Yeah, the whole school won't fit in the principal's office

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u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 16 '26

do you think they stay there all day?

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u/The12Ball Jul 16 '26

I'm saying the principal has more things to do in a day than sit in their office and deal with every single kid with a phone issue. There has to be a solution at the classroom level and these pouches are one such tool

4

u/HalobenderFWT Jul 16 '26

Thatā€™s what the vice principals are for. We had two VPs at my high school back in the 90ā€™s. They handled discipline.

I have no idea what our principal actually did.

6

u/SweetAlpacaLove Jul 16 '26

These are addiction devices, most of these kids are full blown addicts. If you know how addiction works, you know that they will risk whatever punishment to feed that addiction if itā€™s at all possible.

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u/Stormfly Jul 16 '26

until kids learn

The kids on the phone in class are not the kids that learn.

Also, as a teacher, you quickly learn that the problem students have problem parents so punishment does little.

Preventing the problem always works better than punishing students.

over and over

I have 40 minutes to teach a 40 minute lesson and probably don't have much time to deal with students and every minute spent dealing with a problem student is a minute I need to rush to get back.

"Sorry, Timmy. I only have 5 minutes to explain this instead of 10 because I lost 5 minutes getting Jeremy to give me his phone and I had to send him out of the room because he wouldn't."

6

u/Majestic_Horseman Jul 16 '26

As someone who taught this gen of kids for several years (and quit), the problem parent thing is extremely important.

Most kids, I could take away their phones during class, no issue. But after several complaints from a small group of enabling parents who think taking away phones is comparable to discrimination... Yeah, the school had to stop us from taking phones away during classes.

Let me tell you, even if they doubled my salary I wouldn't have stayed as a teacher; I tried moving to a different school but after a school year with the same issues I realised schools are doing all they can to keep parents content, disciplining children is harder and harder each year, and to get a small raise is akin to rolling a big boulder up a steep hill.

I'm glad I graduated long before this, but schools have become daycare and the kids that refuse to learn with parents who don't care just grow in number. Teachers deserve double or triple what they're being paid to do.

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u/jennj99738 Jul 16 '26

Easy to say harder to implement when parents scream that they need little Johnny and Janie to have their phones all day so the parents can reach them "in case of emergency." Parents are the problem. They have been the problem for a long time. Either they are totally absent in their kids' education or they're buzzing around all the time making ridiculous demands and complaints. Administrators, superintendents, and school boards are scared shitless of parents making complaints, the media reporting on them, and the liability from lawsuits. Lawsuits have increased in recent years and so have the payouts for valid and invalid claims.

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u/threedogdad Jul 16 '26

because teachers should be teaching, not playing phone police all day. it's ridiculous they were ever allowed in class.

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u/RunBrundleson Jul 16 '26

I was a substitute teacher briefly and the kids just assumed because I was a sub it didnā€™t matter and literally every kid had their face buried in their lap staring at their phone.

Iā€™m not gonna give the kids too much shit, we created electronic heroin and then sat our kids in front of it at age one and didnā€™t think through the consequences.

3

u/thephotoman Jul 16 '26

Itā€™s more of a slot machine than heroin.

I spent the last week and a half scrolling TikTok to see what the problem was. And the answer was that TikTok, like all social media, is an inconsistent reward system. You finish a video you like, then scroll to find shit. Itā€™s the inconsistent reward mechanism that keeps people sat in front of slot machines.

I wanted the experiment to last two weeks, but I callee it early: when every video I saw led me to blocking the creator because they were clearly a narcissist projecting their insecurities onto entire demographics, it wasnā€™t worth continuing.

Also, Iā€™ve noticed that the kids canā€™t relate to each other anymore. The boys have no friends: they donā€™t trust other boys not to be the kind of abusive douchebags that theyā€™d have to cut out. The girls are lost in an affirming circlejerk of self-victimization. Theyā€™ll volunteer to be the real victim in situations that have nothing to do with them, as they understand and embrace innocent victimhood as their gender role.

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 16 '26

When people say things like ā€œthe boys have no friends; they donā€™t trust other boys not to be the kind of abusive douchebags theyā€™d have to cut out,ā€ theyā€™re really describing how toxic masculinity teaches boys to fear vulnerability and expect harm from other boys, not some inherent flaw in boys themselves. And when they observe that ā€œthe girls are lost in an affirming circlejerk of selfā€‘victimizationā€ or that girls ā€œvolunteer to be the real victim,ā€ what theyā€™re actually seeing is how girls learn to express pain in exaggerated ways because their real struggles, including the very real harms many experience from boys and men, are often minimized, dismissed, or ignored. These patterns arenā€™t natural gender traits; theyā€™re symptoms of a culture where boys are punished for softness and girls are believed only when their suffering is dramatic enough to be undeniable.

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u/xxxpinguinos Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

No idea how old you are, but at least when/where I went to high school (graduated 2017) we were reasonable humans about it. Of course some kids would just be on their phone a lot and hide it, but most of us werenā€™t, and some teachers even let us listen to music or something if we were doing independent work. Because we were reasonable about it and didnā€™t abuse it

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u/Ryaninthesky Jul 16 '26

Post Covid students have not been reasonable about it.

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u/xxxpinguinos Jul 16 '26

Iā€™m aware, Iā€™ve seen the horror stories. I was more responding to ā€œitā€™s ridiculous they were ever allowedā€

It wasnā€™t always this bad

4

u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 16 '26

I never allowed them, I saw the writing on the wall, but when parents don't support you, this is the outcome.

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u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

I wish the outcome looked more like "okay, have your phone then, but if you aren't paying attention you will fail." But kids aren't allowed to fail grades anymore. It's ridiculous.

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u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 17 '26

Me too, but I'm expected to police them. There needs to be more accountability and consequences.

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u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 16 '26

teachers are always going to be toy police in school . do you think kids in the 80s were just locked in because they didnt have phones?

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u/threedogdad Jul 16 '26

I was there, as were all of my family members. In lower grades there were some toys a brought in now and then, that's it...and it was clear you were breaking the rules. These days every kid has a phone with them regardless of grade/age and they don't think of it as a toy but an essential device. It's not remotely the same.

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u/LolaAucoin Jul 16 '26

Because a teacher shouldnā€™t have to stop what theyā€™re doing to go through the hassle of confiscating phones. I can also see some kids getting violent if they tried.

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u/Happy-Cod-4368 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Because a few $1000 iPhones getting stolen from a teacherā€™s desk after they confiscated them is more than enough for schools to not want the liability anymore probably

4

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

Not just stolen. In the late 2000s early 10s you could take a broken phone to school, pretend to talk on it have it taken from you and then shift the culpability onto the school. Another thing you could do is have headphones taken and then just choose a better pair from the bin that they put everyoneā€™s property in.

Yeah taking peoples property without proper documentation and a chain of custody is just inviting problems into your institution

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u/Lopsided_Tiger_0296 Jul 16 '26

Iā€™ve seen videos of kids refusing to hand over their phone because ā€œitā€™s my propertyā€ or ā€œhow am I going to call my parents in an emergencyā€? Kids can have their phones once they show they can focus in class without being on it and not paying attention

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u/BagOnuts Jul 16 '26

If you donā€™t get why they have to do this, then you havenā€™t been to a public school lately.

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u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

Well no, I'm 27 and my baby isn't school age, why would I be doing that. That's literally why I asked.

1

u/BagOnuts Jul 16 '26

Well you got plenty of answers, hopefully you know why now.

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u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

Yeah, your sarcastic reply wasn't helpful or needed, but I hope it felt good for you.

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u/wheniaminspaced Jul 16 '26

Because the parents gave the teachers unholy hell about phone confiscation.

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u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

People tend to lag a little behind the facts. We didn't have smartphones at the day, but had programmable graphical calculators... which could hold pretty much everything inside a textbook and were always allowed during tests (including language tests).
Took them a couple of years to realize.

But we did have all our old school phones, just without all the modern social media cr*p. Sexting took some effort; lazy kids nowadays.

3

u/platinum92 Jul 16 '26

Kids don't care anymore. They don't care to follow rules and they know any actual enforcement can be fought by parents all the way up to the school board level. Or they just take the punishment because their parents don't care and suspension or ISS is a day off regular class.

It's rough out there in a lot of schools and it's sad.

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u/NatterinNabob Jul 16 '26

As a former teacher, that is really not the way. They have enough on their hands already without being the cell phone police and dealing with all the parents who are mad because they think their child was singled out. This should be done from the top down, with all complaints about it going straight to the administration.

2

u/CoelacanthQueen Jul 16 '26

Yeah exactly. I got Saturday school when my old flip phone had a scammer call it but I had an iPhone 4 the next year. We had a hard phone ban and it wasnā€™t a problem. Color me surprised when 10 years later Iā€™m working at a school and all the kids have their phones in the hallway.

2

u/LotteTakesNoShit Jul 16 '26

Become a teacher and you'll find out. There's a massive shortage, so you shouldn't have a problem getting a job.

2

u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

These kind of non-answers being annoyed at me or sarcastic for asking are just ridiculous.

0

u/LotteTakesNoShit Jul 16 '26

Thatā€™s a real answer. We need teachers and itā€™s not that easy to explain on Reddit.

2

u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

If you can't type an explanation you might be a product of a literacy crisis.

0

u/LotteTakesNoShit Jul 16 '26

šŸ˜† This is why no one wants to give you a real answer.

2

u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

No plenty of other people did, it just seems like you're the incapable one.

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2

u/Hedonismbot1978 Jul 16 '26

"You just knew..."

Not anymore.

2

u/ButDidYouCry Jul 16 '26

I've had kids threaten me and call me names for asking for their phones.

2

u/Practical_Law6804 Jul 16 '26

Its genuinely so simple, I don't get why they have to do all this.

Have you met kids and teens these day? How many stories do we have (at least in the United States) where students go nuclear on instructors for asking them to be engaged in class or risk losing their phones or other distractions.

2

u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

Then why aren't they also going nuclear over these pouches? Like yes I believe you but whats the difference except an investment in a special pouch?

2

u/BestHorseWhisperer Jul 16 '26

Smartphone addicts are old enough to have kids who are smartphone addicts. That means parents are foaming at the mouth if their little electronic tether to their child is taken away. The thought of someone taking their phone or their child's sends them into a chemically-induced rage. It's as unacceptable to them as if you took away their shoes or their glasses... Or more accurately, trying to take drugs away from a drug addict. These people are hopeless.

2

u/headrush46n2 Jul 16 '26

pulling a phone away from a 12 year old is like pulling a pipe away from a crack addict. Those kids will flip the fuck out.

2

u/Gold_Independent_428 Jul 16 '26

Multiple reasons. Kids now are raised on those phones, algorithms are the most addictive they have ever been, school boards and many parents are just not supporting teachers. I've experienced "what do you expect me to do about it", threatened if I take their phone, gaslit or when you send the student out, the parent fight the school board and it becomes an adaptation for support, and/or sued (this has happened). A lot has changed in the past five years, we are in different times. With out laws banning the use of phones in school it's a daily fight and it really does depend on your clientele. There is going to be people who are tempted to tell me "I just need to do ...", respectfully you haven't taught in classroom in a public school, in the past four years, in a country where teachers are often treated like the enemy.

2

u/TripleDoubleFart Jul 16 '26

Because children are addicted now.

2

u/Draconuus95 Jul 16 '26

Mostly because teachers have even less power than they did when we weee in school 15 years ago.

Parents over the years have bullied schools into relinquishing any punishment options they might have that actually leads to consequences. Taking phones away. Sued for stealing 1k+ phones. Failing classes. Well Johnnyā€™s just struggling in a non tailored environment. Give him a passing grade. Bullyā€™s causing issues. Zero tolerance policies encourage kids to either do nothing. Or to explode violently because even just sitting there getting hit might give them detention. And a host of other discipline issues.

Itā€™s made teaching an even more thankless task than it always has been. Oh and salaries have barely gone up for all that trouble increases either.

2

u/hawaiianhamtaro Jul 16 '26

Yeah these things confuse me too. I was in high school 2011-2015. People definitely were texting during class, but you had to be quick and sneaky about it to not get caught. If you were just mindlessly scrolling on your phone the teacher would see you and take it, and you would eventually get a detention. At what point did they stop enforcing this?

2

u/Beginning-Board-9488 Jul 16 '26

Many parents are successfully suing teachers and school district for confiscating phones though, so many districts have prohibited teachers from doing so

1

u/christona-bike Jul 16 '26

Then wouldn't they be able to sue over these pouches?

2

u/tlollz52 Jul 16 '26

Parents mostly

2

u/No_Sale7548 Jul 16 '26

Sounds simple indeed. Thatā€™s what most school teachers donā€™t last five years in the career. Because it sounded simple.

4

u/billsboy88 Jul 16 '26

Some kids get violent if you try to take their phone away. And teachers donā€™t really want to get punched, even if the kid gets suspended afterward

3

u/doomus_rlc Jul 16 '26

Probably parents bitching "you can not hold onto my kid's property!"

1

u/graygoohasinvadedme Jul 16 '26

When I taught we couldnā€™t touch a studentā€™s phone unless school admin was in the room. Several lawsuits against teachers for cracked screens or other damages that they couldnā€™t prove were *not* there before the phone was taken.

5

u/maybebaebea Jul 16 '26

I went to a school that said we were allowed to carry clear or mesh bags, but any others had to be kept in the locker. Then they changed the rule on a random Wednesday without telling any families, so a bunch of kids got detention. That went away after the principal realized he forgot to send out the memo. That was luckily middle school. Went to high school in a different district and never used my locker.

2

u/GoldenLiar2 Jul 16 '26

It is in theory, but enforcing it is so impractical and kids will always fight it tooth and nail. Phones should go in a box before class, retrieved after. Anything else is impractical.

2

u/Pathetic_Cards Jul 16 '26

I mean, I went to high school in the age of smartphones, and it was mostly fine. I do get that, based on what Iā€™m told, attention spans are dwindling among the youth, so I can see how the problem has gotten more extreme.

3

u/AshthanTom Jul 16 '26

Their attention spans are basically gone amongst the youngest of the generation. There are studies showing that technology usage in the classroom and home are creating an inability to develop. It's gotten so bad that this is the first generation to test lower than the last in every measurable metric.

2

u/rita-b Jul 16 '26

you can use a cosmetic bag inside the transparent bag for privacy items

2

u/CartoonistAny4349 Jul 16 '26

I meanā€¦ trying to have kids stay off their phones is reasonable.Ā 

My "I'm with the boomers on this one" that I don't think kids need phones at school at all. I can understand the use with extracurriculars after the school day ends, but there is no reason to have it during.

2

u/spyrowo Jul 16 '26

I'm glad they're making the experience of menstruating while in school even more frustrating and humiliating by forcing students to have transparent backpacks to show off their pads, tampons, and extra change of underwear.

2

u/thephotoman Jul 16 '26

The backpack part is giving, ā€œI donā€™t want to look at the conditions inside schools, so letā€™s just make kidsā€™ lives even worseā€ energy.

2

u/TrueTurtleKing Jul 16 '26

Yeah but even 20+ years ago. We had kids bring knives and shit to middle school. Looking back, glad someone tattled on them.

I can see why school wants these clear things now with vapes and whatever kids bring nowadays.

Few bad apples to ruin the whole thing.

2

u/GhostOfTheArcade Jul 16 '26

I remember coming back from 7th grade and you either had to have a Mesh backpack or a clear bookbag. We quickly found out the clear ones would bust at the seam in a matter of weeks.

2

u/afriendincanada Jul 16 '26

"having kids stay off their phones is reasonable"

90% of the time you're right. Its the other 10% that's infuriating.

Kids that have medical things on their phones (diabetes). Kids arranging rides after extracurriculars. My kids had medical consultations by zoom. Their school rules presumed that every instance of phone use was rulebreaking and acted accordingly.

The school administrators who couldn't tell the difference between a kid on their phone in class, and a kid on their phone inside the front door on a -20 day at 4:50 p.m. after band practice texting "dad I'm ready to be picked up". Or a kid checking an alert from their glucose monitor.

2

u/LongestSprig Jul 16 '26

"What can we do about school shootings"

"Oh no, not the fashion statement of backpacks, that is sacred"

3

u/GeForce_GTX_1050Ti Jul 16 '26

even with a plastic bag you can still hide a weapon in a container

like a hollowed out book

5

u/PITCHFORK_MAGNET Jul 16 '26

Oh, thereā€™s no doubt in my mind a kid could get a weapon of some sort into school if they really wanted to. Not making it easy is still beneficial though.

3

u/GeForce_GTX_1050Ti Jul 16 '26

on top of these you cannot bring anything fun to school. snacks, toys, trading cards and things. it'll be stripped off at the gate if spotted

not harmful, but school life will be bleak, just like that backpack

0

u/Remarkable-Host405 Jul 16 '26

The primary way weapons are carried is on person, conceal carry. The clear backpack is trying to solve rifles, not tiny handguns

1

u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

I think I'd prefer transparent backpacks over security gates, but they're both pretty dystopian.
Banning phones sounds like a very reasonable thing for schools to dp. Probably also forcing students to stay longer at school in order to do homework/assignments in person. 99.9% are going to use phones in a disruptive manner, 99.9% are going to cheat online.

1

u/bdizzle805 Jul 16 '26

Well unfortunately for our gun loving my freedums" croud. Stupid ass shit parents don't seem to know how to lock up their guns (not saying every school shooting is because of this) but its sad we even have to have this conversation. The depression part for me is the shitty ass parents.

1

u/apigeonontheinternet Jul 16 '26

Fuck the backpack, the ā€œthem having to pay for this shitā€ is depressing.

1

u/thediecast Jul 16 '26

these are almost always school districts that fear monger though. Most school shootings it's someone that shows up and just starts shooting, not pulling it out of the bag in the middle of english class. I'm old and lived in a small texas town when Columbine happened, my school freaked out. They had the swat team from a town 100 miles away come to do drills for school shootings, changed the dress code to not allow any slip on shoes/flip flops for the reason of 'if there's a school shooting you won't be able to run away as fast'.

1

u/jaearr Jul 16 '26

but having kids stay off their phones, banning phones, and restricting phone use in certain locations are completely different rules.

1

u/Shoondogg Jul 16 '26

Itā€™s not even the lack of privacy with the backpack; picking out my new backpack for the year was always a back to school highlight.

1

u/Dexter2376 Jul 16 '26

Right? One of the biggest excitements and conversation starters as a kid was having such a cool looking spiderman backpack

1

u/ShubberyQuest Jul 16 '26

It includes feminine products. I hid pads and tampons in deep inside pockets. This is awful.

1

u/nifty000 Jul 16 '26

The clear backpacks donā€™t even work for someone actually trying to break the rules. Proven to be security theater.

1

u/saintswererobbed1619 Jul 16 '26

I grew up only allowed to use clear or mesh backpacks, this was in the late 90s through the aughts. It was fine.

1

u/Imaginary--Situation Jul 17 '26

to conform you for your loser slave labor job... LOL

1

u/Smallbunsenpai Jul 17 '26

A lot of schools ban phones even at lunch. Iā€™m sorry but you should be allowed on your phone at lunch. Itā€™s LUNCH! They shouldnā€™t be allowed in class but like, idk, between classes and all that, I donā€™t get it.

0

u/GoldenLiar2 Jul 16 '26

It is in theory, but enforcing it is so impractical and kids will always fight it tooth and nail. Phones should go in a box before class, retrieved after. Anything else is impractical.

99

u/Original-Action Jul 16 '26

Welcome to south Carolina where the architects and builders who design prisons...design schools as well

https://giphy.com/gifs/H5C8CevNMbpBqNqFjl

38

u/Not_an_okama Jul 16 '26

My college dorm used the same food service as the county jail, the jail had a higher tier plan though...

According to my friend who worked for the dinning hall one year and later spent a month in jail for selling pot to half the town. He was the last person arrested in my state for pot.

4

u/Quixotic_Seal Jul 16 '26

Yeah, when I watched the first season of 60 Days In it struck me that the food the prisoners were getting was EXACTLY the same as what we got in high school. Iā€™d recognize those shitty burger and chicken sandwich wrappers anywhere.

And this was at a notoriously affluent school.

13

u/DustyRacoonDad Jul 16 '26

There's a lot of things to be upset about but the guy that makes his living doing civil engineering for the state, is not the enemy.Ā 

If anything, he wants to make a better building and he's just stopped by the restrictions placed upon him by others.

1

u/Hilde_In_The_Hot_Box Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

This is pedantic, but a civil engineer is most likely not going to be the person designing room layouts. It will likely be an architect in coordination with electrical and mechanical engineers for a lighting plan + hvac. The civil & structural engineers those parties to make sure the building is constructed on a solid foundation with walls, roofs, and reinforcement according to the building code. There might be some coordination if the architect requests a design that is impractical, impossible, or otherwise too expensive from a structural perspective - but generally all good designers will try to ā€œstay in their lane.ā€

Easy way to remember it is that the civil + structural engineers make sure the building is structurally sound. The architect makes sure it is functional for people (or at least functional to whatever instructions they are given by the owner.)

Source: I am a civil engineer

6

u/MartinisnMurder Jul 16 '26

Same with many schools in MA!

2

u/missqueenkawaii Jul 16 '26

Also Florida.

0

u/TripleDoubleFart Jul 16 '26

I don't really see the issue with that.

1

u/Original-Action Jul 16 '26

The issue is the psychological impact. Commonly known as "the school to jail pipeline," the building aesthetic plays a part in the lack of education young people receive in certain public schools. Young people would perceive no difference in the incareration facility...save unlike public school where they go home in the afternoon. Teachers become corrections officers, school uniforms are jumpsuits and the schedule bell rings as needed.

A building that serves to educate should not have the same design and floor plan as an incarceration facility. The floorplan of a school allows educators to instruct a certain number of children per classroom, open spaces for activities and recreation, and administrative offices. Similarly the juvenile detention has the same floorplan to house a certain number of offenders per "classroom", open spaces for activities and recreation, and correctional officer administrative offices. The exception used to be the bars on the windows to keep the offenders from escaping. Those bars are becoming common in schools to keep active shooters from gaining entry.

Contrary to what another redditor mentioned, there's no anger involved, nor is the building design the product of a paid state civil engineer. These are private firms paid by the state or county to design and build school and prison facilities as a "cost savings" metric for the tax payer and due to limited funds.

My wife who was not born in the States didn't see the problem either...until I pointed out:

-White Knoll HS was designed by the same firm that brought to us the Moss Justice Center and York County prison

-Lake Carolina Elementary upper campus was designed by the same firm that brought to us the Sumter County Justice Center and Spartanburg County Sheriff's Holding Area

-Alvin S Detention Center was designed by the same firm that brought to us USC-Spartanburg Campus and the University of Clemson Forestry and Environmental Science Bldg.

This is the short list. No tin foil hat tricks, just good old fashioned research...

1

u/TripleDoubleFart Jul 16 '26

You never said they had the same design plan, just that the same people designed them. I assumed people could design buildings in different ways.

1

u/Original-Action Jul 16 '26

You're correct. You'll need to view the exterior and interior of these facilities to make an informed opinion. I have and should have kept my internal monologue to myself perhaps.

5

u/MartinisnMurder Jul 16 '26

Same! A clear backpack is pretty insane. So if youā€™re a girl and need hygiene products youā€™re allowed like no privacy? Some concert venues or festivals have rules about this stuff and I remember back in the day knowing someone who worked at MAC in Macyā€™s she was required to only carry a clear bag into work. All of the makeup counter employees had to. Iā€™m so glad for many reasons I am 20 years out of high school.

2

u/EkbatDeSabat Jul 16 '26

All it does is encourage bad actors to use more ingenuity. Whatever they carry in there, a book or whatever if they still do that, can just be hollowed out and they can put whatever it is in there. It's such a stupid short sighted "look at us we're at least trying" rule.

2

u/MartinisnMurder Jul 16 '26

I was thinking about the hollowed out book thing too! I know someone that had one of those for their weed before it was legal haha

2

u/Remarkable-Host405 Jul 16 '26

Hard to do that with a rifle.

A pistol van beĀ  carried on person

2

u/EkbatDeSabat Jul 16 '26

A standard rifle cannot fit in a normal backpack either way unless you're already breaking it down or using a compact model, each of which can be solved with a clear backpack if they want to.

2

u/Remarkable-Host405 Jul 16 '26

It takes 2 pins and zero tools to split my ar15 in half. I'm well aware.

3

u/cutestkillbot Jul 16 '26

Can you imagine a prison where kids are playing porn on their phones during math class and showing it to other kids while they are trying to learn? Because thatā€™s a big reason why we are banning cell phones. How about having photos taken of you in the locker room while trying to change? Itā€™s not treating kids like they are in a prison, itā€™s adults treating kids like they do not have a fully formed prefrontal cortex to ensure that they donā€™t do harm to others. If they canā€™t make good decisions and their parents wonā€™t raise them right, then we are forced to make rules that protect our other students. If parents are ok with their kid on a phone instead of learning thatā€™s fine and they can ruin their own kid but I wonā€™t let their family poison leach over to the other kids.

3

u/xaldarin Jul 16 '26

Feeling entitled to carry a personal media device around in school all day is definitely an opinion.

2

u/Complex-Key918 Jul 16 '26

Most of these schools that do all this have been prisons for a long time. This isn't new.

2

u/bk3nn3dy1907 Jul 16 '26

Phones shouldn't be allowed in school though. And clear backpacks have been a thing since the 90s in some places. Comparing a school with rules designed to increase safety and attention to learning to a "prison" is a crazy stretch

2

u/SendMeIttyBitties Jul 16 '26

Keeping kids off their phones and clear bags are prisions?

Its people like you why we have these problems bub.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

1

u/Theyoshiking64 Jul 16 '26

Do you really need a stranger online to explain hyperbole to you?

1

u/ForeignCup6977 Jul 16 '26

They kind of already did in the 80's/90's. At least from what I remember about Middle School.

3

u/lugubrious-possum Jul 16 '26

growing up in rougher neighborhoods most schools had uniform mandatory and you werent allowed to bring any bags on special days, especially near the end of the year where most fights would break out for some reason

1

u/Wolv90 Jul 16 '26

I'm glad for my kids that I moved to a town where that's not the case either. But maybe it's only a matter of time?

1

u/bag-o-farts Jul 16 '26

Some of yall forgot about Columbine, this has been a thing for a while.

1

u/afjessup Jul 16 '26

You only get one ā€œfuckā€ with a PG-13 rating

1

u/whycook_ Jul 16 '26

I grew up with banned phones throughout school. Its not a big deal. Why do they need it all day anyways? I think the most constructive response is to ban phones out of their pocket. You dont need it unless its an emergency. Let them carry it to school but punish them for fucking around and not paying attention in class.

I dont understand how this is complicated

1

u/Cevvity Jul 16 '26

Teachers, pg. students? Maybe notā€¦

1

u/enter360 Jul 16 '26

Did your school not have metal detectors, drug sniffing dogs, random pat downs in the hallways, and lockdowns ?

1

u/mad_dog_94 Jul 16 '26

When I was in HS, I thought my school felt like a pg13 prison because we had bars on the windows. This would be dystopian if it wasn't literally real life

1

u/headrush46n2 Jul 16 '26

parents emailing teachers every day?

Fucking nightmare. I treated my parents like enemy spies, they didn't know shit.

1

u/_MatVenture_ Jul 16 '26

I for one cannot image living in country where treating school like a PG-13 prison is required.

1

u/fenwickfox Jul 16 '26

I just watched "teach you a lesson" on netflix. Great series btw (kinda like a real life anime). Most of the events in that are based off real life. If it's a big enough problem that a school is requesting this, it's a big enough problem. Schools need more agency.

1

u/Dantai Jul 16 '26

I watched a movie called Pay it Forward recently, blame algorithm clips....released in 2000. Like 26 years ago, kids in Nevada were going through metal detectors at schools, and smuggling knives through it and whatever...all the way back then!

I've never seen or experienced them in Canada, at least yet. But dayuuumn, America wtf!

1

u/Helpful-Dot-3782 Jul 16 '26

I mean when I went to high school the only phone we had were Nokia bricks and maybe early flip phones that had only t9 texting, calling, and snake on it. Thereā€™s so much on the internet to distract kids now thereā€™s no way they should be able to access that during structured learning time.

1

u/PracticalJob2427 Jul 16 '26

PG 13's giving them too much credit.

1

u/Backyardt0rnados Jul 16 '26

I went to school a really long time ago. Like my class reunion is older than the average population of reddit. But school absolutely felt like prison to me in the nineteen hundreds.

1

u/Milon_Z Jul 16 '26

they've had metal detectors in schools going back into the 80s, it's not really that new

1

u/Smallbunsenpai Jul 17 '26

Thatā€™s how I felt in high school and that was in the mid 2010s.