‘Put learners first’: Unesco calls for global ban on smartphones in schools

This is a no-brainer. Kids do not need to be on their phones doing social media bs while at school. The same can be said for adults while at work.

Yeah but if I don’t have my phone, what am I supposed to do? Work? Give me a break.

This ban would be even less successful than any of the bans on porn, alcohol, drugs, and war turned out to be.

As a latch key kid myself when I was young there was a clamor for TV being the babysitter being the heart of all evil. With today's kids a cellphone isn't just the babysitter. It's the everything bar. They need it to even function on a base level in society at all. Prying that away so they can focus is a good idea in the short term but isn't viable or realistic after they have left the classroom because the lessons simply will not stick as the whole approach is far too traumatic. You end up making the kid double down on the resentment towards institutionalized learning as a whole.

There is a need for a middle ground here, not forced absolutism. Kids have vocation here, let them have it if they can stay with the curriculum. If they can't and need the forced isolation and they opt into it then fine but don't make it an all or nothing because you will end up ostracizing whole segments of the population that is now grown up with always on internet.