France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools

I think this is a mainly positive move. Mobile phones are massive distractions to children, especially in a school context. When it comes to young children, I am skeptic to the use of digital technology in education in general. School should help incorporate good habits into a child's routine, such as reading books, and nailing reliance on phones into children is not something we want to be doing in schools.

TLDR: As a high school level teacher, this would be less of a problem if teachers had stronger enforcement powers. Since we often don&#x27;t - I would strongly favor a ban. If students need a computer, we have them available all day, every day.<p>As a high school level teacher, I appreciate the attitude that there are amazing opportunities for learning and skill development with computers. I agree with this wholeheartedly. That said, a majority of my students are addicted to social media (they are teenagers, after all) and <i>cannot</i> self moderate their attention and&#x2F;or behavior on this issue. They are not, generally, breaking their attention away from class for some other kind of educational outlet (for which I am already fairly lenient when appropriate). They are sending their friends snaps, plays both games, and texting.<p>Of course, using phones in class is already against school policy, but it will remain and issue until I am able to take a phone away from a student. At a prior school, this was explicitly against policy becuase it was considered a liability issue as phones are expensive personal property that the school did not want to be responsible for them. Additionally, parents give minimal support and&#x2F;or flip out when it happens. Very few have the willingness to keep their student&#x27;s phone at home during the school day even when it is a known and acknowledged problem. Often, they simply don&#x27;t want to argue with their teen about it.<p>I believe that we - as a American culture - are still too enamoured with our smart phones to effectively acknowledge the potential negative effects they can have on our attention&#x2F;learning&#x2F;cognitive development.

The way mobile phones are being used in the present day, by both children and adults alike, is unhealthy and at the very least it can be said that the potential ill effects are not very well understood. Much like how research into the ill effects of smoking were not properly understood during its heydays in the early 20th century when it was a sign of social sophistication and took many decades before a conclusive link (to lung cancer) was established.<p>One of the major changes it has caused in our societies is the splintering of attention and erosion of the ability to confront boredom (let alone the skill to turn it into something useful).<p>For example, if you reach for your mobile phone when your friend with whom you&#x27;re having dinner excuses himself to go to the restroom, then that is a symptom. By itself, browsing some news websites or checking your social media feed is probably harmless in this context, but there is a huge opportunity cost in those missed moments where you could&#x27;ve profitably exploited that break to think about things that are important to you and to him.<p>Perhaps the ensuing conversation could&#x27;ve been steered in a deeper direction had you paused to think in those moments.

The scary thing about smartphones is how they might be permanently changing adolescent and teenage brains, and not in a good way.<p>Checking texts and emails, surfing the internet for information, and yes - even sites like HN and reddit - cause a dopamine surge in the brain that can lead to so-called &#x27;dopamine loops&#x27; [1]. In such a crucial part of brain development, my fear is we are turning kids into the equivalent of &#x27;lever-pushing monkeys&#x27; [2]. Certainly there is already evidence that smartphones might be contributing to negative development [3].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;brain-wise&#x2F;201209&#x2F;why-were-all-addicted-texts-twitter-and-google" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;brain-wise&#x2F;201209&#x2F;why-w...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=axrywDP9Ii0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=axrywDP9Ii0</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;11&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;11&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;why-are-more-ame...</a>

As a parent of three adolescents I enjoy the fact that I can reach my kids whenever and Find My Friends allows me to confirm that they made it to school safely on a snowy day, for example.<p>However.<p>I did some volunteer teaching for a couple of years at my son’s school. Interestingly, I didn’t seem to observe students reaching in and initiating engagement with their phone very often. It was almost always in response to the “buzz”. It was so clear. They are there taking notes, looking at you, or even just staring at the floor. And I would see the small “snap” bodily response that happens when the phone buzzes with whatever. And mentally they might as well have jumped up and walked straight out of class. They were gone. Not “half paying attention while looking at this thing” but completely transported to a different sphere.<p>Having every student disable all push notifications during class time would have solved nearly all the problems I witnessed. They developed “driving mode”, would sure be nice if they did an easy-to-access “class mode” where every notification of any type except a text or call from mom or dad was suppressed. Sure, some would refuse to enable class mode but with the students I taught, if I reminded at the beginning of class to turn it on, I suspect a fair amount of my students would have done it voluntarily.

Sounds like pure common sense to me. Schools are implicitly responsible for the overall well-being of kids. Many schools ban smoking, sugary snacks&#x2F;drinks, some dressing style (or non-dressing), makeup. Many parents would love to send their kids to schools without a phone, this will empower and support them.

Cell phones were banned during my years in high school, and smartphones didn’t even exist until halfway through my final year.<p>In hindsight, I am thankful for the enforcement as it made for fewer addictive interruptions in attention that I currently deal with in my professional career and personal life at large. Texting under a desk or playing a 2d game on a flip phone was about all you could get away with.<p>I doubt that my sentiment is very unique here.

The important thing in the article is that this ban concerns phone usage during breaks and lunch. Phones in classes were already forbidden long time ago.

Can we limit them for use by parents as well? Playgrounds seem to be the place parents go to look at Facebook while their kids yell &quot;look at me mummy&quot; forlornly.

Shouldn&#x27;t this be a matter for individual schools or school boards (the article says some already have this in place)?<p>I like the policy, but as I get older, I wonder why we have so many laws that control so much of what we can and can&#x27;t do. I agree this one&#x27;s pretty benign, but it still seems like an excess of authority.<p>When I was in school, if I distracted another student or played on my calculator, I&#x27;d get in trouble. Despite the lack of law banning talking, the school wasn&#x27;t impotent to enforce discipline.

Blanket bans of this kind rarely work, and policies like this are usually caused by other factors.<p>My primary school had a concrete playground without any trees, and school policy forbid us from running (so we wouldn&#x27;t hurt ourselves), from playing games like tag (so we wouldn&#x27;t run) or clapping each other&#x27;s hands (because we could hurt ourselves). We also couldn&#x27;t play card games to protect against gambling, nor gather in a group of 5 or more people for some reason. I would have loved a cellphone or anything not to be bored out of my mind during break, but that wouldn&#x27;t be necessary with a more reasonable school policy.

This is great. Actually, school that my kids goes to forbid smartphones this year. It&#x27;s been all positive.

Few things make me feel genuinely <i>old</i> like reading about smartphones in K-12 schools.<p>When I was in high school, there was a part of the student handbook that specifically forbade &quot;wireless devices&quot; used during school hours, and given that only a few kids even had basic cellular phones at the time, enforcement was not only easy, but barely necessary.<p>A modern classroom where kids are not only texting each other (something I didn&#x27;t encounter until college) but sending Snaps, posting on Instagram, and playing Clash of Clans is so far outside anything I can imagine from my time in public school as to be from a completely different culture. I thought being a teacher must be hard based on my experiences then – I can hardly fathom what it&#x27;s like today.

My kids are still young, but I&#x27;ve been thinking about what is the right moment to give them mobile phones. Ideally, I would wait like to wait until middle school and then hope they will put them into their locker during class. I think concentration is one of the important skills to cultivate, I&#x27;m probably biased because it has been so important in my career. Phones are designed to distract and break concentration, responsible phone usage seems important. Also, I see kids cycling while using their phones all the time in Holland. If I would ever catch my kids doing that they will have to hand in their phones immediately.

&gt;The minister said the ban was also a “public health message to families”, adding: “It’s good that children are not too often, or even at all, in front of a screen before the age of seven.”<p>I remember being a little kid and wanting to learn about space and submarines and sharks, and not being able to. I&#x27;d read my local library&#x27;s books on those subjects, but I lived in a little town with a puny library so quickly exhausted my supply of information. I&#x27;d have given my front teeth to have access to a tablet with wikipedia access - even just one geocities article on Great Hammerheads would&#x27;ve made me jump for joy.<p>Information diving on subjects you&#x27;re interested in is one of the greatest boons of the modern age, and I think it&#x27;s a terrible thing to deny a curious child. Yes a kid can spend all day every day on facebook or twitter or watching youtube videos, but to say <i>all</i> kids shouldn&#x27;t have access because <i>some</i> might turn into little zombies is foolish. Assuming usage is properly curated by parents or other authority figures, smart devices can be some of the most powerful tools for educating children this side of a Greek tutor.<p>Also this is a hobby horse as old as time. &quot;New Techology is evil, and it&#x27;s corrupting our youth like never before!&quot; It wasn&#x27;t true with TV, or radio, or codexes, or writing itself, and I see no reason this time in particular should be exceptional.<p>&gt;“This new announcement from the [education] ministry leaves us dubious because we’re having trouble understanding what is the real issue here. In general, we’re used to them being logical and pragmatic about things, and here, we can’t find the logic or the pragmatism in the announcements,” said Philippe Vincent, the union’s deputy general secretary.<p>Ah. So it&#x27;s a meaningless publicity stunt that will never go anywhere, and the original promise was a cynical election ploy to win the votes of luddities. Due credit to Macron’s administration though, at least they&#x27;re making token efforts to stick to their campaign promises.<p>&gt;“In ministerial meetings, we leave our phones in lockers before going in. It seems to me that this as doable for any human group, including a class,” Blanquer said in September.<p>Do you seriously see no difference between between a handful of elderly government officials leaving their phones in individual lockers guarded by armed men while they discuss affairs of state for hours on end, and hundreds of 8 year olds putting their iPhone 65s in unguarded communal bins while they run around for 15 minutes and then have to retrieve them again?

The web, and social media in particular is as addictive, and perhaps even as damaging as smoking ever was (is), albeit in less obviously perceptible ways. This is a good move.

I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s good or bad news. But what is very disappointing is that when French government deal with digital natives issues, it&#x27;s a question about &quot;should we fear about smartphones or not ?&quot; As Laurent Alexandre explains it perfectly (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rJowm24piM4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=rJowm24piM4</a>, in french) in many talks he gives those times to the French government, we should spend more thinking about how to educate our children to use and understand those new technologies, instead of fearing it and applying the &quot;good old french precautionary principle&quot; to keep our eduction system free of smartphones, full of chalk and blackboard...

I&#x27;m surprised they ban them only now, and only up to middle schools. Smartphones are the easiest way in the all history to cheat on school tests. Our parents and grandparents could write 1 or 2 math formulas or verb translations on a small piece of paper; now kids can just have all the courses of the entire year (+ Google and Wikipedia) on their iPhone, completely hidden in their pencil case. When I was in college, everybody cheated that way.

I think they must specify they banned smart mobile phones OR mobile phones<p>By reading all comments I think problem is in smart mobile phones. which have extra features for user entertainment which also act as distraction (for student during study)<p>Before coming to any decision we should not forgot that phone can also use as medium of communication with our guardian in emergency and emergency is something we could not predict.

I think this is a bad move.<p>When I was in school, I didn&#x27;t want to carry heavy books all the time.<p>I downloaded Shakespeare and other eBooks, and wrote my own script to convert the text into 1000-character iPod Notes.<p>When someone forgot their book to class, I could share mine with them.<p>Will other portable electronics be banned, or only communication devices? What about the Ti-84 calculator, which is still required for exams?

When I was a kid in high school in Belgium, mobile phones were definitely banned in every respectable high school without needing it to be enforced on a national level. You were allowed to carry it with you of course, but if anyone saw you using it, the teachers would take it away from you. That included during recess. I don&#x27;t recall ever seeing anyone using their phone in class, except maybe some kid trying to be edgy once. It was a pretty okay system that I don&#x27;t recall anyone really complaining about. Parents were happy they could contact their kids if they were worried, and it sure was nice I that I was easily able to call for help when I broke my arm while riding my bike home that one time.<p>Of course, this was before the rise of smartphones. Those only took off around the time I got my first job, so I can&#x27;t really comment on that. I definitely do recall playing Tetris and Wolfenstein 3D on my Texas Instruments calculator though.

I fully understand the thoughts against the usage of mobiles for kids and early teenagers. Notwithstanding, to me it feels awfully wrong that the state, and not the parents, prohibit the usage of anything (that does not harm others directly).<p>Same with Germany banning smartwatches for kids... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;20&#x2F;germany-bans-kids-smartwatches-that-can-be-used-for-eavesdropping&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;20&#x2F;germany-bans-kids-smartwat...</a><p>And then about enforcement. As technology progresses, I see little real room for no displays &#x2F; smart everything anywhere. I practically see it as a lost battle.<p>Still, I don&#x27;t have kids, so I do not fully comprehend the problems that parents&#x27; may have with this issue.

Wow, this is amazing. I&#x27;ve seen kids being told off for NOT having a mobile phone on them at school so they could reach their parents in case of urgency.<p>It&#x27;s amazing how mindsets can be so different in different places (and I&#x27;m saying all this with no tone of judgement).

Fantastic! Very positive move.<p>We are poisoning our minds with mobile technology. Future generations will view our use of cell phones like the radium watch factories (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Radium_Girls" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Radium_Girls</a>) or adding heroin to babies&#x27; cough syrup (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;yes-bayer-promoted-heroin-for-children-here-are-the-ads-that-prove-it-2011-11" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;yes-bayer-promoted-heroin-for...</a>).

I had a flip phone with no internet in HS, I played minesweeper on it about half a day everyday at school. It was the <i>only</i> way I had of staying awake during some of my classes. I literally fell asleep during class if I didn&#x27;t have <i>some</i> stimulation. Not having that would&#x27;ve been a torture since falling asleep is a good way to get in trouble.<p>Before I had my phone I drew. About 90% of my ink expenditure in school was drawings.<p>I would&#x27;ve probably resented the hell out of a measure like this)

There&#x27;s a funny scene in the movie Paper Plans where an Aussie school teacher makes all his students put their phones in a big hat before class starts.

I would have gotten in trouble for playing on a Gameboy in class when I was a kid. This isn&#x27;t much different.<p>Though the ban seems like an over-reach of authority. Kids should be able to use their phones during breaks. And I&#x27;m sure many will.

Parents keeping an electronic leash on their kids is also part of the problem.

Thie is completely the wrong approach. Rather, schools should work to ensure that all kids learn how to use digital devices (not just phones) for their own benefit. If all they see at home is parents or siblings on Facebook, Skype and mobile games, then that&#x27;s what they&#x27;ll do too. Schools have to teach for reality, boy try to recreate some unrealistic and nostalgic &quot;how it was in the day&quot;. Look at Finland and Estonia, they use technology meaningfully in class and get great results. It&#x27;s not about using it all the time, but about using it where it fits. Prohibiting phones will just lead to new ways of circumventing the ban, new kinds of conflicts, punishments for kids for living what is today a normal life.<p>If your only approach is to ban &amp; punish, then those phones in kids&#x27; hands will be only used for whatever is the easiest low-value engagement. Teach kids that they can use Wikipedia, ebooks, educational videos, and creative tools to satisfy their interests, look up things from class that they don&#x27;t understand, work together to make a presentation for class, programme Lego or other robots, practice vocabulary and interact with students from abroad in their second or third language, make little videos about the things they&#x27;ve learned, etc and you&#x27;ll get great results. Frontal lecture causes distractions because it&#x27;s fundamentally boring, unengaging and loses half the class. Tech can help - if used right. To give just one reference, out of thousands, see eg the OECD Report on this [1].<p>Tech can be really disruptive. And it can be a great facilitator for learning. It&#x27;s about how it&#x27;s used and whether students learnb to use it creatively, critically and constructively. You won&#x27;t learn which mushrooms are edible by being kept out of the forest, and neither by being thrown into a forest and told to do whatever. You learn to understand what is edible, harmful, useful, ... if an experienced person that knows how to do so accompanies you in the forest once in a while and shows it, explains it and watches as you try to do it yourself in a real forest that you might encounter. Keeping kids away from phones, or allowing them to do whatever will have the same results - they&#x27;ll play, eat the harmful mushrooms and fail to see the fantastic opportunities. Accompany them in using their own devices. That&#x27;s the task of an educator today - teach kids how to live in today&#x27;s world. Not smartphones every minute of the day, but also not forbidden. Use them were it fits. Show them what role they can play.<p>Principally, this requires teacher training, adapting curricula and testing, and efforts in particular to make sure no kid is left out. Those from good families with educated parents will mostly learn this through parents or after-school activities, but especially poor&#x2F;migrant&#x2F;otherwise low performing students will suffer if you don&#x27;t make sure education teaches them for the world of today.<p>Really, really sad. This is a purely ideological move, catering to an older, reluctantly digital voter population. But it is also a betrayal of the very kids it claims to help.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oecd.org&#x2F;publications&#x2F;students-computers-and-learning-9789264239555-en.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oecd.org&#x2F;publications&#x2F;students-computers-and-lear...</a>

ban is good. cell phones in class &#x2F; school is not needed and just unneccesary distraction. seeing as how addictive the devices can become, it&#x27;s imo a good thing to throttle the use of them for kids a bit. They should obviously learn about the technology to be able to cope with a highly technology oriented society, but it&#x27;s not helpful to have all kids with cell phones in schools. it will benefit their school work, and also social interaction with other kids.<p>good ban. go france!

It&#x27;s surprising that this isn&#x27;t more prevalent actually.. Here in India being caught with one just means giving up your cell for the rest of the year.

When I taught, I found that student&#x27;s having mobile phones was pretty useful.<p>They had to be kept in their bags and on silent during my lessons, unless I gave permission for them to be out.<p>They would use them to add reminders for homework, have a second screen for internet access, take photos of the board, connect to my Apple TV and then point their cameras at their work to display it to the rest of the class.<p>I rarely had issues, and when I did I would just confiscate the phone and then make the parents come in to school to collect it. That soon tempers a child&#x27;s desire to get their phone out in class.

I wonder how well this will be enforced, I have to assume that some percentage of students will still bring their phones into school.

Good riddance.

It&#x27;s good. Sounds bad, but it is good.

totally second this,hope we can do the same here,especially those smartphones are too addictive to young brains.

A lot of these problems would go away with sophisticated technological control, such as software which restricts phone use except after school ends.

BRAVO!!!!

Meanwhile, my high school was authorizing students to smoke during recess <i>in</i> the school...

There is literally no reason for an under-18 to have a mobile phone <i>at all</i>.

They were already banned 7 years ago, this policy is a scam.

I had such rules in school and no one actually was capable of explaining why exactly it was good for me. It was a long time ago and I still don&#x27;t understand

Everybody seems to agree on this. But when we continue to ban drugs. Do the same people scream &quot;prohibition does not work!&quot;?

Good move. Should be extended to colleges and workspaces too where any sort of concentrated work&#x2F;discipline is required. Nobody will die.

I think it&#x27;s mostly posturing. Mobile phones were already banned in class, and this was well enforced. But many kids, especially in cities, take public transportation to get to middle school. My experience with middle school in Paris is that it&#x27;s also very unreliable schedule-wise. When school suddenly finishes 2 hours early, I appreciate getting a text message from my kid telling me what they&#x27;re up to. It looks to me that it&#x27;ll be hard to enforce reliably - are they going to search backpacks, and keep phones in lockers during the times kids are in school ?

Jeez. I had not thought the Macron government to be so backwards. IMHO there are two issues at place:<p>1. teachers not adapting to new times. In ye olde days, teachers had the attention of the students basically guaranteed (as the only thing students could do instead of paying attention to the teacher was drawing messages on papers and passing them around). That frontal instruction is bullshit and should be a thing of the past could be ignored. Now, however, teachers have to compete with the Internet for the attention of the students - but instead of embracing the change and throw some rotten traditions over board, they ban phones. LOL.<p>2. Mobbing&#x2F;cyberbullying. I can understand that schools want to tackle this problem, but banning smartphones is a <i>symbolic</i> measure. The students will still use closed Whatsapp&#x2F;FB&#x2F;whatever groups after school, without the school being able to interfere in any way. Proper prevention measures, like teaching the students what the effects of social media can be, provide counseling, social workers, etc. - all that costs money, a lot of it. And so politicians rather ban smartphones so that the (rightfully) concerned parents shut up without having to spend huge sums of money.

I&#x27;d like to be able to call my kid in the event of an emergency. I understand banning general cell phone use during class hours, but it&#x27;s infringing on civil liberties to force an unrestricted ban