Welp, you asked for my opinion. My opinion is that if you literally can't think of a valid use for the entire internet in a classroom setting, then you aren't trying very hard. It's tantamount to having a library at your fingertips.
* How about using an app to record the lecture, so a student can verify their notes later?
* How about taking a picture of the notes on the board, when they can't copy things down quickly enough?
* How about checking up on a sick relative using SMS, so they aren't feeling anxious about it all class?
I'm not even trying really -- there are dozens of valid use-cases that respect the preset curriculum. Let alone all of the uses that fall outside of respecting it, if and when the curriculum is too facile for the student.
Couldn't I have been learning programming during the time my high school English class was tackling "A Catcher in the Rye" one chapter per week, after I read the entire book within the first few hours we had it? Apparently not, because cell phones aren't allowed, and they can only used for Candy Crush.
>My question is how many kids are actually going to do that?
Not very many, and that's why most people will justify smartphones being taken away from all students. Which will primarily hurt the ones who were using them for more interesting purposes. Typical crab bucket mentality.
>And what justifies them to be the judge of whether what the teacher is discussing is relevant to them or not, given they are 10 years old.
I never said anything about whether the lessons were relevant, nor were ages brought up.
I get your point, but space exploration and robots everywhere aren't the only types of "wildly different" futures. People just have latched onto those two things as facile benchmarks.
Completely agree. I also think, "disingenuous" since it's the most obvious fake answer, and also "uncreative" since they couldn't come up with anything better.
> there are lesser classes of human being as well, the ones that aren't as good as others at whatever metric you happen to be using.
Yep, it does suggest that. Just because everyone has equal rights under a governmental system, doesn't mean everyone is actually equal by any substantive metric.
And the intent of banning smartphones is to force all students to pay more attention to that curriculum, correct?