back to article Mobiles at school could be MAKING YOUR KID MORE DUMBER

Restricting smart watch and mobile phone use can be a low-cost policy to reduce educational inequalities. This is the conclusion of a report by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy working at the London School of Economics Centre for Economic Performance (pdf) and Louisiana State University. The survey looked at a number …

  1. BongoJoe

    Irony Alert

    I just hope that the the Irony Alert Flag has been raised due to a purposeful and playful El Reg and not by a subEditor having had a mobile during his English lessons...

  2. frank ly

    Extrapolation

    "As to whether parents should ban the mobile phone at home, Prof Beland told us: “I cannot answer this question with our data.”

    Meanwhile, a Daily Mail columnist and wife of a senior UK politician has made the obvious connection that seems to have eluded these so-called scientists.,

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/sarah-vine-says-allowing-under-16s-to-use-smartphones-is-just-as-toxic-as-underage-drinking-sex-and-illegal-drug-taking-10262894.html

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Extrapolation

      Underage drinking sex? A new activity?

    2. P. Lee

      Re: Extrapolation

      It isn't just children, adults also go into a comatose state and become unresponsive to locally generated input. They lose the ability to abide by social conventions, ignoring those around them and communicating only with those who aren't in the room.

      Is it "worse" than alcohol etc? It depends how you define it. Is alcohol worse than heroin? In absolute measures, it causes more damage overall.

      "Smart"phones' bad effects are amplified because their prevalence undermines the social rejection of their downsides.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Gimp

        Re: Extrapolation

        It isn't just children, adults also go into a comatose state and become unresponsive to locally generated input.

        I have also reflected on bringing cattle prods to the synchronization meetings as people not currently "on air" are prodding the portable bullshit for "urgent mails" or repeatedly tapping the screen because there is some game on for which you have to respond in realtime to other players (something invented by the Google cancer, I hear). It's like something out of a comedy show.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. edge_e
    Boffin

    higher achieving students being better able to cope with other distractions

    I'd like to see further study in this area. Is it becasue the smart kids manage the distraction better, or is it because the pace of the lesson is so slow because of their less able peers that they're bored?

    When I was at school, the bright kid was the one staring out the window.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: higher achieving students being better able to cope with other distractions

      Chicken - egg, egg - chicken.

      Managing multiple inputs, running the "school process" as a background thread which can preempt the "staring out of the window" and "reading a book under the desk" threads and managing distractions in general are 95%+ of getting high grades in school. It is also one of the reasons why girls tend to do significantly better academically up to a certain age.

      They are simply better in juggling 10 things at the same time at that age. Based on non-scientific observations of my kids, the daughter can run 3-4 tasks at at the same time without botching them (f.e. doing homework while listening to music _AND_ watching pop-sci and pop-engineering shows on BBC iPlayer at the same time +/- a background thread playing Star Wars commander). Junior can handle at most one. Asking him to do two things in parallel is a recipe for disaster.

  4. Jason Hindle

    They actually allow phones to be switched on during class?

    Paint me surprised.

    1. Suricou Raven

      Re: They actually allow phones to be switched on during class?

      It's not hard to hide a phone under a desk, or to quickly slip it beneath a book when the teacher is heading their way.

    2. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: They actually allow phones to be switched on during class?

      One thing is to ban mobile phones in class.

      Another thing entirely is to ban mobile phones in class and enforce the ban.

      1. Paul Kinsler

        Re: Another thing entirely is to ban mobile phones in class and enforce the ban.

        Read the article: they take into account estimated compliance rates.

    3. NotWorkAdmin

      Re: They actually allow phones to be switched on during class?

      I'm horrified too. Presumably phones are banned in exams at least, so the schools know how to do it.

    4. Efros

      Re: They actually allow phones to be switched on during class?

      Not here, but they are usually on vibrate. What is most annoying is that a lot of kids receive texts and calls from their parents during classes.

      1. Graham Marsden

        Re: They actually allow phones to be switched on during class?

        Allegedly they use versions of those "mosquito" devices as the notification tone because they can hear pitches that high whereas most adults can't.

        Although I've also seen it said that kids can be spotted using their phones because most people don't tend to look down at their crotches and smile...

  5. msknight

    Not related to the article...

    ...but that's very neat writing on that blackboard. I can actually read it, for a start!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not related to the article...

      I have seen quite a fe blackboards in my life and this is a shoop.

  6. werdsmith Silver badge

    The misspellings and orthographical errors that are propagated on phones and social media are now so accepted they are becoming correct according to the dumbing down movement. The kids even see correct English as wrong.

    And by "correct English" I mean the standard that is required by GCSE examiners, and some kids are losing out because of it.

    Loosing out.....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @werdsmith

      They need to put a break on it.

    2. PNGuinn
      Mushroom

      @ werdsmith

      "And by "correct English" I mean the standard that is required by GCSE examiners, and some kids are losing out because of it."

      Er - you wot???

      Or did you mean that some kids are loosing out by the "standard"......?

    3. Kubla Cant

      @werdsmith

      Citation?

      The standard of English found on the Internet suggests your rite. But theirs a well-attested phenomenon of contextual usage. It's most noticeable in speech: children use different accents, vocabulary and syntax depending on the social context. In writing too - even the bottom quartile know that the language they use for texting is unsuitable for essays.

      Bear in mind that the widespread use of phones and computers probably means that all children use written communication far more than previous generations. Paradoxically, solecisms could be the price we pay for more widespread literacy.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: @werdsmith

        @Kubla Cant

        Citation? Is this an academic exercise? This, and the action to be taken to deal with it, was discussed at a school governor meeting I attended.

        Not texting language, but normal language used incorrectly (according to exam standards) that children believe to be correct because to them it is prevalent.

        And as for "solecism" I must thank you for being my Susie Dent on that one.

        Just need an Arthur Dent now.

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon

          Re: @werdsmith

          "Just need an Arthur Dent now."

          What?

          Wears the tee?

      2. J 3
        Headmaster

        Re: @werdsmith

        "The standard of English found on the Internet suggests YOUR RITE. But THEIRS a well-attested phenomenon of contextual usage."

        Er... I hope you were going for "funny" there. On purpose.

  7. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Old news

    Research on how using a mobile phone impairs other cognitive functions has already been done. As has research on the demands placed on us by brief, mediated communication: like low cocoa chocolate it's sweet but unfulfilling thus requiring a more frequent fix.

  8. SVV

    Amazing piece of research

    I womder hiow long these academics spent on this groundbreaking study to reach the conclusion that "being taught" and "doing work" in class result in better academic results than "playing videogames" and "doing Facebook"?

    Certainly my best teachers were the ones who actually stood in front of the class teaching - especially the maths teacher who could spend 40 minutes of the lesson on hilarious stories and sarcastic putting the world to rights before a lucid explanation of some difficult new topic for the last 20 minutes, knowing he had gained the full undivided attention of the whole class : everyone in that class got a Grade A at O Level. The worst ones were the ones who just pointed us at a chapter in a textbook and then more or less left us to work through it before doing the written exercises at the end. Those were the most "spend time staring out of the window" type classes. I suspect that a lot of the latter still goes on rather than the former, and no amount of rebranding as free schools and academies is going to make the slightest bit of difference when the kids are having to plough through "Key Stage 4, Module 17B" in order to get the marks that get the school its' ranking in those risible "league tables".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Amazing piece of research

      Indeed ground-breaking! Who would have thought that distractions like mobile phones indeed distract pupils!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm

    6.4% vs 14.23% of a standard deviation shift?

    1) note the spurious decimal places

    2) ... isn't there some more rigorous way of determining statistical significance? A quick look at the pdf doesn't provide much reassurance - but maybe I missed something...

    1. Paul Kinsler

      Re: Hmm

      See fig.2, with 95% confidence limits indicated.

    2. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: Hmm

      "6.41% of a standard deviation"

      I admit it is a while since my statistics education but that seems a strange way to specify a change. To make any sense we would need to know the standard deviation and confidence levels, and understand what those terms mean. Perhaps it is marginally better than the way mainstream media treat statistical results.

      Can anyone enlighten me?

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Hmm

        Can anyone enlighten me?

        Well, basically, that means the difference is so miniscule as to be irrelevant. They are talking about an improvement in test scores by 3% or 4% (absolute) for the lowest scoring 25% of pupils even in the case where there may be a vast gap between the good and bad scoring pupils' results.

        Let's say Johnny Aintgood scored 40% in a test whilst being allowed to use his smartphone for underage-drink-sex. Well, the same Johnny would have scored maybe 43%-44% with the ban.

        1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

          Re: Hmm

          Many thanks, consider me more enlightened.

  10. jake Silver badge

    Back in the day ...

    ... we learned "the three Rs". And we invented TehIntraWebTubes.

    Today? Folks "in the channel" (whatever the fuck THAT means) have zero idea how it all works, and the teenagers are drastically being left behind when it comes to how technology works at a ones&zeros level.

    Suggestion: Lose anything more complicated than log tables, sliderules, the dewey decimal system, dictionaries and encyclopedias until the kiddies are ~18 years old.

    Why, exactly, does a 6 year old need a so-called "smart phone"?

    Seriously. If you don't know how transistors work, you'll never really understand computers.

    1. Martin
      WTF?

      Re: Back in the day ...

      Seriously. If you don't know how transistors work, you'll never really understand computers.

      Oh, come on.

      I have been working with computers for over forty years. I have written in programming languages from assembler on minicomputers and microcomputers to Python and Perl.

      I have written software for theatre lighting equipment and coin mechanisms - all of which needed a real understanding of the hardware behind the software I was writing.

      I've written disc operating systems from the chip level upwards.

      I have written software for bespoke hardware, working in tandem with the hardware engineer to create a working system - me debugging and patching the software, him debugging and cutting and soldering links to ICs on the board.

      By any reasonable standards, I understand computers.

      But I have no fucking idea how a transistor works. I just know it does.

      1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

        Re: Back in the day ...

        "But I have no fucking idea how a transistor works."

        If used as logic gates, it's not that hard to understand. They'd be either almost open or almost closed. Everything inbetween is an unholy mess. But for some strange reason this mess seems to be a preferred state for the analogue folks. Go figure.

        /joke.jpg/

        1. Bucky 2

          Re: Back in the day ...

          Everybody knows what a transistor does. I'd have to agree, though, that exactly how it does it is lost on me, too.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Back in the day ...

      One of the first things you learn in computer science is that transistors have nothing to do with how a computer works. The fundamental two logic gates (not and or) can be implemented with valves, relays, bipolar and electrostatic transistors, and even fluid gates. D

      I do know how a transistor works, but this has only been relevant to analogue design. Not many people do that.

  11. FartingHippo
    Boffin

    Prof Beland told us: “I cannot answer this question with our data."

    Proper Boffin.

    I wish politicians and journalists would apply the same rigour before opening their mouths.

    1. Simon Rockman

      Re: Prof Beland told us: “I cannot answer this question with our data."

      Indeed, which is why I included it. A completely honest answer. It wasn't even the traditional funding request of "We would need to do more research".

      Simon

  12. Whit.I.Are

    Teaching kids

    Schools are supposed to teach kids stuff. So how about they teach kids the accepted norms of mobile phone usage - turn your phone off when you're in the cinema, don't use your phone at the dinner table, don't use your phone in class or you'll fail your exams etc.

    1. J 3

      Re: Teaching kids

      "Schools are supposed to teach kids stuff."

      Obviously. But are basic good manners one of them? Sure they can help with that, specially in the "interacting with lots of people" kind of situations, but good parents/family should probably be the ones doing most of that otherwise. The blaming of schools for the lack of simple human interaction skills sometimes goes too far, methinks.

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: more?

      Or dumberer.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: more?

        WOW! SUCH DUMB. MUCH DOOFOSITY.

      2. Al Black

        Re: more?

        Yes: Mobiles at school could be MAKING YORE KID MORE DUMBERER!

  14. FredBloggs61

    And the award for the most obvious result from research goes to...

    ...

    Next in the research headlights is "Is a lack of authority in the classroom to blame for declining educational standards?"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And the award for the most obvious result from research goes to...

      In terms of my expectations, for something so "obvious", I was surprised that the effect seemed so small.

  15. Joey M0usepad Silver badge

    It never occurred to me that schoolkids were allowed to play on their phones during lessons!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Listen gramps, I have bad news for yoo...

  16. ecofeco Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    The kids?

    They certainly make my coworkers dumber than shit.

  17. MrZoolook
    Paris Hilton

    Translation: I'm a cock!

    Yeah but u now dat txt is da wy 4wd rite so wot u on abt ne way

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