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For decades, murder has been more common in states with capital punishment than in those where it is not used.

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NY Times

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Imane Belaroussi, from left, Grace Blahourou and Zoélinh Masson on their phones after school in Paris. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

PARIS - The eighth-grade girls already know what to expect from France's new smartphone ban in all primary and middle schools because their school voluntarily instituted one last year.

"Annoying," was the assessment of Zoélinh Masson, 12, as her friend Grace Blahourou, 13, agreed.

Still, they said that with no smartphones, students did talk to one another more.

France's education ministry hopes that its smartphone ban, which took effect at the beginning of September and applies to students from first through ninth grades, will get schoolchildren to pay more attention in class and interact more, and several studies suggest such correlations.

Some experts are skeptical that the ban can be enforced, and some teachers question the merits of insulating children from the internet-dominated world they will face outside school. But the French government believes that without minimizing distractions, children will never learn the basics.

"If we want to prepare children in the 21st century, we must give them the tools of modernity: mastery of math, of general culture, the ability to flourish in social relationships, a capacity to discuss with others, to understand and respect others and then very strong digital skills," said Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer.

"It's a message we send to society: Do not always be on your phones."

The smartphone ban expands on a current law that applied only to junior high grades and forbade the use of smartphones during class. The new law includes lower grades and will also apply to the entire school grounds, including the schoolyard. The only exception is when smartphones' use is assigned by a teacher.

Around 93 percent of French children ages 12 to 17 have mobile phones, and an estimated 86 percent in that age group have models that support apps, according to French government and research institute data from 2016 and 2017.

Just under two-thirds of middle school and junior high students are signed up on social networks like Instagram and Snapchat and video games like Fortnite.

The problems with smartphone use are well known. Students' insecurity can rise as they constantly worry about keeping up with "likes" and "shares" on social media. Teachers worry about cyberbullying and abusive practical jokes like photographing classmates from under the bathroom door and then posting the images online.

France is rare in legislating a solution. In Denmark, legislators are examining a similar approach, but have said they do not want to put it into law. In Britain, each school makes its own rules. And in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio won points three years ago when he lifted a school cellphone ban put in place under his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg.

In New York, as in many American school districts, parents want to be able to check on their children throughout the day. And in school shootings in the United States, students have often used their phones to call 911 and report "active shooter" situations.

In France, where there have been no school shootings, few parents have objected to the ban. The law, a campaign promise of President Emmanuel Macron, flew through the legislature this summer with strong support from parents and many teachers.

About 60 percent of French junior high schools already had similar bans, said Frédérique Rolet, the secretary general of a national teachers union.

Under the new law, students can bring their phones to school but must keep them out of sight in their school bags or lockers. If they are caught using them, the phones can be confiscated for a day.

Around 93 percent of French children ages 12 to 17 have mobile phones, and most have models that support apps. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

Yet students say they know how to get around the ban.

Grace, the eighth grader, said that even after her school, Françoise Dolto middle school in Paris, introduced its rule last year, she continued to film her friends for Snapchat and Instagram. She just did it clandestinely.

Both she and her classmate Zoélinh say they take their phones to school even though they are not allowed to use them there.

"In theory I could leave it at home and pick it up after school, but I'd be missing something," Zoélinh said. "I would not feel good at all."

Grace added, half joking, "We'd be depressed."

Both said they felt a void when their phones were not close by. During an interview in a cafe, both girls restrained themselves from doing much texting, but kept touching their phones.

Teachers also doubt whether the ban is enforceable, especially with young teenagers for whom rebellion often trumps any inclination to follow a teacher's instructions.

"I just don't know how the law will be put in place," said Cécile Dhondt, who teaches students who have trouble keeping up in class at College Jean Jaurès middle school in a suburb of Lille, in northern France.

As for taking away phones if students refuse to put them away, she said, "If I confiscated them, my students would not come anymore to class, and that is not the objective."

David Scellier, who teaches French language and literature at a school in a Paris suburb, said that he doubted the law would be an effective "answer to the addiction problem," and that responsibility was being put in the wrong place.

"Who buys the phones for the children?" he said. "Who doesn't give them a framework and set limits on using them? Parents. But everyone blames the school, which is very typical in France: School should be responsible for all the children's problems."

However, he acknowledged that phones were a top concern of the young teachers he trains, who inevitably ask how to deal with smartphone use in class. "Most of them think that they will be more protected with the law," he said. "Let's wait and see. But I doubt it."

For sociologists and scientists in France who study attention spans and the digital culture, removing smartphones from school makes sense even if it does not fully address the difficulty of managing the siren call of social networks.

"It's a culture of presentism," Monique Dagnaud, a researcher at the government-run National Center for Scientific Research, said of social media. "It creates a rapport with the world that is very immediate, very visual, fun."

"The culture of the internet is of immediate pleasure," she added - the inverse of school, which is about delayed gratification.

Smartphone use sets off the production of dopamine - "the same system that is implicated in addictions and drugs," said Jean-Philippe Lachaux, a neuroscientist at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research.

"The problem with the telephone is that it reduces all sensation to what you see and the body disappears," he said. "The world is very much reduced."

That makes the smartphone ban all the more important, he said, so that children "open up to the rest of the world" for at least a few hours a day.

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France Bans Smartphones in Schools Through 9th Grade. Will It Help Students? (Published 2018)

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PARIS - The eighth-grade girls already know what to expect from France's new smartphone ban in all primary and middle schools because their school voluntarily instituted one last year. "Annoying," was the assessment of Zoélinh Masson, 12, as her friend Grace Blahourou, 13, agreed.

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Most deaths occur during the first five minutes. Preparing teachers and students would save lives.

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LEWISTON - Class wasn't in session in the Lewiston-Porter School District on Friday as members of local law enforcement used a pair of buildings to perform drills aimed at helping them improve their response to an active shooter emergency.

By 7:30 a.m., the garage next to the district's administration office off Creek Road was bursting with uniformed officers from the Lewiston Police Department as well as State Police and Border Patrol agents.

The contingent of law enforcement officers arrived on the scene as part of a large-scale active shooter drill involving the district's primary education building and high school.

"We've been doing this, probably since Columbine as a police department with the school district here," Police Chief of Lewiston Frank Previte said following Friday's drill. "I can tell you that in almost every case you see an active shooter... they're communities just like this... when the news goes there... what's the first thing you hear people say all the time? 'We never thought it could happen here.' "

The drills themselves lasted approximately an hour and half each. Within them, scenarios were played out, blanks were fired and "bad guys" were apprehended or shot by trained law enforcement. Students were not present for these drills but, according to Previte, they have been involved in "lockdown" tests and were aware of the protocol expected in case an actual shooter arrived on school grounds.

"What we do during those lockdown drills is we walk around with the staff," Previte said. "We look in a room and all of a sudden we see one kid sitting out, visible because he's not all the way over, and that lets us know we have to do something else, change the configuration, maybe, but find a solution to that problem."

Mount St. Mary's Hospital also participated in this year's active-shooter scenario. Roughly 30 "victims" were transported by emergency workers, covered in fake blood and bullet holes to "stress" the response of the hospital, said Dr. Patricia Grupka, assistant superintendent for administrative services of Lewiston-Porter. During the drill the voices of the "victims" were a constant as they asked for help and begged first responders to attend to their wounds.

"This is the first time we're actually transporting to the local hospital to see if we can stress out the hospital, to see how they would respond to multiple injuries," Grupka said. "So, that's what makes this kind of unique."

Teachers were instructed to give medical professionals detailed descriptions of their "injuries" and act the part of a terrified gun-shot victim. At the same time, first responders were instructed to not aid the "victims" and to continue to hunt for the threat. Later, emergency workers helped the "wounded" with stretchers after the "bad guy" was taken down.

"You'll have representatives of all these agencies and others join up in a real-life scenario, so for us to get together and get this training, it's vital," Josh Barrett, a member of the Border Patrol said. "Afterwards it's so vital to do a 'hot wash' to say what went wrong? What were the positives, what were the negatives? If we run into communication issues during the scenario, that's something we can discuss. All the departments are on the same sheet of music."

Previte echoed the sentiment after the drills had ended.

"We all have to work together," he said. "It helps us standardize our tactics."

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Active shooter drill at Lew-Port offers lessons for law enforcement

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LEWISTON - Class wasn't in session in the Lewiston-Porter School District on Friday as members of local law enforcement used a pair of buildings to perform drills aimed at helping them improve their response to an active shooter emergency.

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There's scant evidence that they're effective. They can, however, be psychologically damaging-and they reflect a dismaying view of childhood.

Updated at 11:12 a.m. ET on March 13, 2019.

At 10:21 a.m. on December 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a "code red" lockdown. "This is not a drill," a voice announced over the PA system. At the same moment, teachers received a text message warning of an active shooter on campus. Fearful students took shelter in classrooms. Many sobbed hysterically, others vomited or fainted, and some sent farewell notes to parents. A later announcement prompted a stampede in the cafeteria, as students fled the building and jumped over fences to escape. Parents flooded 911 with frantic calls.

Later it was revealed, to the fury of parents, teachers, and students, that in fact this was a drill, the most realistic in a series of drills that the students of Lake Brantley, like students across the country, have lately endured. In the year since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last February, efforts to prepare the nation's students for gunfire have intensified. Educators and safety experts have urged students to deploy such unlikely self-defense tools as hockey pucks, rocks, flip-flops, and canned food. More commonly, preparations include lockdown drills in which students sit in darkened classrooms with the shades pulled. Sometimes a teacher or a police officer plays the role of a shooter, moving through the hallway and attempting to open doors as children practice staying silent and still.

These drills aren't limited to the older grades. Around the country, young children are being taught to run in zigzag patterns so as to evade bullets. I've heard of kindergartens where words like barricade are added to the vocabulary list, as 5- and 6-year-olds are instructed to stack chairs and desks "like a fort" should they need to keep a gunman at bay. In one Massachusetts kindergarten classroom hangs a poster with lockdown instructions that can be sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star": Lockdown, Lockdown, Lock the door / Shut the lights off, Say no more. Beside the text are picture cues-a key locking a door; a person holding up a finger to hush the class; a switch being flipped to turn off the lights. The alarm and confusion of younger students is hardly assuaged by the implausible excuses some teachers offer-for instance, that they are practicing what to do if a wild bear enters the classroom, or that they are having an extra-quiet "quiet time."

In the 2015-16 school year, 95 percent of public schools ran lockdown drills, according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics. And that's to say nothing of actual (rather than practice) lockdowns, which a school will implement in the event of a security concern-a threat that very well may turn out to be a hoax, perhaps, or the sound of gunfire in the neighborhood. A recent analysis by The Washington Post found that during the 2017-18 school year, more than 4.1 million students experienced at least one lockdown or lockdown drill, including some 220,000 students in kindergarten or preschool.

In one sense, the impulse driving these preparations is understandable. The prospect of mass murder in a classroom is intolerable, and good-faith proposals for preventing school shootings should be treated with respect. But the current mode of instead preparing kids for such events is likely to be psychologically damaging. See, for instance, the parting letter a 12-year-old boy wrote his parents during a lockdown at a school in Charlotte, North Carolina, following what turned out to be a bogus threat: "I am so sorry for anything I have done, the trouble I have caused," he scribbled. "Right now I'm scared to death. I need a warm soft hug ... I hope that you are going to be okay with me gone."

As James Hamblin wrote for The Atlantic last February, there is precious little evidence that the current approach is effective:

Studies of whether active-shooter drills actually prevent harm are all but impossible. Case studies are difficult to parse. In Parkland, for example, the site of the recent shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, had an active-shooter drill just last month. The suspect had been through such drills, and may have used them to his advantage.*

Moreover, the scale of preparedness efforts is out of proportion to the risk. Deaths from shootings on school grounds remain extremely rare compared with those resulting from accidental injury, which is the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. In 2016, there were 787 accidental deaths (a category that includes fatalities due to drowning, fires, falls, and car crashes) among American children ages 5 to 9-a small number, considering that there are more than 20 million children in this group. Cancer was the next-most-common cause of death, followed by congenital anomalies. Homicide of all types came in fourth. To give these numbers yet more context: The Washington Post has identified fewer than 150 people (children and adults) who have been shot to death in America's schools since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, in Colorado. Not 150 people a year, but 150 in nearly two decades.

Preparing our children for profoundly unlikely events would be one thing if that preparation had no downside. But in this case, our efforts may exact a high price. Time and resources spent on drills and structural upgrades to school facilities could otherwise be devoted to, say, a better science program or hiring more experienced teachers. Much more worrying: School-preparedness culture itself may be instilling in millions of children a distorted and foreboding view of their future. It's also encouraging adults to view children as associates in a shared mission to reduce gun violence, a problem whose real solutions, in fact, lie at some remove from the schoolyard.

We've been down this road before. In an escalating set of preparations for nuclear holocaust during the 1950s, the "duck and cover" campaign trained children nationwide to huddle under their desk in the case of a nuclear blast. Some students in New York City were even issued dog tags, to be worn every day, to help parents identify their bodies. Assessments of this period suggest that such measures contributed to pervasive fear among children, 60 percent of whom reported having nightmares about nuclear war.

Decades later, a new generation of disaster-preparedness policies-this time geared toward guns rather than nuclear weapons-appear to be stoking fear once again. A 2018 survey by the Pew Research Foundation determined that, despite the rarity of such events, 57 percent of American teenagers worry about a shooting at their school. This comes at a time when children are already suffering from sharply rising rates of anxiety, self-mutilation, and suicide. According to a landmark study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, 32 percent of 13-to-18-year-olds have anxiety disorders, and 22 percent suffer from mental disorders that cause severe impairment or distress. Among those suffering from anxiety, the median age of onset is 6.

Active-shooter drills reflect a broad societal misunderstanding of childhood, one that features two competing images of the child: the defenseless innocent and the powerful mini-adult. On the one hand, we view children as incredibly vulnerable-to hurt feelings, to non-rubberized playground surfaces, to disappointing report cards. This view is pervasive, and its consequences are now well understood: It robs children of their agency and impedes their development, and too often prevents them from testing themselves either physically or socially, from taking moderate risks and learning from them, from developing resilience.

But on the other hand, we demand preternatural maturity from our children. We tell them that with hockey pucks and soup cans and deep reservoirs of courage, they are capable of defeating an evil that has resisted the more prosaic energies of law-enforcement officers, legislators, school superintendents, and mental-health professionals. We ask them to manage not the everyday risks that they are capable of managing-or should, for their own good, manage-but rather the problems they almost by definition cannot.

This second notion of the child stems from what I call adultification, or the tendency to imagine that children experience things the way adults do. Adultification comes in many forms, from the relatively benign (dressing kids like little adults, in high heels or ironic punk-rock T-shirts) to the damaging (the high-stakes testing culture creeping into kindergartens). We also find adultification in the expectation that kids conform to adult schedules-young children today are subjected to more daily transitions than were previous generations of children, thanks to the dictates of work and child-care hours and the shift from free play to more programmed activities at school and at home.

Similarly, we expect children to match adults' capacity to hurry or to be still for long periods of time; when they fail, we are likely to punish or medicate them. Examples abound: an epidemic of preschool expulsions, the reduction in school recess, the extraordinary pathologizing of childhood's natural rhythms. ADHD diagnoses, which have spiked in recent years, are much more common among children who narrowly make the age cutoff for their grade than among children born just a week or so later, who must start kindergarten the following year and thus end up being the oldest in their class; this raises the question of whether we are labeling as disordered children who are merely acting their age. The same question might be asked of newer diagnoses such as sluggish cognitive tempo and sensory processing disorder. These trends are all of a piece; we're expecting schoolchildren to act like small adults.
Read: How the reversal of adult and child roles is hurting kids
Adultification is a result of a mind-set that ignores just how taxing childhood is. Being small and powerless is inherently stressful. This is true even when nothing especially bad is going on. Yet for many children, especially bad things are going on. Nearly half of American children have experienced at least one "adverse childhood experience," a category that includes abuse or neglect; losing a parent to divorce or death; having a parent who is an alcoholic or a victim of domestic violence; or having an immediate family member who is mentally ill or incarcerated. About 10 percent of children have experienced three or more of these destabilizing situations. And persistent stress, as we are coming to understand, alters the architecture of the growing brain, putting children at increased risk for a host of medical and psychological conditions over their lifetime.

How misguided to take young brains already bathed in stress hormones and train them to fear low-probability events such as mass shootings-and how little most of us think about what we're doing. Whereas much adultification involves subjecting kids to things we adults do to ourselves (sleep too little, rush too much), we are at some distance from the harms being inflicted in schools. Even though only a quarter of shootings that involve three or more victims take place at schools, we seldom hear about realistic live-shooter drills in nursing homes, places of worship, or most workplaces. They would likely inconvenience if not incense adults, and scare away business. But we readily force them on children.

If today's students feel anxious, perhaps it's partly because, after being told by adults that they're not capable of handling life's little challenges, those same adults are bequeathing them so many big challenges, ranging from the college-admissions rat race to an economically precarious future; from climate change to gun violence. Of course, this impulse fits into a longer history of dispatching children to fix adults' messes, a history that connects the young civil-rights icons Ruby Bridges and Claudette Colvin with the Parkland survivors-turned-activists David Hogg and Emma González.

Audrey Larson, a Connecticut high-school student, would seem to fit squarely into this tradition, having recently won an engineering prize for designing a collapsible, bulletproof wall intended for use in classrooms. Because she grew up near Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of a 2012 massacre, she wanted to do something tangible to alleviate her classmates' fear of school shootings. Larson told a reporter that "we can't wait around anymore" while politicians dither on gun violence. One judge lauded the project's "robustness and detailed design work." But I was struck more by the contrast between her prizewinning effort and her earlier, more whimsical entries: a dog-scratching gadget and a pair of glowing pajamas.

Our feverish pursuit of disaster preparedness lays bare a particularly sad irony of contemporary life. Among modernity's gifts was supposed to be childhood-a new life stage in which young people had both time and space to grow up, without fear of dying or being sent down a coal mine. To a large extent, this has been achieved. American children are manifestly safer and healthier than in previous eras. The mortality rate of children under 5 in the United States today is less than 1 percent (or 6.6 deaths per 1,000 children), compared with more than 40 percent in 1800. The reduction is miraculous. But as in so many other realms, we seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

At just the moment when we should be able to count on childhood, we are in danger of abandoning it. When you see a toddler dragged along with her parents to a restaurant long past bedtime; or when you consider the online kindergarten-readiness programs that are sprouting up like weeds (preventing kids from rolling around in actual weeds); or when you think about that 12-year-old North Carolina boy writing an anguished farewell note to his parents, it's hard to avoid the sense that we are preparing a generation for a kind of failure that may not be captured in actuarial statistics. Our children may be relatively safe, but childhood itself is imperiled.
This article appears in the March 2019 print edition with the headline "Not Just A Drill." * The quoted article previously cited reports that the suspect pulled a fire alarm. A police investigation later clarified that smoke from the gunfire triggered the alarm.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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Active-Shooter Drills Are Tragically Misguided

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There's scant evidence that they're effective. They can, however, be psychologically damaging-and they reflect a dismaying view of childhood. Updated at 11:12 a.m. ET on March 13, 2019. At 10:21 a.m. on December 6, Lake Brantley High School, in Florida, initiated a "code red" lockdown.

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The psychological effects of realistic simulations could be dangerous.

Updated on March 13, 2019 at 9:42 a.m ET.
There's always at least one kid in tears, as they huddle under their desks in the dark. Still Beth Manias, an early-elementary literacy teacher outside of Seattle, tries to act upbeat and relaxed.

"I have them whisper about their favorite candy, dinner, books, movies-whatever, as a distraction," Manias told me. She tells the kids they're practicing to stay safe in case there's ever a bear on campus. Though, she admits, "They always see through this. The older they get, the more savvy they become, probably because they are exposed to more of the news."

At schools across the country, more children are taking part in mandatory "active-shooter drills." Forgoing any pretense of a bear, sometimes a faculty member plays the role of a shooter, jiggling doorknobs as children practice keeping perfectly silent. Many parents, teachers, and students say that the experience is somewhere between upsetting and traumatizing.

Which may be worthwhile, if it were clear that the drills saved lives.

Active-shooter drills came into existence after the Columbine massacre in 1999. What is known of their long-term psychological effects comes from the reports of people now in early adulthood.

Ryan Marino, an emergency-medicine physician at the University of Pittsburgh, recalled that his school had adopted the drills during that period, after a student was found to have a "death list" and access to guns. He told me the drills didn't seem real until he was 12, and a fellow student coughed during one of the drills. "The teacher told us that if this had been real, we would all be dead."

"That single experience shaped my childhood," Marino said. "Having to practice and prepare for a peer coming to my school and shooting at me and my friends was something that really changed the overall atmosphere. Looking back, it was a major shift in how the world felt."

In the two weeks since the shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, new and renewed calls for such drills raise the question of whether they do any good-and if they might be doing harm.

The day after the event, Susan Hennessey, the executive editor of Lawfare, tweeted: "Feeling mildly nauseous reading a note from my kid's preschool about implementing active-shooter drills."

Brian Leff, a writer in Los Angeles, told me his fifth-grade daughter's principal just announced the school is contemplating a surprise lockdown drill. "Now my daughter can't stop thinking about when it's going to happen and how she'll know if it's 'real' or not."

The writer Allison Gibson says that at her 4-year-old son's preschool, they're called "self-control drills," because the goal is to get the students very quiet. "The first time he mentioned it, when he was 2, I had to piece together what he was referring to, and it nearly broke me."

Of course, general lockdown and disaster drills have a long history; a generation of Americans came of age hiding under desks from nuclear bombs. While the idea of such a maneuver protecting a person from a bomb blast or nuclear fallout became fodder for jokes, the drills themselves had insidious effects on kids' senses of safety. Some teachers reported that students' artwork changed to feature mushroom clouds and sometimes the child's own death, bringing a pervasive sense of danger into the places where kids most need to feel safe.

Despite some similarities to natural-disaster and Cold War drills, active-shooter drills also mean exposing kids to the idea that at any point, someone they know may try to kill them.

"It's good to do emergency drills, but active shooters are not a drill anyone should have to do," says Meredith Corley, who taught math in Colorado in the aftermath of Columbine. "It re-traumatizes kids who have experienced violence. Getting the kids settled back into the work of learning after lockdown drills is a nightmare. That mind-set has no place in a learning environment."

"I was slightly too young for bomb drills, but in greater Kansas City, tornado drills were de rigueur," says Lily Alice, a Midwesterner born in 1965. "We did have tornados now and then. The difference, of course, is that no one stockpiles them to use against other people, and weather forecasts mitigated some fear."

Even President Trump, who has expressed support for arming teachers, has warned against active-shooter drills. During a White House meeting last week, he said, "If I'm a child and I'm 10 years old, and they say we're going to have an active-shooter drill, I say, 'What's that?' 'Well, people may come in and shoot you'-I think that's a very negative thing ... to be honest. I don't like it."

Zachary Levinsky, a lecturer in the department of sociology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, is one of few academics who has studied active-shooter drills. He argues that though some school violence always existed, Columbine marked a shift of the burden of prevention: "Schools were somehow positioned as blamable-as responsible for these massacres." This created an institutional concern for reputational risk management. To implement something like an active-shooter drill was to signal to parents and the community that the school is being proactive-it was doing something.

Of course, a demand for action does not often make for prudent decisions when it comes to harm reduction. Drills cover administrator and school-district liability, and they may make parents feel better knowing that their kids are in a school that's taking decisive action. But what are the longer-term effects on the children's health and development?

Studies of whether active-shooter drills actually prevent harm are all but impossible. Case studies are difficult to parse. In Parkland, for example, the site of the recent shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, had an active-shooter drill just last month. The suspect had been through such drills, and may have used them to his advantage.*

In any case, preparedness drills always change the baseline level of risk that people perceive. This heightening can manifest as stress and anxiety, not to mention changing the way kids understand how people treat one another-to even consider violence an option, not in some abstract way.

Colleen Derkatch, an associate professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, studies how we assess risk when it comes to our health. "The more prepared we are, the more heightened our sense of risk," she told me. "And one potential effect we haven't considered is how these kinds of preparedness activities affect kids psychologically, and could increase a sense of feeling at risk. They really expand the ways in which we feel increasingly under siege."

Preparedness activities, that is, are never neutral. Derkatch's work relates this concept to the anxiety wrought by a culture of "wellness" products, which are ostensibly meant to keep us healthy, but also enhance our awareness of health risks. "They give us a sense that we're all constantly on the edge of illness," Derkatch told me. "Preparedness can be a good thing, but it has very real costs and consequences. For children whose personalities are just forming-who are figuring out what kind of world they live in-if this is the input they get, I think it will have a significant impact down the road."

The idea extends to the fact that a child is much more likely to be abused by a parent than shot in school; but there would be obvious limits to the value of putting kids through realistic simulations in which a parent turns on them.

Derkatch has an 11-year-old daughter who is in the sixth grade. In her school, they've done lockdown drills, but the drills are the sort that are generalizable to any emergency. The teachers are very clear that it's just a drill, and they lock the doors, and kids stay in their seats. There's no hiding or barricading, as many schools in the United States now require.

If you were to move to the United States, I asked Derkatch, would you want your daughter going through these sorts of drills?

"No," she said. "But I wouldn't move to the United States. And guns are the reason why. Guns and health care."

The two are, of course, now intertwined. President Trump and many other Republicans have a penchant for blaming "mental illness" for mass shootings-even though most shooters have no known or diagnosable mental illness. People who are mentally ill are much more likely to be victims than murderers. Most are rather, like the alleged shooter in Parkland, described as isolated, troubled, angry, resentful men and boys. Many have a history of childhood trauma, like being abused or neglected. It is rare that a shooter has come up in an environment with multiple adults on whom they could rely-where they felt safe and secure.

A sense of safety and security in childhood is integrally tied to mental and physical health later in life-as well as emotional wellbeing, and the formation of the coping mechanisms that allow a person to deal with later adversity in ways that do not involve killing. It is this sense that can be undermined sometimes even by the best of intentions.

"Kids perceive the world generally as a bit of a dangerous place now because of how they tend to be closely supervised at almost all times," said Derkatch. "If you look at the proposals in the United States, it sounds like they're trying to make schools an awful lot like prisons, with monitored perimeters and armed guards and possibly armed teachers. You could extrapolate from the experiences of kids living in potentially violent situations, where you never know what's going to happen. That does have a profound impact on kids."

"I will never be able to explain it well, but losing a feeling of safety as a child, especially at school, is a major thing," said Marino, the emergency physician who was terrified to cough. "Anyone who has not gone through school with active-shooter drills can never understand what it feels like."
* This article previously cited reports that the suspect pulled a fire alarm. A police investigation later clarified that smoke from the gunfire triggered the alarm.

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kinds of preparedness activities affect kids

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What Are the Psychological Effects of 'Active-Shooter Drills'?

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The psychological effects of realistic simulations could be dangerous. Updated on March 13, 2019 at 9:42 a.m ET. There's always at least one kid in tears, as they huddle under their desks in the dark. Still Beth Manias, an early-elementary literacy teacher outside of Seattle, tries to act upbeat and relaxed.

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This article has facts to support healthy eating, especially during childhood.

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Many kids would likely argue that their lunch periods are too short. While the precious breaks from classwork are used to relax and chat with friends, students also need to scarf down a full meal to fuel them through the rest of the day.

But, confirming what millions of parents who unpack their children's lunch boxes every day already know, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found that kids need more than a few minutes to consume those needed nutrients.

Longer lunch periods correlate with students eating healthier lunches, researchers found. The study compared food choices and consumption with the amount of time students are given to eat. Students with less than 20 minutes for lunch ate less across the board-including fewer nutritional fruits and veggies.

Nationwide, the average lunch period is about 30 minutes, according to a 2014 report from the School Nutrition Association. But researchers found that the amount of time available to eat can get cut down to less than 10 minutes because of long lunch lines.

Researchers reviewed 1,001 students from six elementary and middle schools in low-income neighborhoods in Massachusetts that had lunch periods of between 20 and 30 minutes. Students with less than 20 minutes to eat consumed 13 percent less of their entrées, 12 percent less of their vegetables, and 10 percent less of their milk compared with students who had at least 25 minutes for lunch. Students with shorter lunch periods were less likely to even select a fruit in the lunch line: 44 percent of kids with 20-minute periods picked up an apple or orange, as opposed to 57 percent of children with longer lunch times.

More than 30 million children-half of all public school children nationwide, a record, according to the Southern Education Foundation-eat low-cost or free lunches every day through the National School Lunch program. With the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, school lunches have seen an overhaul in their nutritional guidelines, with an increase in whole grains, low-fat options, and fruits and vegetables. But if the kids don't have time to eat those healthy options, it's all for naught. (The industry that provides the lunches is now lobbying Congress to whittle down those rules.)

"Many children, especially those from low-income families, rely on school meals for up to half their daily energy intake, so it is essential that we give students a sufficient amount of time to eat their lunches," Juliana Cohen, the study's lead author and an adjunct assistant professor at Harvard, said in a statement.

While lengthening lunch periods and cutting into class time may not be a viable option for many schools whose funding is tied to results of high-stakes standardized tests, researchers suggest streamlining lunch lines so that students can make the most of the time they have.

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Want Kids to Eat Healthier School Lunches? Give Them Time

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Many kids would likely argue that their lunch periods are too short. While the precious breaks from classwork are used to relax and chat with friends, students also need to scarf down a full meal to fuel them through the rest of the day.

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So long, soda. Adios, candy bars. Federal regulations will strip junk food from elementary and high school vending machines in 2014.

The "Smart Snacks in Schools" nutrition standards, announced last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, require any food sold in public schools to meet calorie, fat, sugar and sodium limits.

While schools can still sell brownies and cupcakes at bake sales and sporting events, snacks sold during school hours cannot exceed 200 calories and must be either chock full of whole grains or primarily contain fruits, vegetables, dairy or protein.

That means granola bars, popcorn, fruit cups and calorie-free flavored water instead of Doritos, Pop-Tarts, Famous Amos cookies and Coke.

Michelle Obama praised the guidelines, which align with the first lady's "Let's Move" campaign against childhood obesity.

"As a mom myself, I am so excited that schools will now be offering healthier choices to students and reinforcing the work we do at home to help our kids stay healthy," she said in a statement.

Other parents echoed that sentiment.

"I think this is how it should have been from the beginning," Ilyssa Blatt Morris, a mother of two from California, told U.S. News via Facebook.

Teens can still bring junk food to school or go off campus to snag sugary snacks, but Morris notes, "at least the schools are not supplying this junk and making it far too easy an option."

The snacking standards are part of a wave of healthy food guidelines handed down from the federal government over the past few years.

School lunch regulations implemented last year endured backlash from schools, parents and students over reduced calorie caps. The lunch rules doubled fruit and vegetable servings, but left students hungry and sluggish, critics said. Breakfast requirements mandating more fruit and whole grains and fewer calories are set to take effect at the start of the new school year.

Some students will see little impact from the "Smart Snacks in Schools" regulations. Nearly 40 states already restrict some unhealthy snack foods in schools and several school districts have taken it upon themselves to limit junk food in schools.

"My high school didn't have them anyway so doesn't really matter to me," Jacob Jensen, a recent graduate from Harmony Science Academy, told U.S. News via Facebook.

Not everyone is on board with the snack regulations, though.

I don't even go to school anymore, but I'm still upset about the switch to healthier snacks like it effects me #FreedomOfChoice

- ®achel (@ramblinrachel) June 28, 2013

Nixing popular snack items from a la carte options sold in school cafeterias could mean a hit to already tight school budgets, Sandra Ford, director of food and nutrition services for Manatee County School District in Florida, said during a congressional hearing last week.

Ford estimates her district would lose roughly $975,000 a year if it eliminated all items that don't meet the new regulations.

Have something of interest to share? Send your news to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com.

Tags: USDA, K-12 education, education, students, high school, diet and nutrition, food and drink

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Whether you are a parent, teacher, student or administrator, get caught up on the latest news, ideas and policy debates affecting America's high school classrooms. Have something of interest to share? Send your news and notes to us at highschoolnotes@usnews.com.

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Junk Food Axed From School Vending Machines

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So long, soda. Adios, candy bars. Federal regulations will strip junk food from elementary and high school vending machines in 2014. The "Smart Snacks in Schools" nutrition standards, announced last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, require any food sold in public schools to meet calorie, fat, sugar and sodium limits.

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Tooga / The Image Bank via Getty Images

UPDATED* States are reporting that some of their schools are dropping out of the healthier school-lunch program because they can't afford to participate. But does that really mean nutritious school lunches (and snacks) are doomed?

The majority of the nation's schools - about 94% - are participating in the National School Lunch Program, which reimburses schools for the meals they serve and provides food at lower cost to feed lower-income students. These schools must follow new criteria required by the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, and include more grains, fresh fruits and vegetables in lunches. But for some, these changes are pretty challenging to follow.

In a survey conducted this summer of more than 520 district nutrition directors, the School Nutrition Association reported that a very small percentage - 1% - of schools were dropping out of the program for the 2013-14 school year, and 3% were considering abandoning the program.

( MORE: What the New USDA Rules for Healthier School Snacks Mean for Schools)

Why? Kids aren't buying the better-for-them options in the cafeteria, and that's leading to a drop in revenue for some schools. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pays schools back about $2.93 cents per lunch served to a child eligible for free meals, and the USDA offers an additional 6¢ per lunch for schools meeting the standards. But for smaller or nonprofit private schools that simply don't have enough kids who qualify for these lunches, the often higher costs to feed them healthy meals that adhere to the new nutrition guidelines are not covered by this reimbursement.

"My understanding, from a few of the districts that have dropped off, is that their free and reduced percentage could be as low as 5% of the students, which means that all they are getting for the reimbursable meal is 30¢," says Julia Bauscher, the president-elect of the School Nutrition Association and school-nutrition director at Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky. "If they had previously not offered a lot of whole grains or fruits and vegetables, or their students didn't choose them, there was a significant increase in cost of providing the meals."

Take the Voorheesville Central School District near Albany, N.Y., which the Associated Press featured in its story about schools struggling with the new lunch-program requirements. Superintendent Teresa Snyder says the district lost $30,000 in revenue during the first quarter of the year because of the program, since students either brought lunch from home or went without, instead of purchasing the healthier options offered in the cafeteria.

But that district is very small, and less than 6% of its students qualify for reduced or free lunch. The school still offers healthy food, and to find a way to maintain the school-lunch program, administrators worked with students to develop a nutritious and more cost-effective menu that would appeal to kids. "For us, this is not a political statement, but an economic one. We believe in the intent of the law, it simply does not apply to a district like ours," says Snyder. "I do believe our issues revolve around our small population of free and reduced lunch - the reimbursements are so low they do not balance the cost of providing the meals according to the guidelines."

( MORE: Stricter School-Lunch Standards Lead to Lighter Kids)

Smaller schools may also face an additional hurdle, since most of the people responsible for achieving this balance are volunteers who aren't trained in nutrition - or food distribution. "In Kansas we have a lot of private schools and oftentimes the food-service director may be a parent, and they may not have had a lot of background in food service, so they need additional help and training. Our public schools have people who have more experience," says Cheryl Johnson, director of child nutrition and wellness for the Kansas State Department of Education.

Of course, the entire program is predicated on the fact that children will welcome - and eat - the healthier options. As TIME has reported, schools with the greatest success in making their cafeterias healthier started early and introduced changes gradually. The Jefferson County Public Schools district in Louisville, Ky., for example, made its lunchrooms offer 50% whole grains for an entire year before the rules were even enacted, for example.

"The bigger the difference between what [the students] were accustomed to seeing on their serving line in 2011 to 2012 vs. what they saw in 2012 to 2013, the more difficult it was for the school food-service director to address the needs and concerns of the students," says Bauscher.

USDA undersecretary Kevin Concannon says the schools that have been the most successful have also considered food presentation. For instance, dyeing applesauce bright green seems to draw students to grab it in the lunch line - possibly because they think it's sweeter and more decadent than it actually is. "It's a matter of really training the palate. Kids are the same as adults, we get used to eating certain ways and all of a sudden there's an abrupt change," he says.

( MORE: More Food for Hungry Students: USDA Tweaks School Meals)

The most difficult to please, not surprisingly, are teens in high school. Because they are probably more set in their eating habits, and because high school athletes, for example, need to eat more calories, these schools have experienced the most backlash against the new lunch options, which many students felt were too skimpy. (Wallace County High School students in Sharon Springs, Kans., even made a video that went viral last year in which they sang about their hunger pangs.)

In response to these complaints, the USDA decided to waive some of the original restrictions, by removing limits on the amount of protein and whole grains per meal. Those amendments to the rules will remain in effect this school year. Johnson says after the video, there was a 5% drop in participation among Kansas schools, but that had shrunk to only 3% by the end of the school year.

It may take several school years for the new lunch standards to be accepted, and several more before their effects are seen in children's eating habits. What we consume, not to mention the process of sourcing, preparing and distributing food, can't be changed overnight, much less over a semester or two. "Eating healthier is a good thing, but it is more expensive. And the truth is most students don't want to eat healthier, so there has been and will be a transition period because what is being served at school in many cases doesn't look like what they eat at home," says Michael Smith, the superintendent at Tuscola Community Unit School District No. 301 in Tuscola, Ill. "I'm a proponent of the new standards health-wise, but it is another example of how all of these issues are dumped on schools. I wish they would also be addressed in other places where students eat, like fast-food [restaurants] and gas stations."

Still, the goal of the new standards is to encourage healthy eating early on, before unhealthy habits set in. If children in elementary schools are seeing more grains and fresh produce in their cafeterias, then they may be more likely to try them and continue eating them as adolescents and adults. School, after all, is a place for learning, and that includes the cafeteria.

*This piece was updated with the latest numbers on school lunch participation.

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Why Some Schools Are Saying 'No Thanks' to the School-Lunch Program | TIME.com

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UPDATED* States are reporting that some of their schools are dropping out of the healthier school-lunch program because they can't afford to participate. But does that really mean nutritious school lunches (and snacks) are doomed?

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Alanis Morissette once said, 'isn't it ironic!' (Ask your parents). After years of struggle between teachers and students and the use of smartphones in school, new educational trends are actually encouraging the use of these devices.

The mobile, cellphone or smartphone is not just used for WhatsApp, Snapchat or RoBlox, it can be used in a multitude of ways from an educational perspective. Don't believe us? Keep reading. In this article we bring together 40 uses for smartphones in school.

Before we continue, it is worth remembering that this does not mean we should suddenly change the way in which we teach, or allow the use of the smartphones without control. The purpose of this article is simply to remove some of the negative connotations around smartphones and to consider new possibilities which we have at our disposal. In order for students to use smartphones in school responsibly, it is important that we set limits and rules beforehand.

A revolution in the classroom:

1. Check facts: probably the most common use of all. Both students and teachers can now find facts within seconds. This can be very useful when explaining and debating topics.

2. Take photos: mobile phones can be used as cameras to illustrate work and presentations.

3. Carry out tests: this is probably one of the most interesting and revolutionary uses of the mobile phone in the classroom. Students can now take quizzes and tests on their mobile phone that were created earlier by their teacher. In this way, teachers can gain valuable real-time insight into the knowledge of their students and the effectiveness of their teaching. To implement this technique now, download the ExamTime Mobile App for iOS or Android.

4. Dictionary: there are a multitude of dictionary applications that allow you to check the meaning of a word instantly.

5. Translator: again, this can help with meaning and explanation of a foreign word just like the dictionary application.

6. Calendar: no more forgetfulness or confusion about exam dates or submission deadlines. Now you have applications that allow you to synchronize calendars.

7. Listen to music: we have spoken before at length about how music helps us to study. Additionally, you do not need to store your songs if you use services such as Spotify or Soundcloud.

8. Images: as you well know, a picture is worth a thousand words. For this reason, in many cases, students find it easier to understand material when there is an image related to an explanation. Mind Maps are a good example of a tool that helps in this regard.

9. Review: smartphones allows you to access resources and material quickly before an exam. Don't forget to sign up with ExamTime online and then download the official app for Android or iOS.

10. Stopwatch/timer: classes, exercises and presentations often come with time limits. Practice your time management by using your mobile phone's stopwatch.

11. Read eBooks: when learning, applying for a job position or going to University, reading PDFs and manuals can be mandatory. For this reason, applications like Kindle allow us to read books and manuals from anywhere.

12. Discover related subject material: among many other functions, the ExamTime App lets you search through more than one million study resources created by other ExamTime users.

13. Document scanner: although it does not offer the same quality as a traditional scanner, the camera of a mobile phone can serve as a scanner. Some teachers even support the delivery of class work through photos (for example, Math exercises).

14. Calculator: there are numerous applications that enable you to perform all the operations of a scientific calculator. This helps reduce the amount of items students must carry in their bags.

15. Edit videos: not only can we make videos, but we can also edit them, add text, filters, effects and more.

16. Edit pictures: the same can be done with images as with videos.

17. Publish in the class blog: class blogs are an increasingly common exercise these days and help develop writing skills. Thanks to your mobile phone, you can write and post articles at any time.

18. Track blog visits: the implementation of Google Analytics allows you to check the progress of your class blog from anywhere.

19. Make presentations: instead of having to carry around external hard drives and USB sticks, store the material in your mobile phone and connect it directly to the projector. Have you tried 'play mode' using the ExamTime Mind Map tool?

20. Remote control: whether switching from one slide to another during a presentation or stopping and playing a video, there are applications that enable you to use our smartphone as a remote control.

21. Communicate: the PA system is a thing of the past. If a student must go to the secretary or principal's office, you can communicate with them through a text message.

22. Updates: Remind is an app designed to send notifications to parents and/or students without knowing their phone number. This means that the boundaries between privacy and the classroom can be maintained while communication is not hampered.

23. Locate points on the map: during class location based apps can help when introducing students to a region of country. Applications such as Google Maps help us to locate ourselves and are great in History and Geography classes.

24. Tweet: Twitter is a social network that has many educational uses. The mobile phone is probably the best way to access it to read and write Tweets about education. Don't forget to follow ExamTime on Twitter.

25. Study Vocabulary: in foreign language classes, vocabulary is crucial. Quite often students don't pay enough attention and can get left behind. Flashcards are one of the resources that provide better results when viewing from mobile phones and are super easy to digest.

26. Control Attendance: there are many applications that can help keep track of the attendance of students direct from our mobile phone.

27. Assess Students: mobile phones can be used to monitor and keep track of a student's course work and exam results. In this way, teachers have access at all times to a particular student and can see if that student is making progress or not.

28. Clock: studies have shown that more people are reaching for their mobile phone to check the time rather than checking their wristwatch. Why not check the weather on your mobile device too?

29. Inspire: originality is one of the best ways to keep students interested. However, sometimes students simply get bored. The mobile phone provides a window to the world where you can discover topics and ideas that are otherwise limited by traditional books and encyclopaedias.

30. Share Notes: many teachers tend to distribute material at the beginning or at the end of the class. Instead photocopying large amounts of paper and handing them out, your mobile phone allows you to easily perform this function. Again, the ExamTime App can help with that!

31. Weather: for those teachers who like to move the lesson outdoors, weather apps can come in very useful to see the forecast. These apps can also serve specific lessons in explaining the climatic conditions in other regions/countries.

32. Play: there is much talk of the gamification of the educational process, i.e. the need to transform learning into a game as much as possible. There are literally hundreds of educational apps that can make learning more enjoyable and easier on the students.

These 40 uses of Smartphones in School are just the beginning. The teaching and learning process can be enriched by embracing these ideas. Provided they are monitored and conducted in the safest manner, smartphone use in school is going to be the next big thing in 2015/ 2016.
Don't forget to download the brand new ExamTime iOS and Android app today.
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40 Uses For Smartphones in School | ExamTime

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Alanis Morissette once said, 'isn't it ironic!' (Ask your parents). After years of struggle between teachers and students and the use of smartphones in school, new educational trends are actually encouraging the use of these devices. The mobile, cellphone or smartphone is not just used for WhatsApp, Snapchat or RoBlox, it can be used in a multitude of ways from an educational perspective.

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National Educators see it both ways

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Although students have been using cell phones consistently in their daily lives for almost a decade, many public schools continue to resist allowing the devices into the classroom. Schools generally grapple with new technologies, but cell phones' reputation as a nuisance and a distraction has been hard to dislodge.

Recently, however, the acceptance of these devices has been growing. Beginning in March, New York City, the largest school district in the country with 1.1 million students, will reverse its long standing ban on cell phones in schools.

The ban, which was implemented by the Bloomberg administration, went into effect in 2006, but Mayor Bill De Blasio championed the policy change, saying that he thought it was important for parents to be able to easily contact their kids.

Will more districts around the country follow? Liz Kolb, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Education and author of Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education, says its already happening. According to Kolb, close to 70 percent of schools that had cell phone bans in place five years ago are reversing their policies.

"First it was a very slow domino fall, and now we're seeing more of a tidal wave," Kolb explains. "Part of it is because it's hard to fight the tidal wave and there's so many students with cell phones. The second part is that they're really seeing them as a learning tool, not just a toy for entertainment, and they're seeing that they can be cost effective for the schools instead of having to purchase technology for students."

Critics believe, however, that allowing these devices will only encourage their non-educational use in school, to the point where they will be a significant distraction for teachers and students - and a potential tool for cheating. A specific concern for parents and educators is that lifting the cell phone ban could foster cyberbullying and sexting during school hours. NYC school officials are already taking steps to combat this, hoping to decrease the amount of sexting and cyberbullying overall.

Educators continue to have mixed opinions about cell phones in the classroom. We recently posed the question on the NEA Today Facebook page and received a wide variety of responses.

Are Students Addicted to Cell Phones?
Concerns about cell phones in the classroom are also grounded in what we know about teenage brains, including the inability to concentrate while multitasking and possibly long-term effects on overall health.

In Becky Dieffenbach's opinion, bringing their own devices "just becomes a source of distraction for some students, because no matter how many times you repeat the rule that they can only be on technology when the teacher says it's ok, they choose to ignore the rule and then disciplinary actions have to be enforced."

"Students persistently use them a great deal for personal interactions via social media when they should be paying attention to what is going on in class," according to Connie Fawcett, a high school teacher in Oklahoma.

Based on her personal experiences, Fawcett "can see few positives outcomes for cell phones in the classroom, but it is becoming the new norm. Learning is going to suffer even more. What students gain from using them to support instruction will be lost due to the distraction factor, which appears to be much more appealing and fulfilling to many."

Other teachers disagree and urge educators to accept the inevitability of cell phones in school and learn how to make them work in the classroom.

"We need to stop pushing against the technology and start embracing it," says Amber Schaefer, an elementary school teacher in Minnesota. "The more we push back, the more we separate ourselves from students. It is time to incorporate and collaborate instead of ban and punish."

"It would be nice if they weren't part of the school picture," adds New York teacher Barbara McConnell, "but they are, so let's use them to our advantage."

Beyond the classroom, many educators believe that banning any type of technology can foster inequity. In New York City specifically, the school ban on cell phones was most stringently applied in schools with metal detectors, which also happen to be those with the highest concentrations of low-income and minority students.

José Vilson, a middle school math teacher in New York City and author of This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class and Education, agrees that these bans widen the gap between disadvantaged students and their peers. He believes forbidding cell phones just limits students' access to technology, especially for those who attend urban schools.

Ending the ban in New York will mean students can "carry their cell phones into the building and not be treated like criminals and have to pay extra to leave it outside at the cellphone truck," Vilson says.

Vilson, who uses all kinds of devices in his own classroom, doesn't believe that phones provide "much more of a distraction than kids already have. It depends on how [educators] approach the whole process."

Once the new policy is in place starting in March, individual schools in New York City will be able to establish their own specific policies regarding cell phone use in the classroom, leaving many teachers to determine how they will react to the devices in hallways and classrooms.

Experts advise a cautious and well-researched approach. Liz Kolb urges schools to "start small."

"Don't feel as if because students have the devices they have to be using them all the time," she explains. "They just really need to be careful and thoughtful and take baby steps, and develop a nice protocol and rules and structures for how students physically handle the device in the classroom."

Kolb points to some schools in Michigan that adopted new straightforward rules and guidelines for educators that were designed to meet the needs of students while addressing educators' concerns. Posted on classroom doors, for example, are signs indicating whether the students can use their devices. A green stoplight means they can use them; red means no.

"This allows students to know the expectations, and it also gives teachers autonomy over whether they're going to use the cell phones," Kolb explains. "It gives them a little bit of freedom. It's a very simple policy, but it's also very effective."
Photos: Associated Press

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As Schools Lift Bans on Cell Phones, Educators Weigh Pros and Cons | NEA

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Although students have been using cell phones consistently in their daily lives for almost a decade, many public schools continue to resist allowing the devices into the classroom. Schools generally grapple with new technologies, but cell phones' reputation as a nuisance and a distraction has been hard to dislodge.

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"Staying connected" is the unspoken mantra of the smartphone generation. We now have the ability to instantaneously link up with nearly any information source, and tap into a live feed of what's happening in our social circle.

However, critics have long warned that this non-stop barrage of news and trivia is inevitably distracting, making it more difficult to maintain the focused attention necessary for truly meaningful communication.

Luddite nonsense? Actually, no. Newly published research suggests that the mere presence of a cell phone or smartphone can lessen the quality of an in-person conversation, lowering the amount of empathy that is exchanged between friends.

The study, published in the journal Environment and Behavior, confirms the findings of a 2013 lab-based study in a real-world setting. It suggests you don't have to be actively checking your phone for it to divide your attention.

"Mobile phones hold symbolic meaning in advanced technological societies. In their presence, people have the constant urge to seek out information, check for communication, and direct their thoughts to other people and worlds."

"Mobile phones hold symbolic meaning in advanced technological societies," a research team led by Shalini Misra of Virginia Tech University writes. "In their presence, people have the constant urge to seek out information, check for communication, and direct their thoughts to other people and worlds."

"Even without active use, the presence of mobile technologies has the potential to divert individuals from face-to-face exchanges, thereby undermining the character and depth of these connections. Individuals are more likely to miss subtle cues, facial expressions, and changes in the tone of their conversation partner's voice, and have less eye contact."

The study's 200 participants were broken up into groups of two. Each couple was then assigned to sit down in a coffee shop and discuss either a meaningful topic or a trivial one. A nearby lab assistant noted their non-verbal behavior, and recorded "whether either participant placed any kind of mobile device on the table, or held it in their hand, during the 10-minute span" when they were talking.

Afterwards, participants responded to a series of statements designed to measure "feelings of interpersonal connectedness" and "empathic concern" they experienced during the brief chat. These included "I felt I could really trust my conversation partner" and "To what extent did you conversation partner make an effort to understand your thoughts and feelings?"

The key results: "If either participant placed a mobile communication device on the table, or held it in their hand, during the course of the 10-minute conversation, the quality of the conversation was rated to be less fulfilling, compared with conversations that took place in the absence of mobile devices," the researchers report.

"The same participants who conversed in the presence of mobile communication devices also reported experiencing lower empathetic concern, compared with participants who interacted without (the presence of) distracting digital stimuli." (All these results held true after controlling for such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, and mood.)

Somewhat surprisingly, the researchers found no significant differences in these results whether the couple was discussing serious or non-serious matters. Less surprising, they report the negative relationship between mobile devices and empathetic concern was more pronounced among people who already knew each other. It appears the empathy that naturally arises when talking with a friend can get short-circuited by the distracting presence of a phone.

Misra and her colleagues did not record how often participants touched or handled their mobile devices. While they see that as a promising avenue for further research, their study suggests you don't have to be actually fiddling with a phone for it to distract your focus.

"Networked technologies are distinctive in that they enable us to be in a persistent state of 'absent presence,'" the researchers write, adding that phones' "mere presence as environmental cues can distribute individuals' attention and guide the behavior of those who are nearby without their awareness."

So if you want to have a real, face-to-face conversation with a friend, here's a suggestion: Turn off your phone, and put it in your pocket. Ironically, the best way to make a real connection might be to live, however briefly, in a digital-free zone.

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Presence of a Smartphone Lowers Quality of Conversations

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"Staying connected" is the unspoken mantra of the smartphone generation. We now have the ability to instantaneously link up with nearly any information source, and tap into a live feed of what's happening in our social circle.

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With 75 topics

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To write a captivating and persuasive speech you must first decide on a topic that will engage, inform and also persuade the audience. We have discussed how to choose a topic and we have provided a list of speech ideas covering a wide range of categories.

What is persuasive speech?

The aim of a persuasive speech is to inform, educate and convince or motivate an audience to do something. You are essentially trying to sway the audience to adopt your own viewpoint.

The best persuasive speech topics are thought-provoking, daring and have a clear opinion. You should speak about something you are knowledgeable about and can argue your opinion for, as well as objectively discuss counter-arguments.

How to choose a topic for your speech

It's not easy picking a topic for your speech as there are many options so consider the following factors when deciding.

Familiarity

Topics that you're familiar with will make it easier to prepare for the speech.

Interest

It's best if you decide on a topic in which you have a genuine interest in because you'll be doing lots of research on it and if it's something you enjoy the process will be significantly easier and more enjoyable. The audience will also see this enthusiasm when you're presenting which will make the speech more persuasive.

The audience's interest

The audience must care about the topic. You don't want to lose their attention so choose something you think they'll be interested in hearing about.

Visualize

Consider choosing a topic that allows you to be more descriptive because this allows the audience to visualize which consequently helps persuade them.

Not overdone

When people have heard about a topic repeatedly they're less likely to listen to you as it doesn't interest them anymore. Avoid cliché or overdone topics as it's difficult to maintain your audience's attention because they feel like they've heard it all before.

An exception to this would be if you had new viewpoints or new facts to share. If this is the case then ensure you clarify early in your speech that you have unique views or information on the topic.

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Emotional topics

Emotions are motivators so the audience is more likely to be persuaded and act on your requests if you present an emotional topic.

Relatable

People like hearing about issues that affect them or their community, country etc. They find these topics more relatable which means they find them more interesting. Look at local issues and news to discover these topics.

Desired outcome

What do you want your audience to do as a result of your speech? Use this as a guide to choosing your topic, for example, maybe you want people to recycle more so you present a speech on the effect of microplastics in the ocean.

Persuasive speech topics

Lots of timely persuasive topics can be found using social media, the radio, TV and newspapers. We have compiled a list of 75 persuasive speech topic ideas covering a wide range of categories.

Some of the topics also fall into other categories and we have posed the topics as questions so they can be easily adapted into statements to suit your own viewpoint.

Animals

1. Should pets be adopted rather than bought from a breeder?

2. Should wild animals be tamed?

3. Should people be allowed to own exotic animals like monkeys?

4. Should all zoos and aquariums be closed?

Arts/Culture

1. Should art and music therapy be covered by health insurance?

2. Should graffiti be considered art?

3. Should all students be required to learn an instrument in school?

Automotive

1. Should automobile drivers be required to take a test every three years?

2. Are sports cars dangerous?

3. Should bicycles share the roads with cars?

4. Should bicycle riders be required by law to always wear helmets?

Business and economy

1. Do introverts make great leaders?

2. Does owning a business leave you feeling isolated?

3. What is to blame for the rise in energy prices?

4. Does hiring cheaper foreign employees hurt the economy?

5. Should interns be paid for their work?

6. Should employees receive bonuses for walking or biking to work?

7. Should tipping in restaurants be mandatory?

Education

1. Should boys and girls should be taught in separate classrooms?

2. Should schools include meditation breaks during the day?

3. Should students be allowed to have their mobile phones with them during school?

4. Should teachers have to pass a test every decade to renew their certifications?

5. Should online teaching be given equal importance as the regular form of teaching?

6. Is higher education over-rated?

7. What are the best ways to stop bullying?

Ethics

1. Should people with more than one DUI lose their drivers' licenses?

2. Should prostitution be legalised?

3. Should guns be illegal in the US?

4. Should cannabis be legalised for medical reasons?

5. Is equality a myth?

6. Does what is "right" and "wrong" change from generation to generation?

7. Is there never a good enough reason to declare war?

Health

1. Should governments tax sugary drinks and use the revenue for public health?

2. Has cosmetic surgery risen to a level that exceeds good sense?

3. Is the fast-food industry legally accountable for obesity?

4. Should school cafeterias only offer healthy food options?

5. Is acupuncture a valid medical technique?

6. Should assisted suicide be legal?

7. Does consuming meat affect health?

8. Is dieting a good way to lose weight?

Law and politics

1. Should voting be made compulsory?

2. Should the President (or similar position) be allowed to serve more than two terms?

3. Would poverty reduce by fixing housing?

4. Should drug addicts be sent for treatment in hospitals instead of prisons?

5. Would it be fair for the government to detain suspected terrorists without proper trial?

6. Is torture acceptable when used for national security?

7. Should celebrities who break the law receive stiffer penalties?

8. Should the government completely ban all cigarettes and tobacco products

Media

1. Is it wrong for the media to promote a certain beauty standard?

2. Is the media responsible for the moral degradation of teenagers?

3. Should advertising be aimed at children?

4. Has freedom of press gone too far?

Religion

1. Should prayer be allowed in public schools?

2. Does religion have a place in government?

3. How do cults differ from religion?

Science and the environment

1. Should recycling be mandatory?

2. Should genetically modified foods be sold in supermarkets?

3. Should parents be allowed to choose the sex of their unborn children?

4. Should selling plastic bags be completely banned in shops?

5. Should smoking in public places be banned?

Sports

1. Should professional female athletes be paid the same as male athletes in the same sport?

2. Should doping be allowed in professional sports?

3. Should schools be required to teach all students how to swim?

4. How does parental pressure affect young athletes?

Technology

1. Will technology reduce or increase human employment opportunities?

2. What age should children be allowed to have mobile phones?

3. Should libraries be replaced with unlimited access to e-books?

4. Should we recognize Bitcoin as a legal currency?

5. Should bloggers and vloggers be treated as journalists and punished for indiscretions?

6. Has technology helped connect people or isolate them?

7. Should mobile phone use in public places be regulated?

8. Do violent video games make people more violent?

World peace

1. What is the safest country in the world?

2. Is planetary nuclear disarmament possible?

3. Is the idea of peace on earth naive?

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These topics are just suggestions so you need to assess whether they would be suitable for your particular audience. You can easily adapt the topics to suit your interests and audience, for example, you could substitute "meat" in the topic "Does consuming meat affect health?" for many possibilities, such as "processed foods", "mainly vegan food", "dairy" and so on.

After choosing your topic

After you've chosen your topic it's important to do the following:

Research thoroughly

Think about all of the different viewpoints

Tailor to your audience - discussing your topic with others is a helpful way to gain an understanding of your audience.

Consider your credibility for presenting this topic - to persuade the audience you need to convince them of your ethos meaning that you need to convince them that you can be trusted. Ask yourself:

How involved are you with this topic - are you a key character?

Have you contributed to this area, perhaps through blogs, books, papers and products.

How qualified are you to speak on this topic?

Do you have personal experience in it? How many years?

How long have you been interested in the area?

Conclusion

While it may be difficult to choose from such a variety of persuasive speech topics, think about which of the above you have the most knowledge of and can argue your opinion on.

For advice about how to deliver your persuasive speech, check out our blog Persuasive Speech Outline and Ideas.

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To write a captivating and persuasive speech you must first decide on a topic that will engage. This article covers 75 persuasive speech topics you can use for your next presentation.

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Video on Historical Realities of African Americans in 1965. (4 level)

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Video on Historical Realities of African Americans in 1965. (4 level)

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This teen has done his research.

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Central Middle School Speech Contest - First Place

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Well Organized with Solid evidence - stats, Harvard data, articles, and a bit of humor in his anecdotes.

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Video of one young lady on cell phones for HS students (3 level)

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Video of one young lady on cell phones for HS students (3 level)

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Notice the studies/statistics she used for evidence.

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1st persuasive speech: Should students be allowed to use cell phones in school?

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Video of a winning persuasive speeches (all three are 4 level)

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Video of a winning persuasive speeches (all three are 4 level)

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3 teens/ different topics/ starts with 3rd place, then 2nd, finally first place at minute 7.

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Tropicana Speech High School To Persuade

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Article on Taking a Knee in Peaceful Protest

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Article on Taking a Knee in Peaceful Protest

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Opinion | Eric Reid: Why Colin Kaepernick and I Decided to Take a Knee (Published 2017)

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We chose the gesture purposefully. Our bodies were like flags flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.

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Yay! Tips and Details for MLA Format on Google Docs.

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Yay! Tips and Details for MLA Format on Google Docs.

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This tutorial will show you how to do MLA Format using Google Docs on Google Drive. It is very easy and we are going to accomplish the following settings:

There are two ways, one is to use a template with all the settings preconfigured and the other way is to preform the settings yourself.

Method 1: Using a Template:

1. On the Google Docs menu, click on File => New => From Template.

2. In the newly opened window, search for "MLA Format".

3. Many results will appear and they are all good => let's assume you pick the first one, click on the "Use this template" button.

4. The template will be copied to your Google Drive and you are ready to type your essay.

Method 2: How to Perform all the Settings Yourself:

I. How to Set the Font and Size:

1. When you create a new document, the default font is Arial and size 11.

2. Click on the font and change it to Times New Roman.

3. Click on font size 11 and change it to font size 12.

II. How to Set the Margins in Google Docs:

Google uses the default margin of 1 inch for all top, right, bottom & left so there is no need to change.

If you would like to verify the margins, here are the steps: click on File => Page Setup

III. How To Create a Header in Google Docs:

1. Click on Insert => click on Header.

2. Notice the font on the Header is NOT Times New Roman => change the font to Times New Roman and font size 12.

3. Notice the cursor is blinking on the left, click on the Right Align icon to align the cursor to the right.

4. Press the Enter key on your keyboard twice.

5. Type your Last Name => press the Spacebar key on the keyboard once.

6. Click on Insert => Page Number => Top of Page.

7. Now click on anywhere below the Header line to close the Header.

IV. How to Setup Line Spacing to Double Spaced:

Click on the Line Spacing button => Choose Double.

V. How to Enter the First Page Information:

1. Type your full name => press Enter.

2. Type your professor's name => press Enter.

3. Type course title => press Enter.

4. Type your paper's due date => press Enter.

5. Click on the Align Center icon on the formatting toolbar (to center your blinking cursor) => Type the title of your paper, capitalizing the first letter and all major words and proper nouns. Do not use italics, boldfaced type, underlining, or all caps to format your title. Do not type a period at the end of the title => press Enter.

6. Click on the Align Left icon (to bring your blinking cursor to the left).

7. Click on the Tab key to indent 1/2 inch to begin your first paragraph. Use the Tab key on every next new paragraphs. Your completed setting should look like this:

VI. How to Setup the Works Cited Page:

Follow this how-to when you are ready to work on your Works Cited page. The Works Cited page has the following characteristics:

A heading "Works Cited" centered one inch below the top edge of a new page. Do not bold or underline this heading.

No indent on the first line of each entry. If an entry runs more than one line, indent the subsequent line or lines 1/2 inch from the left margin.

Alphabetize entries in your list of works cited by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system.

1. Immediately after typing the final line of your paper, click on Insert => Page Break (to begin a new page). Your header with your last name and automatic page numbering should appear at the top left of your paper.

2. Click on the align center icon so that the text is centered.

3. Type Works Cited (do not underline, boldface, italicize, or enclose the title in quotation marks).

4. Press the Enter key once to begin a new line.

5. Click on the align left icon so that the text is aligned left.

6. Now type your sources. Don't worry about indentation on the subsequent line/lines yet.

7. Once you are done typing your sources => highlight all your sources => click on the Left Indent icon and drag it to the 1/2 inch mark.

8. Now click on the First Line Indent icon and drag it to 0 inch mark. You are done setting the Hanging Indent for Google Docs.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. Take care!

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This tutorial will show you how to do MLA Format using Google Docs on Google Drive. It is very easy and we are going to accomplish the following settings: There are two ways, one is to use a template with all the settings preconfigured and the other way is to preform the settings yourself.

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Commonly used words for a variety of uses

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Used with quotes

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Whatever you think you should know about napping...

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with links to other article

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I have a love/hate relationship with cell phones in the classroom. Do you?

WHAT I LOVE: Smartphone technology is amazing! Since we don't have daily access to computer or tablets at my school, it's great to be able to tap into the technology that students hold in their hands for lessons and activities.

WHAT I HATE: My students don't (or can't) disconnect. It's a constant battle to get them to put their phones up when they aren't being used in class for a lesson or activity.

Do the things I hate like the constant distraction of smartphones and the classroom management headache outweigh the benefits of using and incorporating smartphones into my lesson and activities?

Well, Richard Freed, a clinical psychologist, discussed this very issue in a Huffington Post article. it seems that cell phone bans are actually beneficial for students. Without a cell phone in their bag or pocket, students are less distracted and more engaged and, as a result, they learn more. I think the key here is a cell phone BAN. A ban means they aren't allowed. Period. This is different than a "don't use while in class" policy. The "don't use while in class" policy means that students are still allowed to carry their phones, but are only allowed to use them at certain times like in the hallways and at lunch. However, since students cannot disconnect, they are constantly on the phones in class when they think the teacher isn't watching. And, this turns into a classroom management nightmare for the teacher who now spends most of the class period policing cell phones.

An article in the Atlantic by teacher and education writer Paul Barnwell further explains the challenges of using cell phones in school. Few students (and, I would add, adults - myself included!) can handle the multi-tasking aspects of using a cell phone in school. There are simple too many distractions on a cell phone (constant notifications, social media apps, texts, etc.). The Atlantic article mentions a 2014 study by Stanford University about how at-risk students learn with technology. The study concludes that at-risk students perform the best in a 1:1 environment. This means that there is one computer or tablet for each student, not one smart phone for each student. Computers and tablets are significantly less distracting than phones. Students can work on these devices without the constant barrage of SnapChat and text notification that appear on their phones.

I recently read an interesting
Since I do not have computers or tablets in my classroom (my school is not even close to being 1:1!), I let my students use their smartphones for some lessons and activities. My students enjoy using their cell phones for lessons and activities. And, I like to think that it helps them learn more about the topic. Tim Walker from neaToday that examines cell phone use in schools and it posed an interesting questions - does cell phone use in school simply feed student addiction? I don't know. I do know that I try to be an energetic, fun, and relevant teacher and establish a good rapport with my students. I think it's fun to incorporate cell phones into my lessons. article by

But I also know that I am tired. I'm tired of fighting an uphill battle against constant cell phone use by students when we aren't using them in a lesson. I'm tired of an inconsistent school and district policy regarding student cell phone use. Is it worth it?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I'd love to hear from you. How do you handle cell phones at your school and in your class? Do you use cell phones in lessons and activities? Do you think we're just feeding a student addictions by letting them use their cell phones in class? What do you think?

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My Love/Hate Relationship with Cell Phones in the Classroom

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I have a love/hate relationship with cell phones in the classroom. Do you? WHAT I LOVE: Smartphone technology is amazing! Since we don't have daily access to computer or tablets at my school, it's great to be able to tap into the technology that students hold in their hands for lessons and activities.

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CNN

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Here's a look at guns and gun violence in charts and graphics:

Civilians in the United States own about 270 million guns, according to a 2007 report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. That's slightly more than the population of Indonesia, the world's fourth most-populated country. America ranks No. 1 in firearms per capita.

According to the FBI, 2015 was a record year for background checks on guns. Some have pointed out the requests for background checks have gone up after mass shootings, the idea being that shootings cause people to worry about their safety and buy a gun to protect themselves. The month after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, for example, saw a surge in requests for background checks. The terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, had a similar effect.

Even though the homicide rate has fallen sharply in the last 50 years

The intense public focus on mass shootings and other killings belies a larger trend: The homicide rate has fallen sharply in the United States. The homicide rates for 2013 and 2014 were the lowest in more than 50 years. Firearms are used in roughly 7 in 10 killings, the FBI says.

Handguns are the weapons used most often in homicides

After many shootings, the focus immediately shifts toward restricting the use of AR-15s or other semiautomatic rifles. But statistics show that most murders in the United States are not a part of mass shootings, and handguns are the most common weapon.

Gun violence kills far more Americans than terrorism

During his presidency, Barack Obama has had to deliver statements on gun violence regularly. After a shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College in October, he asked news organizations to tally up the number of Americans killed by terrorist attacks in the last decade and compare it with the number of Americans who have died in gun violence.

Most U.S. gun deaths are suicides

Of the more than 400,000 people who died as a result of gun violence from 2001 to 2013, about three in five were from suicide. Just under two in five -- or about 156,000 people -- died of homicide.

Seven in 10 active shootings are in schools, businesses

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut; a conference center in San Bernardino, California, where a holiday party was taking place; Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina -- these are some of the more public places that have seen major mass shootings.

Shooter incidents: Most take own life

The FBI studied 160 specific types of active-shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013. The study doesn't encompass all shootings, but gives insight into how some situations could end. Unlike a homicide or mass killing, the "active" aspect implies that both law enforcement and citizens have the potential to affect the outcome of the event based upon their responses.
This story first published on December 4, 2015. It has been updated to add additional graphics.

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u.s. gun violence: the story in graphics - cnn

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U.S. gun violence: The story in graphics - CNN

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Here's a look at guns and gun violence in charts and graphics: Civilians in the United States own about 270 million guns, according to a 2007 report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. That's slightly more than the population of Indonesia, the world's fourth most-populated country. America ranks No.

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Schools Seek Balance for Cell Phones in Class

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Schools Seek Balance for Cell Phones in Class

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Boston Globe

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"You'll get kids saying, 'I'll look something up for English, and while I'm here let me quickly check my Instagram or Twitter feed.' And then it's, 'Oh, I never realized this girl said that to me,' and now they're distracted and not really engaged with their lesson plan," said Joni Siani, a Braintree psychologist and author of "Celling Your Soul: No App for Life," about how digital media affect young people.

Educators don't agree on much when it comes to digital devices in classrooms except that they aren't going away. Some 88 percent of American teens ages 13 to 17 have or have access to a mobile phone, and a majority of teens (73 percent) have smartphones, according to a Pew Research Center study released in April. Ninety-two percent of teens report going online daily, with more than half saying they're online several times a day. Twenty-four percent say they do so "almost constantly."

It's a complex issue, especially since the debate over cellphones is part of a broader conversation about a cultural shift underway in classrooms - a move away from the traditional model of teachers imparting information to students, to one where students actively participate in their own learning, using mobile devices to access the Web, educational apps, and other tools.

At Melrose High School, for example, science students use a physics app to collect acceleration data and measure sound intensity, and English students discuss literature on their smartphones. In Burlington, high school Spanish students practice language skills on their iPads by recording their speech and playing it back.

The shift in classrooms is happening slowly and unevenly, depending on district policies, financial means, and teachers' comfort levels with technology. Some schools are leveraging students' own smartphones - the so-called BYOD (bring your own device) approach. Others with the means to do so, such as the Burlington school system, have taken the "one-to-one" approach and purchased iPads for all students in grades one through 12.

It comes as the era of a one-way lecture - from a teacher who is considered "sage on the stage'' - is fading.

"Undoubtedly there are great teachers with lots of experience who are spellbinding lecturers. I'm not in any hurry to push them out the door, but as they move on, the next generation of teachers will be much better served by the 'guide on the side' [model]," said Joe Blatt, faculty director of the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The lack of consensus about cellphone use in schools is reflected in a hodgepodge of policies around Massachusetts.

Boston Public Schools prohibit their use during school hours. Melrose allows them in class with teachers' permission, and the use of smartphones as teaching tools. Some schools permit phones only during lunchtime or in the hallways. Others decree that phones stay inside lockers; some forbid tweets or texts. At Burlington High School, students can carry silenced mobile devices, but using communication features during class is prohibited.

Still, the trend seems to be in favor of increased tolerance of cellphones.

"About a year and a half ago, I said, 'All right, we can't win this battle, how do we turn it so it wins for us, so we can make it a positive?' " said Cyndy Taymore, superintendent for Melrose Public Schools. "[Students] weren't paying attention, they were checking their e-mail, and God forbid the Patriots were in a playoff game."

But banning cellphones entirely can create unexpected problems. Many parents support phones in schools so they can coordinate pickups and after-school activities with their children. They also want to be able to reach them in case of emergency.

In March, the New York Department of Education lifted its decade-long ban on cellphones in the New York City schools. The ban was unpopular, not least because thousands of students in schools with metal detectors were paying daily fees to vendors to store their phones during school hours. Now administrators will decide for themselves where and how phones will be allowed on each campus.

Through it all, the efficacy of mobile devices in the learning environment remains unclear.

Blatt says: "There is a lot of substantial evidence to show the kind of learning that is possible for kids using these devices - when properly supported and managed by teachers who make the best use of them - can be powerful learning."

On the other hand, a study released in May by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics looked at 91 schools in four cities in England, where more than 90 percent of teenagers own a mobile phone. The study found that test scores were 6.41 percent higher at schools where cellphone use is prohibited. The researchers concluded that mobile phones "can have a negative impact on productivity through distraction," particularly among low-achieving students, who benefitted most from the ban, with achievement gains of 14.23 percent.

"The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the mobile phone policy," according to the study.

Many in the pro-technology camp say that students are not distracted if their teachers are engaging, a statement that exasperates soon-to-be former teacher Miriam Morgenstern.

She recently brought a Holocaust survivor into class to talk about World War II, and noticed that one of her students was tweeting during the talk. "Should I have told the Holocaust survivor to be a little more engaging?" Morgenstern said.

Linda Matchan can be reached at linda.matchan@globe.com.

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Schools seek balance for cellphones in class - The Boston Globe

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"You'll get kids saying, 'I'll look something up for English, and while I'm here let me quickly check my Instagram or Twitter feed.' And then it's, 'Oh, I never realized this girl said that to me,' and now they're distracted and not really engaged with their lesson plan," said Joni Siani, a Braintree psychologist and author of "Celling Your Soul: No App for Life," about how digital media affect young people.

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Blog: Childhood is Broken in the Digital Age

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Blog: Childhood is Broken in the Digital Age

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Richard Freed

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Time magazine's November 7, 2016 cover story, "The Kids Are Not All Right," reveals that our children and teens are tormented by dangerously high rates of depression, self-injurious cutting, and other serious emotional problems. Author Susanna Schrobsdorff connects this generation's suffering to the often hopeless and menacing cyberworld they inhabit: elementary schoolers are cyberbullied on social media, teens scroll through grisly photos of self-mutilation online, and--pouring salt into the wounds--kids' digital immersion cuts them off from needed family connections.

"Even though teens may be in the same room with their parents, they might also, thanks to their phones, be immersed in a painful emotional tangle with dozens of their classmates," Schrobsdorff writes. "Or they're looking at other people's lives on Instagram and feeling self-loathing (or worse). Or they're caught up in a discussion about suicide with a bunch of people on the other side of the country they've never even met via an app that most adults have never heard of."

Many factors explain why America's kids increasingly immerse themselves in dark cyberspaces at the expense of engaging with family, school, and other essential real-world activities. Social media, video games, and the like offer a convenient babysitter for today's parents who work longer hours than those of decades past. Moreover, addictive technologies draw kids like moths to a flame. Yet, no factor has pushed youth digital immersion more than decades of flawed pop-culture parenting advice that has convinced parents and schools to turn kids loose with digital devices.
Leading Parents and Educators Astray
Soon after the new millennium, as America grappled with an explosion in consumer technologies, influential video game developer Marc Prensky promoted a paradigm to guide how parents and teachers should manage kids' technology: the digital native-digital immigrant concept.

Prensky labeled children "digital natives," claiming they're tech experts because they have grown up "surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age." In turn, he characterized parents and teachers as "digital immigrants," relatively unsophisticated on matters of technology. Prensky therefore encouraged a reversal in the traditional family hierarchy, suggesting that parents should obey their kids as they demand more video games, cell phones, portables, and online subscriptions.

A number of popular tech pundits followed Prensky's lead, asserting that parents should back away from guiding kids' tech. In her 2014 Time magazine article, Danah Boyd, the author of It's Complicated, told parents to "Let Kids Run Wild Online," and likewise branded parents who set tech limits "fearful."

Many American parents and schools have latched on to the digital native-digital immigrant belief since, at face value, it can appear spot on. Watching a preteen flip through a tablet or a teen multitask on a phone can seem to confirm the notion that kids are tech whizzes who need little guidance.

However, brain-imaging studies are showing that the teen brain is highly sensation seeking, while its judgment center, the prefrontal cortex, remains immature. Teens are therefore notoriously bad at limiting their own use of seductive entertainment technologies. In contrast, the more developed prefrontal cortices of parents, teachers, and other caring adults help youth grasp what they cannot alone: how kids' tendency to overuse playtime technologies is likely to erode their bonds with family, damage emotional health, hinder academic success, and increase the risk of developing a tech addiction. Parents, teachers, and other adult caregivers must therefore provide children and teenagers with strong guidance on tech.
When a Generation of Kids Runs Wild Online
While patently false, the digital native-digital immigrant belief is the defining blueprint for how American youth now use tech. Parents from my clinical practice stare at me in astonishment when I suggest the need to limit kids' devices: "But she'll get angry if I set rules on her phone." In fact, across the nation, parents have turned their kids loose on screens and devices. According to a national study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "The majority of 8- to 18-year-olds say they don't have any rules about the type of media content they can use or the amount of time they can spend with the medium." Schools, too, are increasingly giving students free rein to use phones throughout the day, even in class.

With parents and schools backing away, it's no surprise that the time kids spend on entertainment technologies has exploded, while the time they spend using technology to learn is trivial by comparison. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, teens now spend 8 hours every day playing with phones and screens, while they only spend 16 minutes a day using the computer at home for school.

Mending a Broken Childhood

I have previously written that our kids' overuse of playtime technologies is leading to a generation of smartphone experts who struggle with the learning basics that colleges use to gauge admission--an alarming two-thirds of American teens now score "below proficient" in reading, and this same percentage score "below proficient" in math. The recent Time magazine article revealing that America's wired-up kids also experience epidemic levels of emotional problems completes this picture: As time with tech soars, mental health and academic skills are sinking. Childhood is broken in the digital age.

To help our kids, I recommend that parents and schools look to how leading tech execs have raised their own children. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and many other tech industry leaders have rejected the digital native-digital immigrant myth, and instead provided their kids strong tech rules. Such limits are needed if kids are to engage with their families that--even in this digital age--are the cornerstone of their emotional well-being. Setting tech rules also helps children focus on their studies and learn to use technology productively.

Make no mistake, guiding children's and teens' tech use demands far more effort from adults than just handing over a device. But that's a small price to pay for fixing what is so clearly broken in our young peoples' lives.

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Childhood Is Broken in the Digital Age... Let's Fix It

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Time magazine's November 7, 2016 cover story, "The Kids Are Not All Right," reveals that our children and teens are tormented by dangerously high rates of depression, self-injurious cutting, and other serious emotional problems. Author Susanna Schrobsdorff connects this generation's suffering to the often hopeless and menacing cyberworld they inhabit: elementary schoolers are cyberbullied on social media, teens scroll through grisly photos of self-mutilation online, and--pouring salt into the wounds--kids' digital immersion cuts them off from needed family connections.

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Do Smartphones Have a Place in the Classroom?

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Do Smartphones Have a Place in the Classroom?

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The Atlantic

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From middle schools to colleges, cellphones' adverse effects on student achievement may outweigh their potential as a learning tool.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.-Walking the hallways between classes at Fern Creek High School in Louisville, Kentucky, I dodge students whose heads are turned down to glowing screens. Earbuds and brightly colored headphones are everywhere. And when I peer into classrooms, I see students tuning out their peers and teachers and focusing instead on YouTube and social media.

These are issues I deal with as an English teacher at Fern Creek. I have guidelines for cellphone and smartphone use, but it's a constant struggle to keep kids engaged in lessons and off their phones. Even when I know I've created a well-structured and well-paced lesson plan, it seems as if no topic, debate, or activity will ever trump the allure of the phone.

More From The Hechinger Report

Many teachers at Fern Creek are stumped about how to deal with student cellphone and smartphone use.

On the one hand, we know that most students bring a mini-supercomputer to school every day, a device with vast potential for learning. On the other hand, just how and even if smartphones might help students learn remains a troubling question. It's especially vexing with regard to students who already have low achievement levels or learning problems.

According to our principal, roughly 75 percent of Fern Creek students are considered "gap" kids under Kentucky's definition-students who belong to groups that, on average, have historically performed below achievement goals. These sometimes overlapping groups include students receiving free or reduced-priced lunch, African American students, English Language Learners, and special-education students. More than half of our gap students scored at the novice (lowest) level on last year's 10th-grade reading exam. I frequently talk with colleagues about the possibility and challenge of using phones to help gap students from all backgrounds learn.

To us, it seems that some kids can handle the multitasking that using phones in school would require; for others, the smartphone is almost always a distraction. Even the visible presence of a phone pulls students-and many adults-away from their focus. Some kids can "switch" attention between the phone as an entertainment device and as a learning tool; for others, the phone's academic potential is routinely ignored.

"The variance in student ability to focus and engage in the actual task at hand is disconcerting," said Rob Redies, a Fern Creek chemistry teacher, via email. "Because although technology and the wealth of information that it can provide has the potential to shrink achievement gaps, I am actually seeing the opposite take place within my classroom."

The phone could be a great equalizer, in terms of giving children from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds the same device, with the same advantages. But using phones for learning requires students to synthesize information and stay focused on a lesson or a discussion. For students with low literacy skills and the frequent urge to multitask on social media or entertainment, incorporating purposeful smartphone use into classroom activity can be especially challenging. The potential advantage of the tool often goes to waste.
"It's like giving kids equal access to cigarettes and candy ... teens are not as adept at understanding risk and cause and effect."
And I know smartphones do have wonderful learning potential, having had occasional success with them in my own classroom. I've had students engage in peer-editing using cloud-based word processing on their phones, for example. I've also heard and read about other educators using phones for exciting applications: connecting students to content experts via social media, recording practice presentations, and creating "how-to" videos for science experiments.

We also know that other school districts across the country are in the midst of trying to incorporate technology to enhance learning, and to close the so-called digital divide-to ensure all students have access to an Internet-enabled device. One way to solve the access issue is to allow students to use smartphones in class. At Fern Creek, where I'd estimate that at least 80 percent of students have smartphones, this would seem like a logical choice, given the relatively low numbers of tablets and computers we have available for student use.

Because of my own frustration with school phone use, and spurred on by conversations with colleagues, I decided to delve into the research about smartphones and education. Can and should smartphones be used to enhance learning for all students? Or should we avoid using phones in class because of the distractibility factor, and because many kids seem resistant to using them for learning?

Research supporting the idea that smartphones-specifically-can be used to enhance learning for all students, even underachievers, is hard to find. However, Stanford University's 2014 study on at-risk students' learning with technology concludes that providing "one-to-one access" to devices in school (students don't have to share) provides the most benefit. The study does not, however, mention smartphones as a choice tool to achieve greater engagement and academic success.

I next contacted Richard Freed, a clinical psychologist and the author of Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age, who works with a wide range of children and families in the San Francisco Bay area.

"High levels of smartphone use by teens often have a detrimental effect on achievement, because teen phone use is dominated by entertainment, not learning, applications," he said.

I considered the Stanford study and my conversation with Freed as I observed students in my own classroom. Struggling students (from all backgrounds) seem to be more susceptible than their higher-achieving peers to using their smartphones for noneducational purposes while in school. Also, the device does make a difference: When I design and schedule instruction allowing for one-to-one computer access, students get better results than when I try the same thing with one-to-one phone access.

Nonetheless, Redies and I and many of our colleagues attempt to use smartphones productively in class, but I don't know of any Fern Creek teacher who allows students open access to their devices at all times. This contrasts with the approach of Brianna Crowley, a colleague with whom I've worked through the Center for Teaching Quality.

Pennsylvania's Hershey High School, where Crowley taught English for eight and a half years before recently leaving the classroom for a full-time consulting job with the Center for Teaching Quality, is part of a high-achieving district with few disadvantaged students. For three years, the district has been implementing a "bring your own device" (BYOD) policy in an effort to maximize students' learning opportunities.

Still, even Crowley has noticed the challenges for struggling students. "Many students who may perform poorly on academic measures seem to see their devices as useful for a narrow range of tasks-most of which involve passive consuming of entertainment or knowledge-level content," she wrote in an email. If all students are to be successful using smartphones and other technology for learning, Crowley added, then it's clear that different students may need different activities and different types of support from teachers.
Analyses of academic metrics seem to support limiting students' smartphone access.
But at schools like Fern Creek, the fact that so many students have below grade-level reading skills, coupled with their tendency to use their phones for entertainment in school, means that teachers here are having a tougher time figuring out how smartphones might support learning.

Fern Creek's principal, Nathan Meyer, recently asked faculty members to provide input on how to best address the challenges of integrating (or not) students' smartphones into the learning environment. "I see students using cellphones and earbuds as a way to disengage with their peers," he said. "The isolation squanders opportunities for students to learn to engage and communicate with empathy." The cellphones and easy access to social media, according to Meyer, are also at the root of much of the student disruption and conflict that happens on campus.

The findings of a recent study onstudent phone access and the achievement gap by Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy for the London School of Economics and Political Science echoed my concerns. "We find that mobile phone bans have very different effects on different types of students," the authors wrote. "Banning mobile phones improves outcomes for the low-achieving students ... the most, and has no significant impact on high achievers."

The study focused on standardized-test data, however, and many educators, like Crowley, question the usefulness of that measure; they would prefer to evaluate learning based on more varied, deeper measures, such as student projects.

"We shouldn't put these results on a pedestal," Crowley said.

Yet analyses of other academic metrics seem to support limiting students' smartphone access, too. Researchers at Kent State University, for example, found that among college students, more daily cellphone use (including smartphones) correlated with lower overall GPAs. The research team surveyed more than 500 students, controlling for demographics and high-school GPA, among other factors. If college students are affected by excessive phone use, then surely younger students with too much access to their phones and too little self-control and guidance would be just as affected academically if not more.

Some school districts with large percentages of struggling students have forged ahead to increase student access to their phones. Last year, New York City's public-school system lifted its ban.

"It's like giving kids equal access to cigarettes and candy," Freed said. "There is a reason that adults have tried to limit and regulate young people's behavior, given that teens are not as adept at understanding risk and cause and effect."

However, Crowley believes teachers must adapt classroom instruction to the modern world. "If educators do not find ways to leverage mobile technology in all learning environments, for all students, then we are failing our kids by not adequately preparing them to make the connection between their world outside of school and their world inside school," she said.

So, is the best learning environment one that's free from digital distractions for struggling learners-a refuge from the constant barrage of information? Or should schools adapt to the realities of a hyper-connected world in which the vast majority of students carry access to almost-infinite information in their pockets? Or is there a middle ground?

For myself, Redies, Meyer and the staff at Fern Creek-and at many other schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged learners-there is no simple answer.
This post appears courtesy of The Hechinger Report.

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visible presence of a phone pulls students

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Should Smartphones Be Banned From Classrooms?

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From middle schools to colleges, cellphones' adverse effects on student achievement may outweigh their potential as a learning tool. LOUISVILLE, Ky.-Walking the hallways between classes at Fern Creek High School in Louisville, Kentucky, I dodge students whose heads are turned down to glowing screens. Earbuds and brightly colored headphones are everywhere.

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LA Times

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A recent Los Angeles Times' article reveals that teachers across America must compete with students' phones for attention. Matt Miles, a high school teacher from Fairfax County, Virginia, says the problem is getting worse: "Whereas 5 years ago, I could quietly ask the one rebellious student to put his or her phone away with no real interruption to class, doing that today would require multiple conversations with a majority of my class."

The push for students to use phones while at school, and even during class, comes from this generation of preteens and teens who -- as illustrated by the recent documentary Screenagers -- struggle to stop playing with their phones. Adding fuel to the fire are tech pundits who claim that smartphones provide learning opportunities for children. Parents, too, may want to communicate by phone with their kids throughout the school day.

But new research is questioning the wisdom of allowing phones in school, as studies reveal this practice is putting students' learning and safety at risk.
Distracted Learning
There's no doubt that smartphones have remarkable capabilities which, in theory, could promote student learning. But the truth is that kids -- in spite of the best efforts of parents and teachers -- use their phones primarily to access digital amusements. A Kaiser Family Foundation report says: "The transformation of the cell phone into a media content delivery platform [has]... facilitated an explosion in [entertainment] media consumption among American youth," including TV and video games.

It's therefore not surprising that a recent London School of Economics study found that schools which ban the use of phones experienced a substantial improvement in student test scores, with the researchers concluding that phones "can have a negative impact on productivity through distraction." Researchers found that phones hurt vulnerable students the most. Study co-author Dr. Richard Murphy, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas, reports: "Allowing phones into schools would be the most damaging to low-achieving and low-income students, exacerbating any existing learning inequalities."

Research on college students (average age 18) in a simulated classroom reveals how phones hurt learning, as students who did not use their phones "wrote down 62 percent more information in their notes, took more detailed notes, were able to recall more detailed information from the lecture, and scored a full letter grade and a half higher on a multiple choice test than those students who were actively using their mobile phones."
The Illusion of Safety
Understandably, some may believe that children's safety is improved if parents and children can reach one another by phone during the school day. However, in order to get a message from their parents, students must constantly monitor their phones, even during class. This constant phone and online use is now recognized as posing risks for children. Why? Because research is revealing that kids who spend more time online are more likely to be involved in cyberbullying than kids who spend less.

Schools therefore inadvertently increase the chances that kids will be cyberbullied at school through open phone policies. Marc Vincenti, a retired English teacher from Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, witnessed how students using phones during school increases their risks of being victimized. Vincenti asked one of his students, who appeared troubled, if she was okay. She responded, "I'm so sorry, but on my way to your class I got a text six pages long from my boyfriend's old girlfriend saying what a slut I am."

We should be doing everything we can to limit cyberbullying, especially during school hours, as research shows that it increases the danger that kids will skip school or consider suicide. Schools will protect students' safety by having them keep their phones off in backpacks from morning bell to last. If parents or children need to reach one another, the school office can be used -- a policy that has worked well for decades.
The Need for Leadership
Schools will clearly promote their students' academic success and safety by limiting the use of student phones during school hours. Presently, most schools leave it to teachers to manage phone distractions in their own classrooms. But this piecemeal approach has left teachers with inadequate support to confront the difficult and potentially unsafe task of limiting disruptive phone use by defiant students. In a recent New York Times' article, teacher Ed Boland acknowledges, "I just wish somebody told me how to get a cellphone out of a kid's hand."

School leaders and teachers therefore need to work together to help students and parents recognize the substantial benefits of keeping phones off during school. Such teacher-leader cooperation will also ensure that phone limits extend to lunch and passing periods to protect students.

Principal Anita Berger of Banneker High School, a Washington, DC magnet school, is providing strong leadership on student phones, particularly considering the challenges faced by her students. Banneker's student body is 85 percent black, a group of teens who -- according to a recent Common Sense Media report -- nationally spend almost twice the amount of time each day using phones when compared with white children (4 hours, 11 minutes to 2 hours, 12 minutes). Black students also tend to score lower academically than white children. So, Banneker's students would especially benefit from school phone limits which, according to the London School of Economics phone study, particularly help lower achieving students.

Principal Berger and Banneker have done just that, with a rule that students don't use phones during the school day. This has helped Banneker students excel, as the school ranks in the top 2 percent on The Washington Post's list of America's most challenging high schools, and nearly 100 percent of its graduates are accepted into post-secondary institutions. "Although we know there are many benefits to mobile technology," Berger says, "the distractions outweigh the benefits."

Banneker's phone limits also promote a supportive and engaging school community. "We do not have social media drama, and students actually interact with one another during lunch," Principal Berger adds. Schools across America can learn a lot from Banneker.

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A recent Los Angeles Times' article reveals that teachers across America must compete with students' phones for attention. Matt Miles, a high school teacher from Fairfax County, Virginia, says the problem is getting worse: "Whereas 5 years ago, I could quietly ask the one rebellious student to put his or her phone away with no real interruption to class, doing that today would require multiple conversations with a majority of my class."

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Trapped by helicopter parents and desperate to carve out a space of their own, teens need a place to make mistakes

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Huffington Post

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When I meet with the parents of depressed and suicidal teens, I always ask them how these kids spend their days. For the past five years, parents' responses have been so similar that I can be nearly certain of their reply: "In the bedroom on the phone."

It's clear to me as a child and adolescent psychologist that our kids' immersion in a world of smartphones, social media, and gaming is contributing to their record rates of depression, self-cutting, and suicide. I have devoted much of my life to this mental health crisis, calling attention to the problem and offering solutions. My book Wired Child, Huffington Post articles I've authored, and talks I give around the nation highlight the need to shift our kids towards lives centered around family and school-not screens.

Jean Twenge's recent Atlantic article "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?" adds to the compelling evidence that smartphone and social media overuse is fueling kids' soaring rates of loneliness and depression. But it's vital to understand why the wired life poses risks, so that we can provide kids with positive alternatives.
What About the Wired Life Hurts Kids?
A lot of material about the dangers of kids' smartphone use focuses on media content. "They made a secret Instagram page about me for people to say something mean," 15-year-old Kelly told me. "Even the nice kids from my school said horrible things." Such cyberbullying attacks are all too frequent, and they increase children's risk of considering suicide.

Another content factor that creates mental health risks is FOMO, or the fear of missing out. Our kids are now treated to an endless scroll of "we're-having-a-great-time-without-you" posts, which eats away at the self-esteem and joy of even the most confident youngsters.

However, I believe that a non-content factor -hiding in plain sight-is taking an even greater toll than content elements. Walk into any restaurant, airport, or waiting room; peek at the kid and parent in the car next to you; or better yet, visit the homes of families with preteens or teens. You will see kids so captivated by their digital devices that they do not engage with or even seem to be aware of their parents.

Today's teens spend an incredible eight hours each day on their devices for entertainment. And I believe the displacement of family by these addictive devices is the most harmful consequence of kids' phone and screen use. This distancing effect is obvious even when family members share the same room. As the father of 12-year-old Jenny told me, "We'll sit down to dinner or go on family outings, but she's always on her phone."

There is remarkably little recognition that kids are being pulled away from family, despite decades of research showing that a close bond with family is the single most important contributor to the well-being of children and teens. Why don't we recognize this?

As Kristin, the mother of an 11-year-old daughter, acknowledged, "Life's easier when my daughter's on her phone. I can go about my day, and I get stuck on my phone, too." At a time when parents are busier than ever and can become preoccupied with screens themselves, it's tempting to look away from the costs of our kids' wired lives.

The displacement of family by smartphones, video games, and social media is also dismissed with claims that the effect is no different now than in the past, when older generations glommed onto TV and the basic telephone. Yet, unlike these older devices, today's technologies are purposefully designed by brain scientists to foster dependence and pull us away from our real lives. In a compelling TED talk, former Google product designer Tristan Harris revealed the black box of tricks that keep us-and our children-staring at our phones and screens for hours.

Still, I believe the primary reason we discount our kids' overuse of technology is the common belief that preteens and teens are better served by connecting with peers than parents-and these peer connections are found mostly online. But this is a destructive myth, as parents have greater brain development than peers, allowing them to be more reasoned, empathetic, and therefore better able to care for kids. Throughout the vast majority of human history, the family unit has been charged with raising children. Even preteens and teens living on the 19th-century American frontier spent their days working, laughing, and crying alongside their parents and other family members, not peers.

Entrusting our kids' well-being to the capricious and drama-filled world of peer relationships-made even harsher and more swiftly viral online-is a mistake of grand proportions. I have worked with countless young people who cut themselves or downed a half bottle of pills because their "best friends" turned on them and shared their most intimate thoughts with the entire school online. Sure, it's great when kids have friends, and close ones at that. But it's time that we parents fight for our kids by taking our rightful place as their primary loving guides.
Connecting a Wired-Up Generation with Family
Consider these steps to shift your kids away from destructive tech obsessions and towards the family they need:

Know what kids need most: When kids complain they're "lonely," recognize that this is often a cry for closer family ties, not peers.

Parent like a tech exec: Confidently set tech limits by knowing that industry insiders, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, set strong device limits on their own kids.

Power in numbers: I recommend parents come together at schools to talk about setting limits, as rules work better when shared by the community.

Help schools help kids: Heavy smartphone use doesn't only impair kids' emotional health, it also hinders academic success. So, encourage your child's school to have students put their phones away during the school day.

Delay smartphone use: Take the "Wait Until the 8th" pledge, which is a nationwide movement to push back the age when kids get smartphones.

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Why Smartphone Dependence Is Ravaging a Generation

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When I meet with the parents of depressed and suicidal teens, I always ask them how these kids spend their days. For the past five years, parents' responses have been so similar that I can be nearly certain of their reply: "In the bedroom on the phone."

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Tons of Data

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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24% of teens go online "almost constantly," facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones.

Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily - including 24% who say they go online "almost constantly," according to a new study from Pew Research Center. More than half (56%) of teens - defined in this report as those ages 13 to 17 - go online several times a day, and 12% report once-a-day use. Just 6% of teens report going online weekly, and 2% go online less often.

Much of this frenzy of access is facilitated by mobile devices. Nearly three-quarters of teens have or have access to a smartphone and 30% have a basic phone, while just 12% of teens 13 to 17 say they have no cell phone of any type. African-American teens are the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one, compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens. These phones and other mobile devices have become a primary driver of teen internet use: Fully 91% of teens go online from mobile devices at least occasionally. Among these "mobile teens," 94% go online daily or more often. By comparison, teens who don't access the internet via mobile devices tend to go online less frequently. Some 68% go online at least daily.

African-American and Hispanic youth report more frequent internet use than white teens. Among African-American teens, 34% report going online "almost constantly" as do 32% of Hispanic teens, while 19% of white teens go online that often.

Facebook is the most popular and frequently used social media platform among teens; half of teens use Instagram, and nearly as many use Snapchat

Facebook remains the most used social media site among American teens ages 13 to 17 with 71% of all teens using the site, even as half of teens use Instagram and four-in-ten use Snapchat.
71% of teens use more than one social network site
Teens are diversifying their social network site use. A majority of teens - 71% - report using more than one social network site out of the seven platform options they were asked about. Among the 22% of teens who only use one site, 66% use Facebook, 13% use Google+, 13% use Instagram and 3% use Snapchat.

This study uses a somewhat different method than Pew Research Center's previous reports on teens. While both are probability-based, nationally representative samples of American teens, the current survey was administered online, while our previous work involved surveying teens by phone. A great deal of previous research has found that the mode of interview - telephone vs. online self-administration - can affect the results. The magnitude and direction of these effects are difficult to predict, though for most kinds of questions, the fundamental conclusions one would draw from the data will be similar regardless of mode. Accordingly, we will not compare specific percentages from previous research with results from the current survey. But we believe that the broad contours and patterns evident in this web-based survey are comparable to those seen in previous telephone surveys.

Facebook remains a dominant force in teens' social media ecosystems, even as Instagram and Snapchat have risen into a prominent role in teens' online lives. Asked which platforms they used most often, the overall population of teens in this sample (ages 13 to 17) reported that Facebook was the site they used most frequently (41% said that), followed by Instagram (20%) and Snapchat (11%).

Boys are more likely than girls to report that they visit Facebook most often (45% of boys vs. 36% of girls). Girls are more likely than boys to say they use Instagram (23% of girls vs. 17% of boys) and Tumblr (6% of girls compared with less than 1% of boys). Older teens ages 15 to 17 are more likely than younger teens to cite Facebook (44% vs. 35% of younger teens), Snapchat (13% vs. 8%) and Twitter (8% vs. 3%) as a most often used platform, while younger teens ages 13 to 14 are more likely than their older compatriots to list Instagram (25% vs. 17% of older teens) as a platform they visit most often.

Middle and upper income teens lean toward Instagram and Snapchat

The survey data reveals a distinct pattern in social media use by socio-economic status. Teens from less well-off households (those earning less than $50,000) are more likely than others to say they use Facebook the most: 49% of these teens say they use it most often, compared with 37% of teens from somewhat wealthier families (those earning $50,000 or more).

Teens from more affluent households are somewhat more likely than those from the least affluent homes to say they visit Snapchat most often, with 14% of those from families earning more than $75,000 saying Snapchat is their top site, compared with 7% of those whose families earn less than $30,000 annually. Twitter shows a similar pattern by income, with the wealthiest teens using Twitter more than their least well-to-do peers. It should be noted that some of these differences may be artifacts of differences in use of these sites by these different subgroups of teens.

Smartphones facilitate shifts in teens' communication and information landscape

As American teens adopt smartphones, they have a variety of methods for communication and sharing at their disposal. Texting is an especially important mode of communication for many teens. Some 88% of teens have or have access to cell phones or smartphones and 90% of those teens with phones exchange texts. A typical teen sends and receives 30 texts per day

And teens are not simply sending messages through the texting system that telephone companies offer. Some 73% of teens have access to smartphones and among them messaging apps like Kik or WhatsApp have caught on. Fully 33% of teens with phones have such apps. And Hispanic and African-American youth with phones are substantially more likely to use messaging apps, with 46% of Hispanic and 47% of African-American teens using a messaging app compared with 24% of white teens.

Girls dominate social media; boys are more likely to play video games

Teenage girls use social media sites and platforms - particularly visually-oriented ones - for sharing more than their male counterparts do. For their part, boys are more likely than girls to own gaming consoles and play video games.

Data for this report was collected for Pew Research Center. The survey was administered online by the GfK Group using its KnowledgePanel, in English and Spanish, to a nationally representative sample of over 1,060 teens ages 13 to 17 and a parent or guardian from September 25 to October 9, 2014 and February 10 to March 16, 2015. In the fall, 1016 parent-teen pairs were interviewed. The survey was re-opened in the spring and 44 pairs were added to the sample. For more on the methods for this study, please visit the Methods section at the end of this report.

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Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015

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24% of teens go online "almost constantly," facilitated by the widespread availability of smartphones. Aided by the convenience and constant access provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily - including 24% who say they go online "almost constantly," according to a new study from Pew Research Center.

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3 min. video trailer

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Are you watching kids scroll through life, with their rapid-fire thumbs and a six-second attention span? Physician and filmmaker Delaney Ruston saw that with her own kids and learned that the average kid spends 6.5 hours a day looking at screens.

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Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

Two recent surveys reveal a widespread belief among teachers that students have shorter attention spans because of their constant use of digital technology.
Are you distracted by technology? Are smartphones, texting, video games, iPads, Facebook, Web surfing and television getting in the way of your learning?

In "Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say," Matt Richtel reports on the two surveys:

There is a widespread belief among teachers that students' constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.

The researchers note that their findings represent the subjective views of teachers and should not be seen as definitive proof that widespread use of computers, phones and video games affects students' capability to focus.

Even so, the researchers who performed the studies, as well as scholars who study technology's impact on behavior and the brain, say the studies are significant because of the vantage points of teachers, who spend hours a day observing students.

Students: Are you distracted by technology? Are smartphones, texting, video games, iPads, Facebook, Web surfing and television getting in the way of your learning?

Has digital technology shortened your attention span?

Do you suffer from a "Wikipedia problem"? Are you likely to give up when you can't find an answer quickly?

Do you find reality less interesting than what you're doing and viewing on a screen?

How much time do you spend each day in front of a screen?

Do you think technology is getting in the way of your ability to write and communicate face to face?

Is technology distracting you from your homework?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older. Two recent surveys reveal a widespread belief among teachers that students have shorter attention spans because of their constant use of digital technology. Are you distracted by technology? Are smartphones, texting, video games, iPads, Facebook, Web surfing and television getting in the way of your learning?

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Transcript: Radio Interview of Parents

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but maybe you just need a few moms and dads in your corner. Every week, we check in with a diverse group of parents for their common sense and savvy advice. We wanted to continue our conversation about homeschooling, whether the idea of teaching your children at home sounds amazing or like your worst nightmare.

Our next guests have all been there and will share their stories. Michael Farris is chair of the Home School Legal Defense Association. He's also the chancellor of Patrick Henry College in Virginia. That's a college designed for homeschooled students but also welcomes other students. He's also a dad of ten, who helped home school his own children. Shawn Spence is a former teacher and a mom of five who homeschooled her children for a number of years. Also with us is Paul Hagen. He was himself homeschooled, he now teaches in a private middle school and he's a dad of three. And Paul Hagen is one of the hundreds of listeners who wrote to us on Facebook and Twitter about their experiences with homeschooling. Welcome to you all. Thank you all so much for joining us.

PAUL HAGEN: Hi.

SHAWN SPENCE: Thank you for having us.

MICHAEL FARRIS: Thanks, Michel.

MARTIN: So Michael Farris, I'm going to start you with, because you are, as my introduction would indicate, not just a practitioner but a major advocate. What brought you to that?

FARRIS: Well, I was a home school dad first, and as a lawyer experienced in first amendment litigation, the homeschooling community started calling me, asking me for help. And I figured out that there was a real need to organize the movement into an opportunity to protect all of our rights, and so I was a home school dad and I'm still a home school dad for 33 years now of homeschooling our kids. Our youngest is 16 and he's a junior in high school. But the others are all grown and either in college or married and working.

MARTIN: What was so important to you about the experience? You've essentially organized your life in order to do it, your entire family has. Why is that? Why do you feel it's so important?

FARRIS: Well, the basic reason we started homeschooling is that we learned from an educational psychologist that kids get their values from whomever they spend a majority of their time with. And so we saw our oldest daughter, who was in the first grade at the time, caring way too much about what her fellow six-year-olds thought about life and her mom and I thought that we were smarter than a bunch of six-year-olds and that we'd rather transmit our values than the six-year-olds transmitting their values. And so we heard about it, we thought great, we thought we'd try it for a year and, well, that was 33 years ago.

MARTIN: Shawn Spence, what about you? As I understand it, you didn't intend to go down this path, you are in fact a licensed teacher and had been a teacher. Your husband's also a college professor. Why did you start?

SPENCE: We moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and I think I often hate to say the city, because I have a lot of friends who have different experiences, but it was in Baltimore where we started. And our children were having a difficult time, after moving to Baltimore, with the educational experience. Overcrowded classrooms, stressed-out teachers, ill-prepared teachers, lots of behavioral problems. Indicative, unfortunately, of most schools in this country right now. And actually, the first person who introduced homeschooling was a teacher at that school. Our son had been reading, already in kindergarten, and she had 30 people in her class, no TA, and she said I can't help him. He is bored. He is spending his entire day with his head down. And we - you should help him, because we can tell that he's just going to be lost here. And so I was not unfamiliar with homeschooling.

When I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I had a great couple and all four of their children were homeschooled. So it was not foreign, it was just that I was pregnant at the time with child number five and it was really the last thing that I wanted to put on my plate. But I'm so glad that I did. I immediately connected with a homeschooling organization, Umoja Home School Group in Baltimore. At that time, we were servicing about 30 families. We grew to service 80 families. And we did everything that kids in school did. We had gym. We had field trips. We had sleepovers. We did the things that our children would normally do, even though - and we also group taught in certain cases. If this parent worked at, say, a science facility, they would have the kids come and visit and they would bring in scientists. So it was very much a group effort. And I'm so glad because our children were able to learn at their pace with their specific learning style. And that is very different, because I think the whole, group them in and teach everybody the same way mode, hasn't worked.

MARTIN: It's interesting, because your experiences of the two of you track very much with what we understand from the statistics on this. The National Center for Education Statistics says that the overwhelming majority of students who are being homeschooled are white, but then followed by African-Americans. But the reasons that parents give are, as you said Michael Farris, the number one reason parents give is the desire to provide religious or moral instruction and that the second most popular reason, closely followed behind, was a concern about the school environment.

And so that tracks very much with the experience that other people have. But Paul Hagen, a lot of listeners wrote in to say that they loved their home school experience. You wrote that it gave you a lifelong love of learning. But you and your wife decided not to home school your own children. Could you talk about that?

HAGEN: Yeah, that's right. So I feel like I had a really good experience. I had a very dedicated set of parents who were interested in home school. And, you know, curiously enough, my wife and I originally thought about homeschooling our boys. We have three young sons who are just starting off with school. And my wife is an educator, as well. She has a masters degree in education with two - certified in both social science education, as well as special education. But we decided that the challenges of home school and the potential pitfalls of home school were not appropriate for our family, and instead that we could be supportive parents within the public school system and support our kids in that way.

And that seems to work better for our family and saying that, you know, I'm one of seven kids myself. And I have two sisters who have kids and who are beginning the home school experience, as well as a sister-in-law who is going to be homeschooling her kids. And so, you know, I think our - my family's experience has been a mixed experience of the family culture of home school, and yet we have decided that, for us, that wasn't going to work.

MARTIN: What about the issue that Josh Powell raised, and Michael Farris I'll start with that, which is to - the first issue is the gaps. Is that his parents just weren't equipped to teach every subject to the level that he feels he needs to compete in the - kind of the modern world or to have the kinds of choices that he wants to have for himself. And then the second issue he raised, although it was not a factor in his case, is the possibility for - the opportunity for abuse, fewer eyes, I mean, things could be going on and nobody would know. I mean, Mike Farris, do you want to start?

FARRIS: Well, we have to make some decisions if we're going to live in a free country. And in a free country, you can't help the fact that there will be some gaps, there will be some mistakes. Some people will not do the right thing with their kids. But Scotland's got the solution for that. They're appointing a Guardian ad Litem for every child in the country and there's going to be a government monitor of every single child, because as Shawn pointed out, the public school situation, with monitors, is failing.

And so the idea that government monitoring works and produces the results, there's no track record to demonstrate that. So I believe in freedom and the basic rule is, in our country, if you neglect your kids' education there's always a stop gap. The prosecutor can prosecute you if you abuse your child, religious exemption or not. That's not relevant. If you fail to provide your child a necessary adequate education. And the difference between adequate and the best possible education is a matter of judgment and discretion, and so the government shouldn't be in the business of intervening in families, as long as there's an adequate education going on. And if there's not, educational neglect's always an opportunity no matter what the underlying home school law is.

MARTIN: Shawn, what do you say about that?

SPENCE: I actually worked with our local school system. So I'm not familiar with every state, but what I do know is that our children had speech impediment initially, they had some stuttering and we were able, as taxpaying citizens, to go to the public school and receive a speech pathologist training. Also when it comes to gaps, we also were able to work with local universities and have a tutor in areas like chemistry and calculus. And so I believe that, in those cases, there are opportunities. Our children took courses at the local community college in certain advanced areas. I'm English, their dad is political science. There are some things we don't know.

But there also are opportunities and I am so excited about things like Open University, because many universities are realizing that the cost of education - so this adequate education that the previous guest discussed is not available just because you go to public school. And we're very clear about that. Private education is where people are - where we're competing. So there is a gap between public and private education already, initially, regardless of where. So when you look at the opportunity for MIT, University of Michigan, they have Open University, have courses that you can attend online like he did, GED courses. There is an opportunity in the community to fill those gaps without having to subject yourself to abuse. And I...

MARTIN: ...If you're just joining us, we're talking about the benefits and pitfalls of homeschooling. We're talking with advocate Michael Farris, homeschooled his 10 children and is continuing to do so. Mom Shawn Spence who, at one point, homeschooled her five. And dad and history teacher Paul Hagen, he was himself homeschooled and is choosing not to home school his three children. Paul, I want to play a clip from a listener who also wrote in to us via Facebook. Kay Flueling (ph) of San Diego, California was homeschooled. She says she didn't enter her first classroom until college. This is what she said.

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KAY FLUELING: I became really fearful that I wasn't smart at all and that if I went to school, all my friends would be way smarter than me. I didn't know what I was missing. So I always felt like I must be missing something.

MARTIN: Well, she went on to say that her fears turned out to be unfounded. But Paul, what about that - what about you? When you went into a traditional classroom, did you feel that you had what you needed in order to function there, socially, as well as academically?

HAGEN: Sure, great question. So, just like Josh and this caller as well, I never went into a traditional classroom until I went to a community college and then finally to a four-year college and university. And I will say, you know, the very first time I walked into a classroom, it was a basic English class, English 101, and I remember looking around the room and wondering where I stood in regards to these other students. And there was certain trepidation, certain fear, walking into that classroom. And as it turned out, I fared well and was able to handle the pressures of college well, and so, once again, my home school experience was very positive. But I want to talk just briefly about some of the gaps also that Josh had mentioned and that you had brought up, Michel.

And I think that's a real concern. It's one of the concerns that my wife and I had when we considered what we would do with our children. I think most home school parents know why they want to home school and there's some really good reasons for doing that. Certainly, the public schools in this country are failing. They're failing millions of students and that's a really big problem that needs to be addressed. And so many parents, like Shawn, will take their kids out of public school in order to provide a better academic base for their kids or there's religious reasons to take your kids out of a school and to make sure that they get that religious or moral instruction that you would like them to have.

My concern and what I've seen personally, both in my own family and from the different people that I've come across over the years, is many of the parents who choose to home school their kids don't necessarily know the how. So, as Shawn said, there are many opportunities for home school parents to provide just incredibly full experiences for their kids. And yet, that's not always the case. And so I guess, you know, I'm supportive of home school to a degree, but I would always caution parents as they consider getting into home school, because there are some real pitfalls and there are some gaps that we see across home school.

MARTIN: In the time that we have left, I wanted to ask each of you, how would you recommend parents go about making the decision for themselves to see whether they really are suited to this, if they want to give their kids the tools that they want them to have later on to make their own choices about their lives? Michael Farris?

FARRIS: Well, some people would contend that homeschooling is easy. It's not easy. It's hard work, it's very hard work. And if a family is willing to undertake that hard work and is willing to augment their own programs and their own abilities with other things, like, we've done very well with our kids, but I can't really teach high school level science. There's a PhD physicist in our church who's taught my sons science and our second youngest son is now at the University of Virginia getting a chemistry major, thanks to Tom Larry's teaching him of science. And so parents who want the best for their kids learn how to do what they can, augment other places. And there are many, many resources. The vast majority of families recognize their own gaps and they go make utilization of the resources that are available to them.

MARTIN: Shawn, what about you? How would you say another parent might go about thinking about this, or...

SPENCE: I think the first step is to look at your resources. Look at your family structure. Look at what you are willing to do, as Mr. Farris said, and also, it's important that the issue for us, for stopping homeschooling, was financial. There is an investment that is needed. We're talking about tutors. We're talking about other classes. So there has to be an assessment as to who is going to do the majority of the teaching. Do you believe in standardized tests? And really ask yourself the questions and why you feel like your education was stellar or substantial and what will - what did your education provide that you can or cannot or need to know more information. So I think it really is - for me, I'm a lifelong learner.

I think I was homeschooled and not really homeschooled. My parents just dropped me off at the library, because they were tired of me asking them questions they couldn't answer. So I think that I learned what the libraries offered and I learned about museums and I was unafraid to ask questions and I wanted to have my children to have that same zeal. I find that now one of our children is very challenged with traditional education. He doesn't - he's not excited. He's not engaged. It's no longer interesting, and believe it or not, although he's been there now for about three or four years, he likes his friends, he's very social, but he is considering that it's just - the teachers, the environment. He doesn't feel like he's getting and being himself anymore. And so there is another side to it...

MARTIN: ...He keeps going back to that. He keeps going back to homeschooling.

SPENCE: ...Yeah, for that particular child, in particular, because I think that it really is the opportunity to give your children that critical thinking. That desire for learning and that willingness, because with this gentleman Josh, he took it right. He took the initiative. Initiative is something that's taught, in a situation, as well. You know, at home.

MARTIN: Paul, final thought from you. We have about a minute left. What would be your best advice to a parent who's trying to figure out if homeschooling is appropriate or not?

HAGEN: Yeah, sure. I, you know, I think the first thing would be know yourself and know your family. It is going to be a lot of work. Home school is a great deal of work. I have the utmost respect for home school families who work really hard at this. And just know if you've got the stamina to do that and if that's something that you're willing to invest your time and energy and your resources in, I think that would be number one.

And then realize that there are those potential pitfalls of maybe some lack of direction or lack of academic discipline that you might need to, you know, gaps that you might need to fill. And I think if you can answer those questions and you can bring a community in around yourself you can be very successful homeschooling. And if not maybe a public school or a private school might be better for you.

MARTIN: Paul Hagen is a dad of three and a history teacher. He joined us from member station KUOW in Seattle. With is in Washington, D.C., Shawn Spence, a mom of five and Michael Farris, chair of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College in Virginia. Thank you all so much for joining us.

FARRIS: Thank you.

SPENCE: Thank you.

HAGEN: Thank you.

MARTIN: And that's our program for today. I'm Michel Martin and you've been listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Let's talk more tomorrow.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Parents On The Pros And Cons Of Homeschooling

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but maybe you just need a few moms and dads in your corner. Every week, we check in with a diverse group of parents for their common sense and savvy advice.

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Advantages

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Advantages of Homeschooling: What is the Advantage of Homeschooling Your Child?

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Educating your child or children at home has many advantages. One advantage that parents consider when thinking of this form of education is the flexibility of creating a personalized teaching schedule, one that will benefit both parent and child.

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Public School Benefits

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When it comes to your child's education, you want to know that you are making the right choice. But each child is unique when it comes to learning, and the option that might be right for another child might not be the best choice for yours. Many parents who are concerned about the quality of their child's education make the choice to homeschool their kids. If you are thinking about homeschooling as an option, take the time to learn about the benefits of public school over homeschooling - they might just change your mind and your attitude about public school.

This video discusses the pros and cons of homeschooling vs schooling in public school.
What is Homeschooling?
In the simplest of terms, homeschooling is simply schooling your children at home. Homeschooling has become quite the progressive movement in recent years with more and more parents choosing to homeschool instead of sending their children to public school. There are a number of reasons why a parent might choose to homeschool their child - here are a few:

The family might have different religious beliefs than those taught (or not taught) in public school. Homeschooling allows you to choose whether to incorporate religion or not.

Homeschooling might offer more specialized educational attention for special needs children.

Parents may have different educational philosophies than public school administrators and teachers. With homeschooling, you choose what philosophies to follow.

Children may progress faster in a homeschool setting than in a public school.

Schooling at home may promote a closer familiar relationship - many parents find that they enjoy spending extra time with their kids in homeschool.

Public school options in the area may not offer the preferred degree of educational quality.

Homeschool can save time since you don't have to transport your children to and from school every day. The school day can actually be shortened for children.

The homeschool movement really started to gain speed in the 1970s when authors like Raymond Moore and John Holt began writing about educational reform. Homeschooling was a new option in alternative education at the time but, according to the National Home Education Research Institute, there are now more than 2 million children being homeschooled in the United States each year. And that number increases by as much as 7% to 15% each year.
The Pros and Cons of Homeschooling Your Kids
Homeschooling is legal in all fifty states, but there are some requirements you have to meet. Parents are required to choose or create an educational curriculum that meets certain educational standards set forth by the state. As long as those standards are met, however, parents have more educational liberty with homeschooling than with public school. Students may have more opportunities to choose what they learn with homeschooling, and they can learn at their own pace without having to keep up with more advanced students. Homeschool gives parents the opportunity to incorporate religion into their child's education and it may promote a closer family atmosphere as well.

This video looks at which student does better: the one who is homeschooled or the one who attends public school.

One of the major downsides of homeschooling is that it takes a lot of time to plan and implement educational strategies. In most families, one parent needs to make homeschooling the children their full-time concern - it can be very challenging for a single parent to succeed with homeschooling. Because one parent may not be able to work, homeschooling may put a financial strain on the family finances. Homeschooled children may also have more limited access to extracurricular activities including sports, and they may not have the same level of social interaction as they would in public school. There are, of course, workarounds for these things but they are still challenges associated with homeschooling.
The Benefits of Public School vs. Homeschool
Now that you know a little more about homeschooling and its associated pros and cons, you may be wondering how public school stacks up. Each child is an individual with individual needs, so public school may or may not be the best option. However, the only way you'll know this to be the case is to take time to learn about the potential benefits of public school versus homeschooling. Here are some of the top benefits you should consider:

Public school has a built-in structure. Children, particularly young children, thrive on routine and they require a lot of attention and care. If you are trying to homeschool your children while also being a stay-at-home mom, you may find it more challenging than you imagine.

Many public schools offer sports and elective options like art and music - these programs may not be available to homeschool students.

A public school teaches children a certain degree of independence. Depending on the grade, children need to keep track of their own class schedules, find their way from one class to another, purchase their own lunch, and make it to and from the bus every day.

Teachers are public schools are required to carry education degrees and they may have more experience working with and teaching children. Teaching a child is different from parenting a child and many parents struggle to do both.

Public school is typically cheaper than homeschooling. You could spend $1,000 or more on a homeschool curriculum alone, not to mention supplies. For a public school, you have to buy supplies once or twice a year and you can pack your child's lunch to save money.

Children who attend public school have more opportunities for social interaction than many homeschooled students. There are homeschool co-ops that can be helpful, but a public school has built-in social benefits.

Sending your children to public school frees you up to just be a parent. Doing double duty as both teacher and parent can be both grueling and frustrating at times - especially if you have other non-school-age children to care for.

Public school gives you and your child some much-needed time apart which helps to foster your child's independence and gives you a break as well. There is no harm in needing a break from your kids once in a while.

In addition to the benefits listed above, there are some downsides to public school. For example, public school has a more rigorous and regimented schedule than most homeschool programs, and students may not have the same degree of freedom and flexibility to customize their education. But unless you can fully commit yourself to create and implementing a strong homeschool curriculum, your child may be better off in public school anyway.

This video outlines five differences between homeschooling and public school.

While there are many benefits of private school versus homeschooling, every situation is different. A public school could very well be the best choice for your child while homeschooling is a better option for another child. You may even find that one of your children does better in one environment and another child does better in a separate environment. Your job as a parent is to provide for your child's needs to the best of your ability. This often means making compromises or making the best of a bad situation. As long as you keep your child's best interests in mind, you will make the right choice.

Attending public school comes with its own challenges, but homeschooling is not always the better option. Before you decide to homeschool your child, take the time to thoroughly consider your options and explore them from all angles. You may just find that public school is a better option than you previously realized - it is up to you to make the most of it.

Questions? Contact us on Facebook. @publicschoolreview

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What are the Benefits of Public School Over Homeschooling? - PublicSchoolReview.com

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Choosing the right school for your child can be difficult, but homeschooling may not be the better option. Keep reading to learn more.

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Always Good? Always Bad?

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Do you think this type of education can prepare children for the "real world"? How might it be better than traditional schooling? What might children miss from not attending a regular school?

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Alfie Kohn - outspoken education activist

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One of the most popular ideas in education these days can be summarized in a single sentence (a fact that may help to account for its popularity).

Here's the sentence:
Kids tend to fare better when they regard intelligence and other abilities not as fixed traits that they either have or lack, but as attributes that can be improved through effort.
In a series of monographs over many years and in a book published in 2000, psychologist Carol Dweck used the label "incremental theory" to describe the self-fulfilling belief that one can become smarter. Rebranding it more catchily as the "growth mindset" allowed her to recycle the idea a few years later in a best-selling book for general readers.

By now, the growth mindset has approached the status of a cultural meme. The premise is repeated with uncritical enthusiasm by educators and a growing number of parents, managers, and journalists -- to the point that one half expects supporters to start referring to their smartphones as "effortphones." But, like the buzz over the related concept known as "grit" (a form of self-discipline involving long-term persistence), there's something disconcerting about how the idea has been used -- and about the broader assumption that what students most need is a "mindset" adjustment.

Unlike grit -- which, as I've argued elsewhere, is driven more by conservative ideology than by solid research -- Dweck's basic thesis is supported by decades' worth of good data. It's not just the habit of attributing your failure to being stupid that holds you back, but also the habit of attributing your success to being smart. Regardless of their track record, kids tend to do better in the future if they believe that how well they did in the past was primarily a result of effort.

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The perils of "Growth Mindset" education: Why we're trying to fix our kids when we should b...

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One of the most popular ideas in education these days can be summarized in a single sentence (a fact that may help to account for its popularity). Here's the sentence: Kids tend to fare better when they regard intelligence and other abilities not as fixed traits that they either have or lack, but as attributes that can be improved through effort.

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Brain Pickings

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"If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve," Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: "Do what you love, and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities..." Far from Pollyanna platitude, this advice actually reflects what modern psychology knows about how belief systems about our own abilities and potential fuel our behavior and predict our success. Much of that understanding stems from the work of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, synthesized in her remarkably insightful Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library) - an inquiry into the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.

One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality. A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness.

The consequences of believing that intelligence and personality can be developed rather than being immutably engrained traits, Dweck found in her two decades of research with both children and adults, are remarkable. She writes:

For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result, your life?

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset - creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character - well, then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

[...]

I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves - in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? . . .

There's another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you're dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you're secretly worried it's a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way - in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments - everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

At the heart of what makes the "growth mindset" so winsome, Dweck found, is that it creates a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval. Its hallmark is the conviction that human qualities like intelligence and creativity, and even relational capacities like love and friendship, can be cultivated through effort and deliberate practice. Not only are people with this mindset not discouraged by failure, but they don't actually see themselves as failing in those situations - they see themselves as learning. Dweck writes:

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

This idea, of course, isn't new - if anything, it's the fodder of self-help books and vacant "You can do anything!" platitudes. What makes Dweck's work different, however, is that it is rooted in rigorous research on how the mind - especially the developing mind - works, identifying not only the core drivers of those mindsets but also how they can be reprogrammed.

Dweck and her team found that people with the fixed mindset see risk and effort as potential giveaways of their inadequacies, revealing that they come up short in some way. But the relationship between mindset and effort is a two-way street:

It's not just that some people happen to recognize the value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort. Our research has shown that this comes directly from the growth mindset. When we teach people the growth mindset, with its focus on development, these ideas about challenge and effort follow. . . .

As you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another-how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.

[...]

The mindsets change what people strive for and what they see as success. . . they change the definition, significance, and impact of failure. . . they change the deepest meaning of effort.

Dweck cites a poll of 143 creativity researchers, who concurred that the number-one trait underpinning creative achievement is precisely the kind of resilience and fail-forward perseverance attributed to the growth mindset. She writes:

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world - the world of fixed traits - success is about proving you're smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other - the world of changing qualities - it's about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you're not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you're not fulfilling your potential.

In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you're not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn't need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

But her most remarkable research, which has informed present theories of why presence is more important than praise in teaching children to cultivate a healthy relationship with achievement, explores how these mindsets are born - they form, it turns out, very early in life. In one seminal study, Dweck and her colleagues offered four-year-olds a choice: They could either redo an easy jigsaw puzzle, or try a harder one. Even these young children conformed to the characteristics of one of the two mindsets - those with "fixed" mentality stayed on the safe side, choosing the easier puzzles that would affirm their existing ability, articulating to the researchers their belief that smart kids don't make mistakes; those with the "growth" mindset thought it an odd choice to begin with, perplexed why anyone would want to do the same puzzle over and over if they aren't learning anything new. In other words, the fixed-mindset kids wanted to make sure they succeeded in order to seem smart, whereas the growth-mindset ones wanted to stretch themselves, for their definition of success was about becoming smarter.

Dweck quotes one seventh-grade girl, who captured the difference beautifully:

I think intelligence is something you have to work for ... it isn't just given to you.... Most kids, if they're not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand to answer the question. But what I usually do is raise my hand, because if I'm wrong, then my mistake will be corrected. Or I will raise my hand and say, 'How would this be solved?' or 'I don't get this. Can you help me?' Just by doing that I'm increasing my intelligence.

Things got even more interesting when Dweck brought people into Columbia's brain-wave lab to study how their brains behaved as they answered difficult questions and received feedback. What she found was that those with a fixed mindset were only interested in hearing feedback that reflected directly on their present ability, but tuned out information that could help them learn and improve. They even showed no interest in hearing the right answer when they had gotten a question wrong, because they had already filed it away in the failure category. Those with a growth mindset, on the other hand, were keenly attentive to information that could help them expand their existing knowledge and skill, regardless of whether they'd gotten the question right or wrong - in other words, their priority was learning, not the binary trap of success and failure.

These findings are especially important in education and how we, as a culture, assess intelligence. In another study of hundreds of students, mostly adolescents, Dweck and her colleagues gave each ten fairly challenging problems from a nonverbal IQ test, then praised the student for his or her performance - most had done pretty well. But they offered two types of praise: Some students were told "Wow, you got [X many] right. That's a really good score. You must be smart at this," while others, "Wow, you got [X many] right. That's a really good score. You must have worked really hard." In other words, some were praised for ability and others for effort. The findings, at this point, are unsurprising yet jarring:

The ability praise pushed students right into the fixed mindset, and they showed all the signs of it, too: When we gave them a choice, they rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. They didn't want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call into question their talent.

[...]

In contrast, when students were praised for effort, 90 percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn from.

The most interesting part, however, is what happened next: Dweck and her colleagues gave the students a subsequent set of harder problems, on which the students didn't do so well. Suddenly, the ability-praised kids thought they weren't so smart or gifted after all. Dweck puts it poignantly:

If success had meant they were intelligent, then less-than-success meant they were deficient.

But for the effort-praised kids, the difficulty was simply an indication that they had to put in more effort, not a sign of failure or a reflection of their poor intellect. Perhaps most importantly, the two mindsets also impacted the kids' level of enjoyment - everyone enjoyed the first round of easier questions, which most kids got right, but as soon as the questions got more challenging, the ability-praised kids no longer had any fun, while the effort-praised ones not only still enjoyed the problems but even said that the more challenging, the more fun. The latter also had significant improvements in their performance as the problems got harder, while the former kept getting worse and worse, as if discouraged by their own success-or-failure mindset.

It gets better - or worse, depending on how we look at it: The most unsettling finding came after the IQ questions were completed, when the researchers asked the kids to write private letters to their peers relaying the experience, including a space for reporting their scores on the problems. To Dweck's devastation, the most toxic byproduct of the fixed mindset turned out to be dishonesty: Forty percent of the ability-praised kids lied about their scores, inflating them to look more successful. She laments:

In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful - especially if you're talented - so they lied them away. What's so alarming is that we took ordinary children and made them into liars, simply by telling them they were smart.

This illustrates the key difference between the two mindsets - for those with a growth one, "personal success is when you work your hardest to become your best," whereas for those with a fixed one, "success is about establishing their superiority, pure and simple. Being that somebody who is worthier than the nobodies." For the latter, setbacks are a sentence and a label. For the former, they're motivating, informative input - a wakeup call.

But one of the most profound applications of this insight has to do not with business or education but with love. Dweck found that people exhibited the same dichotomy of dispositions in their personal relationships: Those with a fixed mindset believed their ideal mate would put them on a pedestal and make them feel perfect, like "the god of a one-person religion," whereas those with the growth mindset preferred a partner who would recognize their faults and lovingly help improve them, someone who would encourage them to learn new things and become a better person. The fixed mindset, it turns out, is at the root of many of our most toxic cultural myths about "true love." Dweck writes:

The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All - you, your partner, and the relationship - are capable of growth and change.

In the fixed mindset, the ideal is instant, perfect, and perpetual compatibility. Like it was meant to be. Like riding off into the sunset. Like "they lived happily ever after."

[...]

One problem is that people with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen automatically. It's not that the partners will work to help each other solve their problems or gain skills. It's that this will magically occur through their love, sort of the way it happened to Sleeping Beauty, whose coma was cured by her prince's kiss, or to Cinderella, whose miserable life was suddenly transformed by her prince.

This also applies to the myth of mind-reading, where the fixed mindset believes that an ideal couple should be able to read each other's minds and finish each other's sentences. She cites a study that invited people to talk about their relationships:

Those with the fixed mindset felt threatened and hostile after talking about even minor discrepancies in how they and their partner saw their relationship. Even a minor discrepancy threatened their belief that they shared all of each other's views.

But most destructive of all relationship myths is the belief that if it requires work, something is terribly wrong and that any discrepancy of opinions or preferences is indicative of character flaws on behalf of one's partner. Dweck offers a reality check:

Just as there are no great achievements without setbacks, there are no great relationships without conflicts and problems along the way.

When people with a fixed mindset talk about their conflicts, they assign blame. Sometimes they blame themselves, but often they blame their partner. And they assign blame to a trait - a character flaw.

But it doesn't end there. When people blame their partner's personality for the problem, they feel anger and disgust toward them.

And it barrels on: Since the problem comes from fixed traits, it can't be solved. So once people with the fixed mindset see flaws in their partners, they become contemptuous of them and dissatisfied with the whole relationship.

Those with the growth mindset, on the other hand, can acknowledge their partners' imperfections, without assigning blame, and still feel that they have a fulfilling relationship. They see conflicts as problems of communication, not of personality or character. This dynamic holds true as much in romantic partnerships as in friendship and even in people's relationships with their parents. Dweck summarizes her findings:

When people embark on a relationship, they encounter a partner who is different from them, and they haven't learned how to deal with the differences. In a good relationship, people develop these skills and, as they do, both partners grow and the relationship deepens. But for this to happen, people need to feel they're on the same side. . . . As an atmosphere of trust developed, they [become] vitally interested in each other's development.

What it all comes down to is that a mindset is an interpretative process that tells us what is going on around us. In the fixed mindset, that process is scored by an internal monologue of constant judging and evaluation, using every piece of information as evidence either for or against such assessments as whether you're a good person, whether your partner is selfish, or whether you are better than the person next to you. In a growth mindset, on the other hand, the internal monologue is not one of judgment but one of voracious appetite for learning, constantly seeking out the kind of input that you can metabolize into learning and constructive action.

In the rest of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck goes on to explore how these fundamental mindsets form, what their defining characteristics are in different contexts of life, and how we can rewire our cognitive habits to adopt the much more fruitful and nourishing growth mindset.
Public domain photographs via Flickr Commons

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Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives

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"If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve," Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: "Do what you love, and don't stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities..."

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By Diana Simeon
We know from the experts that grit-toughness, perseverance, resilience-is key to our teens' success in life. Allowing our kids to handle their own setbacks and challenges are important ways we parents can help this kind of grit take root in our teens.

"Let them face the consequences," stresses Marcia Hanlon, a licensed social worker in Chicago. Take, for example, being late for school or forgetting homework. Experts say teenagers can handle it. "You could say, 'Do we need to change your alarm?' Or, 'Do you need two alarms?' But, don't go back to, 'Oh, I'll get you up,'" Hanlon recommends.

Along the way, though, as our kids tackle these tough situations, we will be tempted to offer them encouragement. While that's great, we need to be careful just how we phrase those words of affirmation-are we telling our kids they'll succeed because they were born with talent, or because they can build talent with hard work?

While handling setbacks is critical when it comes to grit, so is sustained effort. You know, plain old hard work. And this is where a growth mindset can be tremendously helpful. So, what's a growth mindset?

Growth Mindset

It's a concept that was developed by Stanford University scholar Carol Dweck in the 1970s. Dweck identified two basic mindsets. People with a fixed mindset believe that their inherent ability is fixed and cannot be improved. Meanwhile, those with a growth mindset believe that hard work brings improvement.

Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, sees this dynamic play out among today's kids. "Kids who get praised for just being smart or gifted develop a fixed mindset and then they get afraid of failure and stop working so hard," Tough says, "while kids who get praised for their effort tend to develop a growth mindset that pushes them to work harder and see failure as a temporary setback rather than a sign that something is terribly wrong."

No surprise, then, that helping our teenagers develop a growth mindset builds grit-and for parents, that starts with focusing on our teenager's effort.

For example, if your teenager comes home with an A, try not to make the grade the centerpiece of your conversation. "An A, wow, you're smart!" Rather, praise the effort they made to get that grade. "You could say, 'It's fun to get an A. You must feel really good about that. Tell me what you did to get there," explains Debbie Silver, a Texas-based educator and author of Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8: Teaching Kids to Succeed. "Let them know you are proud of how hard they worked." And if your teenager comes home with a C or loses the soccer game or bombs the audition? Again, focus on the effort: "That must be disappointing. What can you do differently next time around?"

Growth Mindset Can Work Wonders

Silver knows firsthand that a growth mindset can work wonders, while a fixed mindset-no matter how intelligent your teenager is-can do just the opposite. "Two of my sons were labeled as gifted, but I saw them stumble more in later life than the two who had to struggle for everything they got," she notes. That's because her "gifted" sons hadn't learned what her less academic children had learned early on, which was "not to give up. They had learned to keep at it."

Sue Sadler, former associate head of Hathaway Brown School in Cleveland, Ohio, sums it up. "It's so hard to watch kids struggle. But when you solve the problems for them, you send the subtle message that they can't do it for themselves. When they have that experience of sticking with something and getting to the end, it's like a spiral, where they want to achieve more and more."

When we talk more about our kids' work more than their smarts or talents, we allow them to move on from failure. Failure doesn't disprove that they are smart or athletic or artistic-instead, it simply means they need to try a different approach.

Paul Tough received hundreds of reader comments after an excerpt of How Children Succeed was published in the New York Times. "There was one named Dave," Tough recalls. "He said, 'I'm left now in my 30s often wondering how much more I could have accomplished if I wasn't terrified of failure and prone to shying away from ventures where my success wasn't guaranteed.'"

Encouraging growth, instead of offering praise, gives teens the courage and the permission to try-and try again-in these situations where there is no guarantee. And when failure is possible, so is success beyond their wildest dreams.
Diana Simeon is managing editor of Your Teen.

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Teens Benefit From a Growth Mindset (That Hard Work Matters)

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By Diana Simeon We know from the experts that grit-toughness, perseverance, resilience-is key to our teens' success in life. Allowing our kids to handle their own setbacks and challenges are important ways we parents can help this kind of grit take root in our teens.

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Growth Mindset is Real

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High school is a big transition for many students. Not only are they juggling many classes and extracurricular activities, but social pressures increase as well. For many teenagers the stress piles up, leading to depression, anxiety and sleep loss. The pressure to do well, get into a good college, and succeed in life is a big burden for many, but psychology professor David S. Yeager is hopeful that mindset interventions could help teens become more resilient to the stress.

In a New York Times article, Jan Hoffman describes two of Yeager's recent studies and how small shifts in the way young people think about their own abilities could make a big difference. Hoffman writes:

"His latest study, published in the journal Psychological Science, found a surprisingly effective technique. At the beginning of the school year, students participated in a reading and writing exercise intended to instill a basic, almost banal message to help them manage tension: People can change.

The students who completed the exercise subsequently had lower levels of stress, reported more confidence in coping and achieved slightly higher grades at year's end, compared to a control group. These results were measured through the students' self-reporting in online diaries and through cardiovascular and hormone measurements."

Subtle reminders that the world will not always feel as overwhelming as it does in the middle of a stressful period could help students weather those difficult patches.

John R. Weisz, a psychology professor at Harvard who was not involved in the research, found the approach efficient and powerful. "If you're an adolescent and you experience social harm, it's not fixed that you will always be a target. You can change," he said. "And over time, others can change, too.

Could A Growth Mindset Help Teens Cope With Stress?

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Could A Growth Mindset Help Teens Cope With Stress?

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High school is a big transition for many students. Not only are they juggling many classes and extracurricular activities, but social pressures increase as well. For many teenagers the stress piles up, leading to depression, anxiety and sleep loss.

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Are Schools Teaching What Kids Need to Learn?

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Are Schools Teaching What Kids Need to Learn?

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Some child development experts are concerned that schools today aren't teaching kids the skills they need to succeed. A culture of testing, they say, is inhibiting the development of "life skills." Curricular content aside, what do you think you are really learning at school? Are you developing skills that will carry you through life?

In the Well blog post "School Curriculum Falls Short on Bigger Lessons," Tara Parker-Pope reviews childhood development experts' perspective on education:

They say the ever-growing emphasis on academic performance and test scores means many children aren't developing life skills like self-control, motivation, focus and resilience, which are far better predictors of long-term success than high grades. And it may be distorting their and their parents' values.

"What are we really trying to do when we think about raising kids?" asked Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg, an expert in adolescent medicine at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We're trying to put in place the ingredients so the child is going to be a successful 35-year-old. It's not really about getting an A in algebra."

[...] One strategy is to teach children that the differences between easy and difficult subjects can provide useful information about their goals and interests. Subjects they enjoy and excel in may become the focus of their careers. Challenging but interesting classes or sports can become hobbies. Subjects that are difficult and uninteresting are just something "you have to get past," Dr. Ginsburg said.

"We need to approach failure and difficulty and struggle as data that teach us what we should do with our lives," he said. "It's when you say to a child, 'I expect you to do well in everything,' that we're preparing them to fail."

Students: Tell us what you think you are learning at school - not in terms of academic content, but in terms of "life lessons" and "soft skills." Are you learning, for example, how to follow directions? How to interpret text? How to cooperate and collaborate? How to be open to new ideas? How to think critically? What skills do you think you will most need to succeed in career and life?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Some child development experts are concerned that schools today aren't teaching kids the skills they need to succeed. A culture of testing, they say, is inhibiting the development of "life skills." Curricular content aside, what do you think you are really learning at school? Are you developing skills that will carry you through life?

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Could letting teenagers sleep later in the morning do more than just make them happy? New evidence suggests that a later start to the school day could have all sorts of benefits, like better grades and fewer car crashes. But some worry that pushing the school day back might get in the way of after-school sports and jobs, and wouldn't leave students enough time to finish homework.

Should the school day start later?

In "To Keep Teenagers Alert, Schools Let Them Sleep In," Jan Hoffman writes:

Jilly Dos Santos really did try to get to school on time. She set three successive alarms on her phone. Skipped breakfast. Hastily applied makeup while her fuming father drove. But last year she rarely made it into the frantic scrum at the doors of Rock Bridge High School here by the first bell, at 7:50 a.m.

Then she heard that the school board was about to make the day start even earlier, at 7:20 a.m.

"I thought, if that happens, I will die," recalled Jilly, 17. "I will drop out of school!"

That was when the sleep-deprived teenager turned into a sleep activist. She was determined to convince the board of a truth she knew in the core of her tired, lanky body: Teenagers are developmentally driven to be late to bed, late to rise. Could the board realign the first bell with that biological reality?

The sputtering, nearly 20-year movement to start high schools later has recently gained momentum in communities like this one, as hundreds of schools in dozens of districts across the country have bowed to the accumulating research on the adolescent body clock.

In just the last two years, high schools in Long Beach, Calif.; Stillwater, Okla.; Decatur, Ga.;, and Glens Falls, N.Y., have pushed back their first bells, joining early adopters in Connecticut, North Carolina, Kentucky and Minnesota. The Seattle school board will vote this month on whether to pursue the issue. The superintendent of Montgomery County, Md., supports the shift, and the school board for Fairfax County, Va., is working with consultants to develop options for starts after 8 a.m.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us ...

- What time does your school day start and end?

- Should your school day start later? Or do you like your daily schedule?

- Is an early start time leaving you sleep deprived? Are you staying up later than you should?

- What do you think the most important benefits of a later start time would be? What might the disadvantages be?

- What do you think about the campaign that Jilly Dos Santos led in her district to push back the high school start time?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Could letting teenagers sleep later in the morning do more than just make them happy? New evidence suggests that a later start to the school day could have all sorts of benefits, like better grades and fewer car crashes.

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Also has links to related articles

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Should Stores Sell Violent Video Games to Minors?

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Student Opinions | As the Supreme Court argues this question, what do you think?

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Should Students Grade Teachers?

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Should Students Be Able to Grade Their Teachers?

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Can students offer insights and observations about teachers that school administrators and teachers themselves might otherwise miss?

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Times Article

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Have we gone trophy-crazy as a society, bestowing trophies on children for almost anything, even just showing up? Are we afraid children will be hurt by losing, so we make everyone a winner? Or are awards an effective way to raise children's self-esteem and keep them motivated to do better?
Do we give children too many trophies?

In the Op-Ed piece "Losing Is Good for You," Ashley Merryman writes about the decades-old trend of giving children countless participation trophies and awards.

As children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year's worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: "Which kids get awards?" If the answer is, "Everybody gets a trophy," find another program.

Trophies were once rare things - sterling silver loving cups bought from jewelry stores for truly special occasions. But in the 1960s, they began to be mass-produced, marketed in catalogs to teachers and coaches, and sold in sporting-goods stores.

Today, participation trophies and prizes are almost a given, as children are constantly assured that they are winners. One Maryland summer program gives awards every day - and the "day" is one hour long. In Southern California, a regional branch of the American Youth Soccer Organization hands out roughly 3,500 awards each season - each player gets one, while around a third get two. Nationally, A.Y.S.O. local branches typically spend as much as 12 percent of their yearly budgets on trophies.

It adds up: trophy and award sales are now an estimated $3 billion-a-year industry in the United States and Canada

Students: Tell us ...

Do we give children too many trophies? Do you agree with Ms. Merryman that giving everyone awards, instead of just an exceptional few, leads to children underperforming in the long run?

Have you ever gotten a trophy you didn't think you deserved? How did the award make you feel? Did it affect how hard you tried?

Does the possibility of earning a trophy or an award help to motivate you? Can you give an example?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Have we gone trophy-crazy as a society, bestowing trophies on children for almost anything, even just showing up? Are we afraid children will be hurt by losing, so we make everyone a winner? Or are awards an effective way to raise children's self-esteem and keep them motivated to do better?

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(Looks the same, but this is a different article.) Losing is Good For You

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Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they're talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they'd rather cheat than risk failing again.

In recent eye-tracking experiments by the researchers Bradley Morris and Shannon Zentall, kids were asked to draw pictures. Those who heard praise suggesting they had an innate talent were then twice as fixated on mistakes they'd made in their pictures.

By age 4 or 5, children aren't fooled by all the trophies. They are surprisingly accurate in identifying who excels and who struggles. Those who are outperformed know it and give up, while those who do well feel cheated when they aren't recognized for their accomplishments. They, too, may give up.

It turns out that, once kids have some proficiency in a task, the excitement and uncertainty of real competition may become the activity's very appeal.

If children know they will automatically get an award, what is the impetus for improvement? Why bother learning problem-solving skills, when there are never obstacles to begin with?

If I were a baseball coach, I would announce at the first meeting that there would be only three awards: Best Overall, Most Improved and Best Sportsmanship. Then I'd hand the kids a list of things they'd have to do to earn one of those trophies. They would know from the get-go that excellence, improvement, character and persistence were valued.

It's accepted that, before punishing children, we must consider their individual levels of cognitive and emotional development. Then we monitor them, changing our approach if there's a negative outcome. However, when it comes to rewards, people argue that kids must be treated identically: everyone must always win. That is misguided. And there are negative outcomes. Not just for specific children, but for society as a whole.

In June, an Oklahoma Little League canceled participation trophies because of a budget shortfall. A furious parent complained to a local reporter, "My children look forward to their trophy as much as playing the game." That's exactly the problem, says Jean Twenge, author of "Generation Me."

Having studied recent increases in narcissism and entitlement among college students, she warns that when living rooms are filled with participation trophies, it's part of a larger cultural message: to succeed, you just have to show up. In college, those who've grown up receiving endless awards do the requisite work, but don't see the need to do it well. In the office, they still believe that attendance is all it takes to get a promotion.

In life, "you're going to lose more often than you win, even if you're good at something," Ms. Twenge told me. "You've got to get used to that to keep going."

When children make mistakes, our job should not be to spin those losses into decorated victories. Instead, our job is to help kids overcome setbacks, to help them see that progress over time is more important than a particular win or loss, and to help them graciously congratulate the child who succeeded when they failed. To do that, we need to refuse all the meaningless plastic and tin destined for landfills. We have to stop letting the Trophy-Industrial Complex run our children's lives.

This school year, let's fight for a kid's right to lose.

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Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, found that kids respond positively to praise; they enjoy hearing that they're talented, smart and so on. But after such praise of their innate abilities, they collapse at the first experience of difficulty. Demoralized by their failure, they say they'd rather cheat than risk failing again.

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Banned Books Week

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From classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the Harry Potter series, the list of books frequently challenged and banned includes many esteemed titles. Each year during Banned Books Week, educators are called upon to confront the practice of censoring children's literature. The annual event, started in 1982, offers the perfect opportunity to teach kids and their families about intellectual freedom and individual American's right to freely access information. Explore this book list of some of the most frequently challenged book titles.

When Books Are Challenged

Questioning whether certain books are appropriate for children is reasonable; some books just are too mature or difficult for some young readers. It's important to listen to parents' concerns and be prepared to guide kids who are selecting their own books.

Our desire to protect children, however, should not come at the risk of jeopardizing young readers' First Amendment rights. As the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights states, a person's use of the library may not be restricted or limited because of age.

Keep these tips in mind as you strive to simultaneously safeguard children and their intellectual freedom:

Expect challenges. Have a policy in place for handling challenged material. The policy should re-assert the library's commitment to presenting as many perspectives on as many topics as possible, unrestricted by partisan or personal biases. It should clearly outline the challenge process. The ALA offers guidelines and templates for drafting policies so you'll be prepared in case a situation arises.

Respect challenges. Part of intellectual freedom is respecting every person's right to challenge material in the library's collection. Challenges can even be beneficial to a collection: some material, outdated and inaccurate, should to be re-examined; valuable material will stand up to a fair challenge.

Work with parents. Collaborate, listen to concerns, and create a safe yet open space for children to explore information and ideas in the library. Demonstrate how critical thinking, discussion, and debate are great protectors that help children become lifelong learners able to evaluate information independently, responsibly, and safely.

Teach from history. Take time during Banned Books Week to explain to children the history of censorship and intellectual freedom. Call attention to familiar and beloved titles, using them to start discussions with kids and their families. Focus on topics such as freedom of thought and speech, the power of books and information, the promise of libraries, and the inseparability of intellectual freedom and democracy.

Celebrate Your Freedom to Read

Use the theme of Banned Books Week - Celebrate Your Freedom to Read - to get kids thinking about the value of plurality, diverse ideas, and the civic responsibility that goes along with these freedoms. Here are some ways to make the event fun for kids:

1. Create flyers, posters, and stickers to get the word out and generate excitement!

2. Display famously challenged books such as In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Set up a message box where readers can submit notes with their thoughts about the titles and why they are valuable to readers. Add the messages to your display.

3. Give booktalks on favorite banned books - include where and why they were challenged, and explain what came of the challenges.

4. Host a family book group centered around a title that has been banned or challenged. Use the opportunity to consider what makes ideas threatening to people and the importance of intellectual freedom in a democracy. Discuss alternatives to censorship.

5. Lead a discussion about citizens' rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

6. Invite kids and adults to come to a celebration dressed as their favorite banned-book character - don't forget to don your own outfit!

7. Create a trivia contest that focuses on titles that promote diversity and use it to generate interest in books kids may not be familiar with.

8. Teach a class on media literacy to show children and young adults how to analyze and evaluate the information they encounter.

As an educator, you play a vital role in informing children and young adults of their First Amendment rights and ensuring that these rights are protected and maintained in the library. Show young readers how to enjoy freedom - encourage them to read something new this week!

Additional Resources for Banned Book Week
ALA: Banned Books Week
Get lists of frequently banned books, free downloadable graphics, activity ideas to raise awareness, and answers to common questions about libraries, censorship, and the American Library Association's positions on the issues.
What You Can Do to Oppose Censorship
The American Library Association shares tips on how to make intellectual freedom a focus of your library.

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Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read! | Scholastic

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From classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the Harry Potter series, the list of books frequently challenged and banned includes many esteemed titles. Each year during Banned Books Week, educators are called upon to confront the practice of censoring children's literature.

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The Harry Potter Controversy

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The Harry Potter controversy has gone on, in one form or another, for years, particularly before the series ended. On one side of the Harry Potter controversy are those who say that J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books are wonderful fantasy novels with powerful messages for kids and the ability to make even reluctant readers eager readers. On the opposing end are those who say that the Harry Potter books are evil books designed to promote an interest in the occult, since Harry Potter, the hero of the series, is a wizard.

In a number of states, there have been attempts, some successful and some unsuccessful, to have the Harry Potter books banned in classrooms, and banned or under severe restrictions in school libraries. For example, in Gwinnett County, Georgia, a parent challenged the Harry Potter books on the grounds that they promoted witchcraft. When school officials ruled against her, she went to the State Board of Education. When the BOE confirmed the right of local school officials to make such decisions, she took her battle against the books to court. Although the judge ruled against her, she indicated she might continue her fight against the series.

As a result of all the attempts to ban the Harry Potter books, those in favor of the series also began speaking out.

kidSPEAK Speaks Out

American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the Association of Booksellers for Children, the Children's Book Council, the Freedom to Read Foundation, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, the PEN American Center, and the People for the American Way Foundation. What do these groups have in common?

They were all sponsors of kidSPEAK!, which was initially called Muggles for Harry Potter (because in the Harry Potter series, a Muggle is a non-magical person). The organization was dedicated to helping kids with their First Amendment rights. The group was most active in the early 2000s when the Harry Potter controversy was at its height.

Challenges and Support for the Harry Potter Series

There have been challenges in more than a dozen states. The Harry Potter books were number seven on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000, and they were number one on the ALA's Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009.

The End of the Series Generates New Views

With the publication of the seventh and final book in the series, some people began to look back over the entire series and wonder if it might not be a Christian allegory. In his three-part article, Harry Potter: Christian Allegory or Occultist Children's Books? reviewer Aaron Mead suggests that Christian parents should enjoy the Harry Potter stories but focus on their theological symbolism and message.

Whether or not you share the view that it is wrong to censor the Harry Potter books, they have value by giving parents and teachers the opportunity offered by the series to increase their children's interest in reading and writing and use the books to promote family discussions about issues that might otherwise not be discussed.

Reading all the books in the series will allow you to make an informed decision about the Harry Potter books for your children. Participate in Banned Books Week activities, educate yourself about your community's and school district's policies, and speak out as needed.

More About Book Banning and Censorship

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What's So Controversial About the Harry Potter Books?

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The Harry Potter controversy has gone on, in one form or another, for years, particularly before the series ended. On one side of the Harry Potter controversy are those who say that J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books are wonderful fantasy novels with powerful messages for kids and the ability to make even reluctant readers eager readers.

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3-Minute Video on Book Ban

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Newman Trustees Undecided About Book Ban

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Good Data

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Many attempts have been made to switch school start times to later hours. High schools in the U.S. generally start at 8 a.m. if not earlier. Considering commute and morning preparations, students are rising long before dawn to spend six to eight hours of dealing with academic and other school activities. The National Sleep Foundation recommends at least nine hours of sleep for teens, but they get much less than that because they are required to wake up early on school days.

Advantages of Later Start Times

1. Teenagers need at least 8.5 to 9.25 hours of sleep based on their biological clocks.

Sleep deprivation affects physical and mental performance because the body's peak ability depends on its circadian rhythm. Several studies show that high school students are among the most sleep-deprived groups due to a combination of academic workload, sports, extra-curricular activities and starting their day too early. A study conducted jointly by Harvard and Oxford found recommended that school districts adjust schedules to match the biological wake-up times of each age group. At 16, this is around 10 a.m.; at 18, 11 a.m. is the optimum wake-up time.

2. Schools with later start times showed significant improvements in school performance.

School districts that experimented with later start times found that students coped with academic workloads much better. A study that included 9,000 high school students conducted by the University of Minnesota found that grades, test scores and overall performance in core subjects advanced significantly when school start times were switched to later hours.

3. Later start times reduced tardiness, truancy and dropout rates.

The same study cited above also found that starting the school day at a later time improved school attendance. When students slept adequately, they were less sluggish in the morning and more enthusiastic about going to school.

4. Later start times enhanced all-day focus, improved mood and boosted sports performance.

Getting adequate sleep and adjusting school schedules to coincide with the natural sleep patterns of teens improved mood and attitude. Students were less likely to report depressive conditions. Physical performance in sports was boosted when students had enough sleep and sleep schedules coincided with biological sleep patterns.

5. Starting school later gave students time to eat a healthy breakfast.

Given reasonable bell times, students can have the time to sit down for breakfast. This means having healthier breakfast choices than prepackaged foods developed for on- the-go eating.

Recommended Reading: Do Increased Teacher Salaries Mean More Learning? (Infographic)

Disadvantages of Starting Late

1. School districts will face administrative and operational pressures.

School scheduling is a delicate balance of resource allocation. Administrators deploy staggered school start times to allocate limited resources and to operate efficiently within their budgets. Adjusting bell times for high school students means that buses can't be rotated for different pick-up schedules. Overcrowded schools cannot stagger bell times to accommodate more classes to meet class size limits.

2. It becomes difficult to schedule sports practice and extra-curricular activities.

It is difficult to squeeze academic schedules, sports events and extra-curricular activities into available daytime hours if schools started later .

3. A late start time will disrupt parents' schedules.

In households where adults work traditional hours, adjusting the first bell schedule to the recommended 10 a.m. start time will disrupt the household's schedule. Students who have no bus service may have problems getting to and from school.

4. Starting later in the day will affect time available for after-school tutoring.
Students who receive extra services such as one-on-one tutoring and other after-school support may find limited resources as tutors and volunteers may not have the ability to adjust their schedules.

5. Students and their families are already conditioned for early bell.

After several years of being in the school system, family schedules have been set up to revolve around school schedules. Making a major switch to later start times may pose a challenge for working parents who would have to deal with additional costs of before and after-school care and transportation.

Adjusting school schedules is a controversial issue because there are various considerations, all legitimate, that come into play. School districts that have experimented with adjusted schedules have found beneficial effects for students. However, making a massive change may be challenging in the face of limited school budgets and resources.

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5 Pros and Cons of Later School Start Times

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Many attempts have been made to switch school start times to later hours. High schools in the U.S. generally start at 8 a.m. if not earlier. Considering commute and morning preparations, students are rising long before dawn to spend six to eight hours of dealing with academic and other school activities.