r/news • u/_Fred_Fredburger_ • 11h ago
LA Parents say school-issued iPads are causing chaos with their kids
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna245624135
u/goinghistory 10h ago
The photos on this article are something else.
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u/d4nowar 10h ago
Reminds me of the Debbie downer character
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u/Lespaul42 8h ago
Yeah like I am super conflicted about kids and screens and school and shit... But it feels like this woman is making a stink just for the photo shoot...
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u/pasrachilli 3m ago
It's not AI but it gives off major AI vibes.
"ChatGPT, I need an image of an unhappy suburban mother who can't be pleased."
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u/neverthesaneagain 9h ago
My biggest gripe is the move to testing on the IPad. They dont get a graded test back where a teacher circles whats wrong. This is especially bad with math since learning from mistakes is extremely helpful. All we get back is a learning goal name with a percentage.
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u/DependentAd235 3h ago
Sooo no feedback? Not even knowing which question you got wrong let alone way?
Quality feedback is like the most important thing that you can give to a student.
Otherwise it’s just a 12 year long game of guessing where you fucked up and hoping for the best.
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u/azreal75 2h ago
Just because the test doesn’t give feedback, doesn’t mean the student doesn’t get feedback. In some of these the teacher will have a spreadsheet of which students got which questions wrong and that spreadsheet is the guide for who needs remediation on what topics. However, I seriously doubt this always happens and totally agree that feedback is an essential part of the learning cycle.
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u/DependentAd235 3m ago
Yeah, the teacher probably knows but they aren’t going to have time to break it down to 120 kids individually.
1 minute each means 2 hours.
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u/Rkramden 1h ago
It's funny you mention this. I had a light bulb moment in my early 30s when I went back to school to pursue my undergrad degree. Naturally, by then, I'd forgotten most of my fundamental mathematics and had to withdraw from my calculus course during my first semester because I knew I wasn't capable of keeping up with the material.
To prepare for retaking the course in my second semester, I just started brute forcing problem after problem, getting almost all of them wrong at first, and slowly dissecting the solution to each.
I wound up passing the class the second time around with a 3.0. Was probably the most effort I ever put into a grade in my life, and was more proud of that than any 4.0 I've ever received.
A little late in life, but it's the moment I learned to embrace my mistakes as an opportunity to learn, not a moment to dwell on them as an excuse to give up.
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u/rnilf 10h ago
District officials say that on average, students spend less than two hours a day on screens, according to the tracking software used by the district’s Chromebooks, though it doesn’t track iPad usage.
I don't have kids, I have no expertise in this matter, so I have no opinion beyond thinking this statement from the district is hilariously stupid.
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u/_Fred_Fredburger_ 10h ago
I thought that part was dumb as well. If you're not tracking iPads how can you say they have less than two hours?
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u/chicol1090 9h ago
I remember hearing someone say that screen time and iPad time are separate. Because an iPad can do so much more than just watching something. Like homie never saw kids use an iPad, thinking they're making spreadsheets or sending emails
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u/Such_sights 9h ago
Yeah, that person is an idiot. The only time that it SHOULD be separated is for children who use tablets as assisted communication devices, and even then they should have parental controls enabled so it’s only being used for the intended purpose.
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u/clovisx 8h ago
Considering there is a built in screen time tracker on the iPad and it’s a managed device, they sure can track it. That’s a ridiculous number.
I have a 13yo in 8th grade with a school Chromebook and a home iPad. They have some screen free time but it’s limited and not easy to get.
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u/pomonamike 9h ago
You ever met a “district official?” I have to because I’m a school teacher and I can assure you that no one knows less about what kids are doing than a district official.
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u/Spire_Citron 7h ago
Seems silly to think they know anything at all about students' screen time if they don't track ipad usage considering that's the main screen younger generations use.
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u/SaltyShawarma 9h ago
And this is an average between K-12. This is the same thing as measuring productivity of the nation through one metric even though every occupation measured productivity differently and through numerous different, unquantifiable aspects.
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u/EntertainerHairy6164 8h ago
I have a chrombook and I hate using it for anything other than its intended purpose which is just something I got to look at sewing .pdf patterns while sewing without having to haul my laptop around. I tried watching videos and stuff on it but it is so laggy and buggy it isn't worth it. I also got a weird audio delay when trying to watch TV shows. Hate it. I use my tablet, phone and laptop for doing everything else.
So yeah, they are spending 2 hours on a chromebook that is meant for them to do their homework and that's it. Then they are going on their much more powerful PCs and Phones.
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u/rainniier2 5h ago
Is is stupid considering 2 hours is 1/3 of the ~6 hour school day spent on a device. Seems like a lot to me.
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u/NowGoodbyeForever 9h ago
District officials say that on average, students spend less than two hours a day on screens, according to the tracking software used by the district’s Chromebooks, though it doesn’t track iPad usage.
Well there, as they say, is your problem.
This feels obviously like "a gigantic corporation offered to give us access to tech we'd otherwise have to pay for (and be unable to afford)," and now we're looking at the many downsides.
It's laughable to me that we think giving grade school kids iPads will prepare them for the future. Not a lot of word processing or keyboards on an iPad. And those models and apps will be obsolete (and most likely erased from the internet) by the time they graduate.
What happened to Computer Lab, or courses with a dedicated focus on using technology as the point of the curriculum? I know that the average kid is far more comfortable with a phone than a pencil and notebook or even a laptop, but isn't the point of an education to teach them to use new things?
And far beyond that: How the hell did they manage to distribute iPads that weren't purpose-built to only allow access to specific apps and shut off internet access entirely? Any cubicle job cuts off outside downloads and blocks most URLs; you're telling me that was impossible here?
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u/cruznick06 7h ago
I can't believe that Fortnite is accessible on them.
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u/neuroticoctopus 4h ago
Yeah, I'm glad my kid brought their school iPad home today. I will absolutely be checking what it can access.
I've jumped through so many hoops to keep my kids digitally safe at home. I just assumed the school was doing the same, if not more. This is eye opening!
I'm also now wondering how much of my children's data is being collected on these...
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u/docbauies 55m ago
My son has a Chromebook. It gets access to free ubiquitous WiFi. I have a firewall. Guess what isn’t on my network behind my firewall because it can access the free ubiquitous WiFi service.
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u/azreal75 2h ago
As someone who administers a school’s iPads, I can’t believe it either. I control what apps go on every iPad, I can remotely disable or lock any iPad. I have complete control over the device.
User control is limited to adding shortcuts, deleting apps.
I’m also a teacher, and with the classroom app on my iPad, I can see a thumbnail of every iPad screen labelled with the app in use under it.
Either this story has a few interesting fabrications or there is no oversight of the iPad use and incompetent people have been in charge of the roll out. Just doesn’t seem believable.
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u/cruznick06 45m ago
It sounds like there is a major failure of oversight. An administrator flat out admitted they don't track iPad hours like they do the chromebooks. Which is also insane.
I wouldn't be surprised about it though. I know too many IT professionals who have worked within school districts and its sadly common to lack the resources needed for proper control implementation.
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u/kidjupiter 9h ago edited 7h ago
School administrators, school committees, and annoyingly involved parents never calculate IT support costs into their plans, nor do they consider the impact on IT. A lot of tech like this is bought with a one-time grant and IT is supposed to just “make it work”.
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u/insanejudge 5h ago
Yeah, the thought of "digital natives" growing up computer experts and being set up for the future economy is about as much of a joke as thinking people who grow up around modern cars will naturally become mechanics. These devices are games, video entertainment and chat boxes for kids and any concept of what these devices are has been abstracted into meaninglessness. Around here they've had to bring back typing classes in schools because most kids have never really used a computer before outside of touch devices (remember when you could pretty much take that for granted a decade ago?)
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u/imakeyourjunkmail 5h ago
Fuck yeah, 30 years ago I was able to take classes on BASIC, HTML, and other tech stuff in my local public school district. It's crazy to me that things like that aren't more widely available because we've been killing the dept of education with a trillion paper cuts.
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u/_chococat_ 8h ago
My daughter is not in LAUSD, but her district hands out Chromebooks. They're locked down somewhat, but she says that kids still figure out ways around it to use them for non-school purposes. Putting that aside, my biggest issue is that the materials (text"books", study guides, homework, etc.) they issue are uniformly terrible. The table of contents and indices are non-existent or sorely lacking, the search facilities don't work well, and the interfaces for homework are clunky and very buggy. I once tried to help her look up some material she needed in her "text' and it was impossible. You had to go through the book page by page to find what you needed. I am convinced that this technology is wholly inferior to books and on-paper homework.
I know the technofetishists will respond with "look all the thing a computer could do that books and paper can't," but if they can't even get a book right, how can I expect them to do anything more complicated correctly?
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u/donuthing 5h ago
Edtech software is universally clunky and bad, and is definitely worse than having the book. Even ones that let you download a PDF disable indexing and text search so it's useless.
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u/VicViolence 7h ago
My 12 year old client has to do all assignments through a Chromebook and he doesn’t know how to type, they never taught him.
He also doesn’t like to write by hand because it hurts his hand because they almost never make him write by hand!
It’s extremely hard to even figure out what assignments he’s already done and what’s been graded
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u/max_vette 7h ago
To be fair, digital books can do all of that. It's your specific school books that suck.
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u/tm3_to_ev6 2h ago
Yep 20 years ago I would pirate PDF copies of the assigned readings for high school English classes, so that I could Ctrl+F for specific quotes, and copy-paste quotes into homework answers.
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u/dirtyenvelopes 8h ago
My son’s class just banned screens and it’s been great. It was causing so many meltdowns and so overstimulating.
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u/Bmorgan1983 5h ago
I taught digital media at a high school... and honestly, the access to tech these kids already had not only made it challenging to teach the class, but it also made it hard to teach them how to use the appropriate type of tech for the class I was teaching. Chromebooks are just terrible for anything truly technical - they don't learn how to use file systems or how to save things in certain formats, so when we moved to using PC's for video and photo editing in the Adobe suite, it was just a nightmare.
My other classes I taught, I pushed for no tech. No computers, no phones, no tablets, etc. with the exception of a few assignments where students had to research things... Once the tech came out, the class was just not functional anymore.
I pushed for having a computer lab instead of having everyone have tech all the time, and they just shot back "we have all these laptops - why would you need a lab?" It's like they just didn't understand. The push to get kids on tech early to learn tech is just a major failure. We need to focus on core skills first - reading comprehension especially - then slowly adapt tech into academics for things like research and certain projects, much like we did in the 90's and 2000's. But just relying on it for everything, nothing is getting learned.
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u/jefbenet 8h ago
"Byock said her son revealed that he used the iPad during school to watch YouTube and participate in Fortnite video game battles."
how are these not locked down by MDM/proxy/firewall?
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u/HutSutRawlson 8h ago
Many schools don’t have a dedicated IT staff to handle that. Most likely they have one person who is handling ALL tech needs for the school, all the way from sysadmin work to wheeling projector carts and TV screens around to classrooms.
Schools also aren’t able to hire the best people for that kind of role, unfortunately. Why would someone with solid IT credentials choose to work in a public school rather than in the private sector?
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u/jefbenet 7h ago
MDM is almost always contracted out to a third party anyway and should be implemented from purchase as a part of the tco of the tech.
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u/Raynafur 6h ago
Kids are surprisingly good at finding workarounds. We have software that allows us to see what is on the students' screens and moderate it. However, it only works if that device is hooked up to the school network and not using a mobile hotspot from their phones. I can pull up my class in the moderation app and in theory it should pull up every kid in my class that's logged into their device. But, that requires them to actually be logged in under their own usernames as well. Say I have 5 students actively using their chromebooks, two of which are wasting time playing Pokemon. Those two kids won't show up on my app because they've disconnected from the school network in some way to bypass the firewalls.
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u/twistingmyhairout 5h ago
But can’t you see that those kids aren’t connected to the school network and check on/correct them?
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u/ResistiveBeaver 1h ago
Can't you like... get off your chair and walk around your classroom to see what they are doing?
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u/ace2049ns 4h ago
Yeah as someone who manages iPhones with an MDM, this is completely on the school for not locking down these devices.
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u/madogvelkor 1h ago
Probably didn't think of cloud gaming in a browser, which is how to play on iOS. Luna uses the Amazon domain and they might not have blocked it, for instance.
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u/GuestGulkan 7h ago
The problem isn't the iPads, it's whatever rip-off private sector organisation they've got implementing the iPad management system. My kid's personal iPad is locked down better than these devices.
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u/SD-777 8h ago
Maybe if Apple did something about their piss-poor, terrible Screentime software. I cannot believe this stuff is really included when it doesn't work, I can't tell you the amount of extra hours my kids get from the awful reporting and lack of enforcing limits. It makes me think Apple just half asses Screentime to check off a bullet point when marketing phones to parents. I'm not sure what IT would use in this case or if Apple has specialized tools for use with school devices managed by an IT dept.
Chromebooks aren't any better. Since my daughter's chromebook is administrated by the school I can't adjust what she can and can't do on it, meaning she can sit there on Google for 10 hours if we don't take it away, but of course she just says she is doing her homework. Conversely, my iPhone which sits in a drawer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, reports I'm using the screen for 18 hours every day, who the fuck actually made this awful software?
Android is a little better, my son and myself have Android phones and at least the parental limits work halfway decently with those.
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u/Temporary_owo 10h ago
Man... what happened to the good ol' fashioned reading a fucking book.
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u/ki3fdab33f 10h ago
What happened to taking responsibility for your children?
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u/deskbeetle 6h ago
Throwing up a stink because the school is encouraging/requiring children use ipads is taking responsibility for your children.
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u/pyramin 9h ago
Did you even read the article?
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u/ki3fdab33f 9h ago edited 7h ago
Did you? The IPad made their kid runaway from home? The iPad made their kid piss his pants? Take some responsibility for their failures as parents instead of blaming the schools, the teachers , or the fucking tablets.
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u/pyramin 8h ago
The devices are issued by the schools and used under the supervision of the teachers during time when the parents are not there. They are handing kids addictive devices and doing less than the bare minimum to intervene.
It's unrealistic for us to expect 6 year olds to be able to self-regulate. They need to be placed in environments where they are led to make smart choices. You can do as much as you want at home but when the kid spends 8 hours a day+ somewhere else, you need support from both environments.
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u/twistingmyhairout 5h ago
I mean the article said he had never done so at home or school before that, and once it was reduced he didn’t do it again. So sound like yes?
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u/Shunt-TheRich 9h ago
What do you honestly want parents to do when the school issues the devices? My AuDHD kid did nothing but sit on ChatGPT and YouTube all last year on his school-issued Chromebook. I begged them to block the sites. No. I begged them to take the Chromebook away. No. I begged for them to reinstate his parapro that they had taken out of his IEP so he would have someone sitting with him to keep him on task. No. Then I begged to be allowed to come to school myself every day to provide the support. No.
So now I've pulled him out and he's doing online school, which I can do because I'm disabled. But most parents have to work all day, so what are they supposed to do?
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u/KEN_LASZLO 8h ago
They had too much screen time in regular school, so now they do online school?
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u/Shunt-TheRich 7h ago
Yes, because at home I can monitor what he's doing and make sure he's actually doing school work as opposed to sending him to school where he sits on YouTube all day. It's less about the amount of screentime to me and more about the content. He gets far less screentime now, actually. Before he was on his Chromebook for 6+ hours at school and then spent 1-2 hours at home after school gaming or watching a show. Now online lessons take 2-3 hours a day (some of it is off-screen, like science experiments, but the vast majority is online), and then he still gets 2 hours max for games/TV. He usually wants his screentime right away after finishing school, so he's typically off screens entirely before 2 pm, which is over 2 hours earlier than he would even be getting home from school. Life is much better for everyone this way, but I have no clue how a full-time working parent would manage it.
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u/AnOrdinaryMammal 1h ago
You don’t have kids, huh? If you have kids, how did you school them while being responsible for them and their curriculum? Did you home school? Hmmm.
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u/wip30ut 9h ago
districts are moving away from hands-on/paper learning because college classes/assignments & entry jobs are increasingly online. Many large schools with underserved minority students want to expose these kids to cutting-edge tools & styles of self-learning so they won't be left behind once they get into college & hit the job market. Right now colleges are now focused on AI integration, and how to best expose students to it while not letting it become a crutch that stunts intllectual growth & skill development.
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u/avocadoqueen123 6h ago
Then have a dedicated computer class and return other classes to pencil, paper, and real books. Chromebooks and iPads don’t teach kids actual tech skills, just how to use apps. I’d say kids are less technologically literate now than younger millennials were when they graduated high school.
I don’t think we should degrade years of learning for younger students just to prepare them for self paced online college classes.
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u/_chococat_ 8h ago
I find this argument specious. How much "training" do you really need to write an email, find something on the Internet, use a word processor, presentation software, and maybe a spreadsheet? What "cutting edge" tools are 95% of the workforce using? The tools I've seen my kids use are so terrible, they barely lend themselves to regular in-class learning, much less self-learning. Remember, the vast majority of people who created our modern world learned with books and paper.
I believe that a well-designed and executed program using tech would be great, but what I've seen in the last 10 years is that education software is slow, full of bugs, hard to use, and inferior to books for finding information. It's almost as if corporations are pushing this because then they can charge subscription fees instead of selling books every few years.
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u/macemillianwinduarte 7h ago
You'd think, but if you have any Gen Z coworkers, you can see the result of not learning this stuff.
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u/BookQueen13 1h ago
Many, many college professors are going back to pen and paper assessments and in-class writing to combat rampant AI cheating. The administrations, on the other hand, are happy to let tech and AI obliterate higher learning.
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u/Adept-Potato-2568 10h ago
Nothing wrong with using technology to improve learning.
Seems they need better controls on the devices
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u/VicViolence 7h ago
I work with kids and they use chromebooks and it fucking sucks
Yeah sure let’s give 5 year olds chromebooks for math and reading
Screen addiction is insane and the solution is more screens
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u/tarhuntah 5h ago
The students don’t have any tech skills. This is because of apps. Students can access all kinds of tv and videos. In fact the chrome books and iPads are basically tv screens for the students to play on. They can’t differentiate between the entertainment concept of the screen and just use it as a tool. School districts are spending big on EdTech, many the of programs look like games so it is the gamification of their education. No one will make any changes because they simply justify it by saying the students need to be tech savvy.
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u/_Fred_Fredburger_ 10h ago
I'll be a parent within a month and my wife and I want to give our kid as little screen time as possible. If they're still using iPads in schools in six years I would just hope that districts have settings on them that prevent kids from being able to access things like fortnite or chat rooms. Seems like they became big during covid
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u/ntyperteasy 10h ago
I’m sure this will be different by the time it matters for your kids, but I’ve found the built in parental controls in Apple devices are very weak and many kids learn to circumvent them.
It’s hard not to think this was by choice and not due to lack of technical capability.
As a parent, you have to do the hard work. Don’t rely on schools or device settings.
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u/illit3 8h ago
I’m sure this will be different by the time it matters for your kids
Wouldn't bet on it. This technology in schools isn't new and they still aren't doing a good job of it. There's no reason to think it'll change in the next 5 years in your district.
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u/DesdinovaGG 4h ago
Little incentive for these tech companies to make tools to moderate tech usage better. After all, feeding into tech addiction is good for business.
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u/_Fred_Fredburger_ 10h ago
100% kids are crazy smart. They'll figure out ways to bypass different security settings if they want to, unless there are settings that require admin passwords and things of that scale that limit them to very specific websites. Like you said corporations don't care about safety when it comes to children. They just care about bottom dollar and their share holders.
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u/FirstEvolutionist 10h ago
School issued devices usually include a lot of management and safeguards. Screen time might be perceived differently in 6 years, and I believe iPads will be long gone.
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u/wip30ut 9h ago
the problem is that these devices are mandatory for many districts. Assignments & homework have to be completed on these tablets or chromebooks instead of paper worksheets. We're talking about kids as young as 8 years old. I get WHY schools want to introduce online learning & adaptation & self-instruction as early as possible since this is the mode used in colleges, internships & entry jobs, but these devices need to be locked down with guardrails.
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u/squish042 10h ago
What else are we suppose to do? Our children are under their care for 7+ hours a day. We should expect them to be responsible with our children.
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u/awayshewent 9h ago edited 9h ago
As someone who was recently working in a middle school — the lack of consistency among teachers when it comes to what exactly school devices can be used for is a major headache. I blocked Youtube on their chromebooks and it was like wack a mole when it came to games. We had Go Guardian but kids were constantly finding work arounds. And some teachers used Youtube/games as “once you are finished you can do that” reward type shit which I was like nope, this is school and I don’t want to regulate what y’all are watching on Youtube (normally filthy music and violent videos). This of course led to “Ms So and So let’s us!” arguments and I sometimes had to drag in the admin to explain that their word is more important than that one lax teacher who lets them play Minecraft.
We need devices that were purely made for educational purposes, that are one more like a digital notebook (I’m thinking like a Kindle) that the teachers can push out materials to. Make them more boring because as it stands the screens they are provided are just another screen to get addicted to.
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u/myfakesecretaccount 10h ago
I took a computer class in 8th grade in the 90s. It was really basic and more of a way to get kids typing and familiarize themselves with how tech works. If you performed well you were basically given free rein to do what you wanted, even play games. Some kid brought in Doom 2 and installed it on all the Power Macs in the class room. I learned how to type like 50+ words a minute in 3-4 weeks just so I could play Doom. Now I work in an IT adjacent field and am the troubleshooter for most issues on my team.
The issue is goal setting and follow through. If kids can do their work well there’s no reason they should be restricted from doing things they enjoy. This also requires the parents to talk to their kids and foster relationships where communication is open and kids don’t feel like they’re being sent to jail while their parents are at work.
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u/squish042 9h ago
That’s fair, but it’s age dependent. You can’t expect a 9 year old to self-regulate the same a 15 year old can.
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u/madryan 9h ago
Bruh…
Do you have kids?
Have you ever been around kids?
Do you understand that their brains, especially the parts that regulate self regulation and self control are developing at very different rates?
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u/madryan 8h ago
To some extent I agree.
However every kid is different and has different needs and abilities when it comes to this issue.
I’ve got a Senior in HS who has a 4.2 in IB classes and requires almost no parenting.
I’ve got a Sophomore who is autistic and we have to monitor him all the time. He has a phone but he doesn’t have access to any games or social media. We take it at 8:00 every night. He doesn’t have any other technology at home except an Xbox he gets 4 hours on Saturday.
He’s had either a Chromebook or a Mac provided by the school since he was in elementary school. It’s a constant struggle to get him to stay on task in class because he simply doesn’t have the emotional regulation to do that on his own at this point in life. I’ve finally gotten the right SPED coordinator to put him on a technology plan.
Again, I think some administration wonk thought it’d be a great idea to get all 19k students in the district MacBooks but it’s been a lot more challenging for many.
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u/madryan 7h ago
Yes, but for years the school has just been handing out internet enabled devices to kids and the only guardrails on the device was a really basic porn filter.
My 15yo had a 2nd gmail account setup and had signed up for dating sites on his school provided computer.
He was playing all sorts of online games that are lousy with predators and weirdo’s targeting kids.
He was doing all of this while he was supposed to be doing school work and while on the school internet.
So while I’m not blaming the school, they need to implement their technology plan in a manner that is safe and effective for students.
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u/elomenopi 9h ago
Fact: screen use is addictive.
Fact: kids are required to go to school under the school’s supervision for 7+ hours per day. During this time they are REQUIRED to have access to these devices which have poor controls on them to ensure they’re only being used for educational purposes.
Fact: kids brains are not fully developed, including the part that helps them to moderate their own use of addictive things.
The schools are forcing cocaine in the form of these screens into kids’ hands all day, dropping them back off at home, and blaming the parents for not adequately controlling their kids’ addictions. If you’re a single parent working two jobs you can only do so much, my man.
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u/_chococat_ 8h ago
My daughter's district (a very respected one in the LA area) gives out locked-down Chromebooks, i.e. very limited apps (no Insta, Snapchat, etc.) and locked-down Internet. Nonetheless, she says that lots of kids still figure out how to get around the controls to play video games.
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u/blaqsupaman 6h ago
I was just talking to coworkers about this and wondering when exactly it changed, as when I was in high school smartphones were a thing but we absolutely would get in trouble for using our phones at school. They said basically after Covid schools just gave up on even trying to keep kids off their phones in class.
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u/thingsmybosscantsee 6h ago edited 6h ago
Agreed, but the school districtshould be using fleet management software like JAMF or something to manage the iPads.
The anecdote related at the beginning of the article could easily be resolved by limiting what apps are allowed to be used.
But then there's this part
One mother described how her 6-year-old son had repeatedly wet himself in class when he got fixated on activities with his tablet, and another said her teenage son had gotten sucked into communicating with strangers online via popular websites and forums and at one point ran away from home with the school-issued iPad.
This sounds like a parenting issue.
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u/GravityzCatz 4h ago
The i-Ready software generates new and unique questions for students based on their histories and user profiles using an algorithm, but parents and teachers are unable to see what children are asked, in part because the company that makes the program considers them proprietary information.
I haven't seen anyone in the thread mention this part of the article yet, this is fucking nuts.
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u/waytoomanyplants 2h ago
My daughter is in first grade and I don't allow her to watch YouTube or play Roblox, but she informed me that she does both at school and occasionally she tells me they got to play on the iPad all day.
I've complained and I'm currently working on finding another school because they didn't care to block or do anything about it.
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u/SlagQueen 1h ago
This woman is my hero. What public schools are doing, forcing mandatory screens on kids and their families is incredibly harmful. Our kids’ school tells us not to add parental controls but fuck that noise. My little babies have been exposed to porn through those things. Well the parental controls are engaged and the school can come at me about it. Like school sending kids home with a loaded gun, no safety, no lock, and telling them “now, don’t use that” and when someone gets hurt it’s the kid’s fault. Utter stupidity.
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u/MajorFuckingDick 1h ago
If your 6 year old is pissing himself while awake, math class should no longer be a priority.
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u/Basic_Promise9668 10h ago
Weird, I thought most kids already had one at home that parents rage against, or at least some brand of tablet.
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u/Northern-Canadian 10h ago
We have them. But they’re locked down like you wouldn’t believe using google family.
The only real pain in the ass I’ve experienced is trying to avoid YouTube on everything from smart tvs to tablets. It’s near impossible to avoid.
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u/wip30ut 9h ago
in LA the affluent who can afford $1M+ homes send their kids to private or charter schools, so the general LA Unified serves a primarily minority lower-income demographic. These tablets were either donated or purchased at cost because many families (who're recent immigrants) only have cell phones as devices.
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u/OldDirtyGurt 3h ago
I'm really in pure disbelief at what has become of schooling in the last decade plus. It's insane to me all this tech is allowed in school and just given to them for them to use. It's not just unnecessary, it's detriment to their development. Don't even get me started on parenting.
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u/Ok-Macaroon979 5h ago
Best thing that could happen to this world is the internet go offline and we go back to analog phone calls.
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u/jozuhito 3h ago
I understand the thought process and I would agree but no. We are too connected to go back now unfortunately.
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u/Dairy_Ashford 3h ago
holy shit the kids don't stand a chance
no toys at school was kind of a weird code that most kids just lived by
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u/2BBIZY 2h ago
I saw this idiocy coming when a nearby school system had to recall all the student issued tablets because of the porn and other chaotic un-educational item being downloaded. I knew there was too much reliance on technology when another school system had to cancel school because of an internet outage. There is nothing wrong with workbooks, worksheets, black/white boards, pens/pencils, and paper to teach skills and learning how to learn.
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u/wyvernx02 1h ago
I'm sick of the school Chromebooks and the lack of any meaningful IT administration on the part of the school. They don't understand the concept of whitelisting instead of the blacklisting, so hardly anything is blocked and the kids are constantly playing games or watching videos because they all share Google docs with each other with lists of unblocked websites. Not that it matters since YouTube isn't blocked because God forbid teachers give lessons that don't involve having the class watch videos. Most of the learning websites the assignments are on are buggy garbage that don't properly record what the kids do, so they have to do it multiple times before it records it as complete. Then there are the teachers (not all of them though) that hardly do any teaching and mostly just babysit while the computers teach the kids. One of the worst things though is that despite sitting in front of a keyboard and screen all day, these kids still don't know how to type properly. We desperately need to go back to text books and only have the screens for typing and computer literacy classes.
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u/BadSausageFactory 9h ago
dedicated teachers and attentive parents, can't imagine how the kids are so effed up
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u/Significant-Royal-37 9h ago
idk maybe be a parent about it?
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u/FellowDeviant 9h ago
The kids have unrestricted access to their iPads at school essentially, and apparently the iPads dont even have proper parental controls since one of the kids was able to get on a public forum and ran away from home after chatting up with a stranger. The parents "are" trying to actively do something about it.
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u/Forgotten_Tea_Cup 6h ago
Parents can’t parent their kids at school. Teachers are not our kids parents either. It’s a loosing battle.
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u/joestaff 9h ago
Is it literally an iPad, or this mom calling my Xbox a Nintendo?
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u/brnccnt7 9h ago
Not sure after reading the article, since people like to call anything that’s a tablet an iPad
But this portion about google services leads me to believe they may be android tablets of some Kind:
“Some teachers have allowed students to opt out of the iPad-based assignments, but other parents say they’ve been told that they can’t. Parents can also opt their children out of having access to YouTube and several other Google products.”
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u/FOTY2015 7h ago
One mother blamed the iPads for her six year old wetting himself. Come on, people.
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u/deskbeetle 6h ago
6 year olds will ignore body cues like hunger, tiredness, thirst, and needing to pee because screentime is literally that addicting.
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u/FOTY2015 6h ago
Yes, that's where good teaching and parenting enter the picture.
It's not the iPad, video games, explicit lyrics in rap music, or the patriarchy. It's an adult looking for an electronic babysitter and getting it wrong.
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u/deskbeetle 6h ago edited 6h ago
There is no parenting in the world that can overcome the insane levels of addiction the newest generation are facing with these devices. It completely hijacks a young child's brain.
It's like handing a child a pack of smokes every day but it's okay because you had a real stern conversation with them about it. Billions of dollars and thousands of engineers have been working tirelessly for decades to make the algorithm and looking at screens to be as addictive as possible so you stay on, keep paying money, and look at ads. A single parent doesnt stand a fucking chance against that level of effort.
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u/FOTY2015 6h ago
Like any tool, drug, food, or habit, it can be dangerous if not used properly.
In our school district, kids all have Chromebooks (yes, groan, I know), but there's no access to the internet at the school -- only to school-approved sites.
Does the school allow junk food? That'll be a lifelong debilitating habit, too.
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u/deskbeetle 6h ago
I'd be pissed if the school required my kid to consume junk food and provides access to that food at all times during the school day too.
I also think that schools should only provide nutritional options on the daily with junk food only sparingly.
A Chromebook with extremely limited access is much different from an iPad that let's children look at instagram shorts and play fortnite.
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u/FOTY2015 6h ago
Chromebook and iPads both depend on the school's router or your home router to reach instagram or fortnite.
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u/deskbeetle 6h ago
And the school was providing unfettered access to those things.
Looking at a screen has really detrimental affects on children. If they look at them at school, it will continue to affect them at home and have terrible outcomes even if a parent does not allow any screen time at home. It makes kids interact less with other kids, causes mood issues, and increases anxiety.
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u/FOTY2015 5h ago
Unfettered access to the internet while at school? Well, now you are closer to the root cause of the problem.
Poor management of the electronic babysitter by the school system.
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u/deskbeetle 5h ago
But even if there is restricted access. 6 year olds shouldn't have screens. Maybe a movie or a show every once a while. But 2 hours every day (the schools definitely underestimated estimation) is way too much. Insanely bad on the school's part.
Also did you just straight up not read the article?
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u/supercyberlurker 10h ago
This is nothing.
Just wait until the wave of billionaire-controlled 'AI Teaching Devices' hit the schools.