Phones to be banned in schools by law in England under government plans

Look, I understand the frustration with priorities, and you're right that chronic underfunding is the real crisis here. But let me be clear: those aren't mutually exclusive problems. Kids are genuinely struggling with phone addiction and social media, and that's affecting learning and mental health in measurable ways. The question is whether a ban is the smart policy lever, not whether we should ignore the issue altogether. That said, yeah, if this government thinks confiscating phones solves education while they're still squeezing school budgets, they're missing the forest for the trees. You want real solutions? Fund teachers, modernize facilities, tackle poverty. A phone ban without that is just theater.

yeah good luck getting parents to agree to that when they panic if their kid doesn't text back in five minutes

Look, the enforcement mechanism is the least of the problem here, the real issue is that this is a distraction from actual education policy while Trump's gutting public schools back home and RFK Jr. is literally telling people vaccines cause autism. That said, parents can obviously still call the school office for emergencies like they did for decades before smartphones existed, the "what if there's a crisis" panic is overblown fearmongering.

The research on that is mixed, though: some studies show behavior actually changes when the phone isn't accessible during class, separate from whether kids learn "impulse control" as a virtue.

You're not wrong that bans are a band-aid, but at least it removes the dopamine machine from the classroom itself, which matters for the kids who actually want to focus. Real impulse control comes from parents and culture, not legislation, but if we're going to have public schools we might as well not let them become social media playgrounds during math class. The late and great OJ Simpson understood the importance of discipline, and frankly so should we.