In America they started off banned as soon as kids started getting them in the early 00s, but then some years later the bans became unenforced or even undone because, apparently, parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
At least in my time they were pretty much banned. You could have your phone on you but if you got caught using it during class, they'd just confiscate it. Of course, some exceptions apply like if a teacher informed of some upcoming event, you could pull up your phone and set it in your calendar without getting chewed out. Not sure what's happened since.
At my son's school, they have to put the cell phones into the "phone hotel" at the beginning of the day, and they pick them back up at the end. But it is performance only, really. If the kid really wants a cell phone, they'll just put an old one in the phone hotel and keep their real one hidden in their bag. But even that isn't really done all that much, as they're required to have laptops for class and they can do anything social and/or distracting they'd want to do on the phone on the laptop instead.
I went to primary school in 1999-2008 and it was the same for me. After that I started my secondary education in business school in 2008 and there were basically zero restrictions on smartphone use. Smartphones probably became ubiquitous in primary school after that too, but this law seems to also target secondary schools which sounds stricter than it used to be.
> parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
It really is a dumb argument. Your primary concern in a school shooting should be getting out safely not messing around with your phone. One more 911 call won't make police any more effective. The phone isn't making you any safer. If anything, it's a distraction putting you in danger. Once you've made it to safety, you won't have any trouble contacting your parents whether or not you have a smartphone.
And thats no reason to let kids do empty highly addictive activity unhinged instead of getting prepared for later life. Emotional reactions != smart ones.
I've read the same comment from you as a response to three different comments. I will just answer here:
"There is substantial evidence to suggest that education influences intelligence.[3]" (From Wikipedia)
[3] Baltes, P., & Reinert, G. (1969). Cohort effects in cognitive development in children as revealed by cross sectional sequences. Developmental Psychology, 1, 169-177.
Why couldn't the school have prepared me for that when I was 16? Why does preparation take precisely 12 years and only then I can really learn anything.
Maybe you're right. You're taking your own anecdotes as evidence that schooling is useless. If schooling and university didn't teach you not to do that then maybe it's not all it's cracked up to be.
The curricula for school and early university semesters are largely standardized, which allows me to generalize my observations as all other students had to learn roughly the same in school and university.
What was taught in school over an entire semester usually was a single lecture in university. At least for the mathematics courses, where actually similar things were taught, just from drastically different perspectives.
If you're capable of university level mathematics then you're probably not the audience that school mathematics classes are most concerned about. It's unfortunate, but schools are trying to raise their average grades and your grades were likely to be good regardless.
Surely you had peers at school that found mathematics to be challenging, or even struggled?
Maybe the particular school you went to was terrible _for you_, but personally I learned a lot, both which helped me both at the (local equivalent) university I went after school and later in life.
Sure, I am guilty of being polarizing. But I honestly do believe that my 12 years of schooling were in large parts a waste of time and I would like it if people at least considered the possibility that you can have children do other things.
Are you implying we should school them the Spartan way rather then? Would that prepare them for life in a better way? Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
>Or, what do you think would be valuable then to do (purposely not saying learn) during those twelve years?
I think that this is different between children.
Actually I think it could be extremely valuable to learn, but then the child's activities should actually focus on learning effectively. And sitting in a classroom with children not that interested in learning and a teacher trying to find some middle ground is not helping that.
Personally I believe that with a good school system I would have been perfectly fine doing university courses at 16 and a good school system would have encouraged me to accomplish exactly that.
> kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
Considering the US is a country where two dozen cops stay out of a school with an active school shooter until they have run out of bullets ... yeah, it is. No-one wants to hear the local TV station run the dying screams of their children. Better not give them phones so they can call for help (or give the cops information, which would be pointless to begin with).
In America they started off banned as soon as kids started getting them in the early 00s, but then some years later the bans became unenforced or even undone because, apparently, parents said that their kids needed phones because school shooters (which is a dumb argument.)
But that shouldn't apply in Finland at all.