Haven't been in school for a minute but they would never allow us to just be freely on our phones so idk wtf you're talking about.

I think the fact that most commenters seem to think kids should use cell phones in class confirms Lemmy is mostly children

When I was in school smartphones were kinda a thing but it was still early iPhone/Android days. The general practice was a powered off phone on one's person is fine, but phones that are in use/ringing could be confiscated for the remainder of the period. I think that was because the school didn't have a good method to handle too many confiscated phones in a day

I haven't been to school in a while, but we had smartphones when I did. And if we took up our phones in class we got called out by the teacher.

My kids school “boxes” phones if you’re caught using them or they interrupt class. They lock them inside a clear plastic case and let you carry that.

This avoids liability because the kid still has possession of their phone and can still see an emergency text or call. The can’t interact with the phone but can get a teacher to unlock if there’s a visible emergency text

I've been out of school for a decade now, but honestly at least when I was playing Hill Climb Racing, I shut the fuck up and didn't disturb others. Otherwise I'd just be blabbering with my friends and that's a much bigger issue for other students.

I graduated with pretty much all 5s and just one or two 4s. Our scale goes up to 5. So it's not like I was a dumbass who just refused to learn. You just can't give a fast learner with ADHD the textbook and expect him to not know all of the course material a week in. It's changed now, but my teenage brain was capable of processing enormous amounts of new information really fast (except subjects that were straight up memorization of facts, like history). I had literally nothing to do in class after the first week or 2 of a course.

“It’s fine if it’s in a bag and off or silent” has been cell phone policy in my experience (decades ago).

What teacher allows kids to use their phones during class?

Yeah, I really don't understand what changed or why. By the time I was in high school, pretty much everyone had a cell phone, but they'd get confiscated if they went off in class or we were caught using them during school hours, and that included all break periods. I remember a teacher threatening to take my phone away when I was using my phone to call my dad for a ride home after I had finished my exams for the day. For high school kids, I could see arguments on both sides for whether they should be allowed during breaks, but definitely not during class periods.

Things were a little more flexible in college, but they were still expected to be silent, and some professors would ask you to leave the class if your phone went off or was otherwise causing a distraction.

The fact that we ever allowed kids to scroll instead of paying attention in class is absurd.

I've never actually seen a classroom where this was the case. (aside from after work was completed, sort of as a reward for finishing their assignments on time) Most teachers will immediately tell students to put the phone away and will confiscate it if they keep trying to use it.

When they're talking about phone bans, they're usually meaning things like taking phones away at the front and returning them at the end of the day, or requiring students to leave them in lockers/locked pouches.