This academic year, New York City’s public schools have made a big change from the previous year’s policies: students are now barred from using cellphones during school hours. One student who spoke with ABC News in September had positive things to say about the ban, telling them, “I feel like it helps students be not as distracted. I think it does keep students focused, those who do want to focus.”
Students having more bandwidth to focus is a good thing, but that isn’t the only effect the phone ban has had for students. As Gothamist’s Jessica Gould reports, not having easy access to a clock on one’s phone has revealed something about certain students: reading a clock is not their forte.
Cardozo High School assistant principal Tiana Millen told Gothamist that the phone ban revealed that some students have never learned to tell time. Millen called the ability “a major skill that they’re not used to at all.”
Another teacher who spoke with Gothamist told Gould that they’ve been repeatedly asked how much time is left during their class, which has necessitated some impromptu lessons in how clocks work. In their defense, some students told Gothamist that several classroom clocks were broken, hence the confusion over the time.
Kids Inherited Smartphones. Now They’re Getting Rid of Them.
Gen Z (and the oldest of Gen Alpha) are sick of the addictive rectangles they never asked forThis is not the only significant technological shift that has come up in schools across the country as a result of a phone ban. This fall, The New York Times‘ Callie Holtermann wrote about students who had sought ways to listen to their music of choice without a smartphone. Their solution? Finding dedicated music players — from used iPods to portable CD players. Is the musical technology of tomorrow the same as the musical technology of yesterday? That just might be the case.
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