PM
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has said that children should not be using cell phones in schools, citing the health impacts of cell phones as well as the success of state laws that have banned cell phones in their schools.
“Cell phones also produce electric, magnetic radiation, which has been shown to damage, to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day, and to and to cause cellular damage and even cancer,” Kennedy told Fox and Friends during a segment.
“Cell phone use and social media use on the cell phone has been directly connected with depression, with poor performance in schools, with suicidal ideation, with substance abuse. And you know … other countries that have done this, the states that are doing this have found that it is a much healthier environment when kids are not using cell phones in schools. And the teachers loved it.” more
RFK has been a pretty busy guy.
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bay-area-biotech-layoffs-trump-20234682.php
I like it but I’m a little torn; who is going to record fanatical lefty teachers?
I went back to school in 2011. I had a lab the first year. The instructor did NOT want to even see your phone during class. One girl kept bringing her phone out. The instructor threatened to send her to the Dean’s office, possibly leading to expulsion.
The next year, that instructor was made department head, replacing the previous guy who was something of a goof ball. That guy then taught one of the two lab sessions. Discipline was nil in his session. I later heard that the passing rate on the professional exam for students in his session was half that of the other guy’s students.
Get government 100% OUT of the education process. That includes STEALING FROM PROPERTY OWNERS ON BEHALF OF PARENTS. Cell phones are not why these kids are stupid…government control is.
MrLiberty
Kids aren’t stupid, they are ignorant because of Federal Government and state bureaucracy, Poor school Boards, too many administrators, Teachers’ Unions, low quality tenured teachers, disinterested parents and distracted kids.
It’s a BIG Pie with a lot of slices (blame) to go around.
Ridding the Bureaucracy at the federal, State and Local schools will force accountability and hopefully create a merit based system to reward or discipline (up to and including termination) Teachers and administrators.
FTA: The biggest reason, however, that some did not support the ban is that **they wanted to be able to reach their child at any time** with 58 percent of respondents sharing this belief.
Dear parents: Neither you nor your children are so vital/important that this type of direct communication is required. For decades parents simply called the school office to relay messages to their kids. I’d be willing to wager that no one died as a result.
Want both the most improvement and the biggest cost savings?
— Fire all administrators above Principal.
— Fire all teachers who are union members.
— Remove everything but reference books from the libraries.
Simple. Easy. Effective. Politically impossible.
(Uncle Al, they could leave the fiction, especially historic classics. It’s cultural. Just not have anything published after 1980.)
There is absolutely no need for younger children to have cell phones at all, period. They should not be hanging out anywhere without adult supervision. When they’re old enougn to be wandering and going places on their own, say 10 or 12 and over, then flip phones.
By the way, among other things, our schools also are doing bad because (1) they have too many children who don’t speak English, (2) they are overcrowded and this is not helped by too many administrators and not enough teachers, (3) they are inundated with administrivia, federa; and state lobbied “education theory” nonsense (whole word reading, new math), and woke crap instead of just teaching the basics, (4) mainstreaming, and (5) since 70s feminism, teachers more and more have tended to come from the least intelligent portion of college students because the smarter women have gone into other fields.
All of these problems are easily fixed.
Then you can go after the adults at work on their phones when there’s work to do.
You just have to do my Boss and his wife. Should trickle down from there.
Don’t worry about me. I’m working.
@janitor:
I agree in principal, but remember these school kids have access to non-school community libraries. The schools should be schools, so their libraries should support only what’s going on in the classrooms (except for the teachers’ sexual atrocities).
Rewind back to 1973 and yer gonna cure a LOT of problems… including the push on special interests and the layering-up of administrators out the Grand Wazoo!!
Return to classic education along the Hillsdale elementary/middle/high school model. I’m surprised no one has tapped Larry Arnn to work alongside the DoE and roll-out their education model.
https://academy.hillsdale.edu/
Psst: They have a program for Home-schoolers, too!
We couldn’t even have an AM/FM transistor radio with an earplug back in the day.
Pocket calculators were banned at first, too. If they saw you with a T100 they considered you a cheater.
Jason
Monday, 24 March 2025, 14:20 at 2:20 pm
“I like it but I’m a little torn; who is going to record fanatical lefty teachers?”
…schools should be REQUIRED to have a camera in every classroom focused on the teacher, recording every moment of every class and accessible live or taped, on-demand to any parent or any taxpayer in the district.
After all, they have nothing to be ashamed of.
Now, do they?
I wonder how many kids can do math with a pencil and paper today?
A ban on using them in federal government offices also. They use them as much as the kids do, instead of working. I’ve seen it for many years.