Middle school removes bathroom mirrors to stop kids from making TikToks::Southern Alamance Middle School in Graham, North Carolina has taken drastic steps to reduce the time kids spend outside of class.
Yep this will stop them making tiktoks alright
The article is about them leaving class to go make tiktoks in the bathroom, and in the article the admin claims that it has lead to “Not as many visits to the bathroom, not staying as long” so it’s working, apparently. Nothing do with attempting to stop them outright from making videos.
Why not just ban smartphones in school? There’s ample research now that they’re harmful to teen mental health
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Add phone functionality to their guns?
Got you covered
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Flip phones.
You don’t. You die like everybody else, without saying goodbye.
They could just watch on the security cameras. I’m pretty sure they exist in every class and parents can access them at any time.
There aren’t security cameras in classrooms, at least in the schools I’ve worked. They are in the hallways though. I wasn’t allowed to record my class (despite that being good practice - watching yourself teach!)
I know a few schools in my area tried to institute zero tolerance no phones rule and the screaming from parents was loud enough that they gave up. One of the big sticking points was because of school shootings. Another was that schools have been bad about getting kids on the bus, that kids are getting lost or even ending up in bus depots at the end of the day.
I think a good middle ground might be to ban smartphones but not phones entirely. If you want your kid to be able to call you, buy them a nokia or something without internet capabilities
I mean the real reason is that parents are almost as bad as their kids with their phones. They have become accustomed to texting their children throughout the day.
Wow, that is eye opening. I can’t imagine how bad helicopter parents can be these days…
There are better tools these days than blanket prohibition.
The signals that voice and data go over are different from each other, so not all modern cellphone jammers jam the entire spectrum. Some can be set up to allow voice calls over the traditional channels while jamming data. This forces students to use the school’s wifi network for any Internet connectivity, whereupon their connectivity to apps and services can be whitelisted/blacklisted as deemed necessary by system admins.
Ergo, a system that keeps students off of their smartphones while allowing parental connectivity.
Yeah, because schools have thousands of dollars to spend on high-end cellphone jammers when they can’t even pay their teachers a decent wage.
Imagine jamming cell signal then an emergency happens. Oh the liability payout would be massive. And they say schools are underfunded now.
I feel that might be an issue from 4G onwards, considering VoLTE and VoNR are intended to avoid the use of a separate voice network to their existing data network
I proposed a Faraday cage once 😂. But running a jammer would be a good way to get the FCC involved (hint: massively illegal). And if you think dealing with the FCC is fun, ask your local ham operator…
Also they all know how to find proxies or unblocked sites. I watched severely intellectually disabled children teach other out to install VPNs. The smarter ones could install shit like Dolphin and would be playing Pokémon in class.
How do you only allow parent connectivity without allowing most everything else? Would this require schools to build an app specifically for them to allow through and make parents and kids use that? It sounds awful for everyone involved. A mildly determined and clever kid would probably be able to figure out how to circumvent the censorship anyways, and now you’re back at square one but with a bunch of useless infrastructure to maintain.
Most smartphones allow os level VPN, that will get around this.
How many VPNs are running on ports that’d be allowed? Schools can easily restrict wifi to only allow 443 through a MITM proxy and 80 (which firewalls can easily inspect and drop TLS connections.)
You can get VPNs that run over websocket connections.
You can’t solve behavioural issues purely with technology.
You’ll be so popular, with your dictator-like censorship of an organisation! How come no one even treats children like people, you wouldn’t find it acceptable to jam the mobile data of adults’ phones. Talk to the kids and encourage them to want to work at school, don’t be autocratic.
Because no one wants to deal with parents.
The children don’t count, clearly. Only adult opinions matter.
This but unironically. In my neck of the woods, we are hemorrhaging kids to private or charter. That means losing money. Superintendents and administrators view parents as customers. They don’t want a parent to get pissed and move districts because the dollars follow the students. If education is babysitting - if a teacher allows students to do nothing but watch videos on their phone - parents hear nothing and assume everything is fine. If a teacher is calling home about behavioral issues, or a school has “high” discipline rates, then that becomes a visible issue.
You can’t take them, because the district is worried they’ll get sued if one breaks. Your option is to tell the parent, and the parent will 80% come up with some bullshit excuse or accuse you of targeting their child. I worked one district that had a form we could fill out - after getting caught three times they were supposed to turn the phone in. Never happened.
Please. Do. Not. Send. Your. Child. To. School. With. A. Smartphone. DONT.
They are addicted. We’ve given them tech that adults can’t even manage to responsibly use. They don’t know how to be bored or curious. The behavior is just strange - when I’ve been fuck it and just taken a phone - they regress. 15 year olds babbling and throwing tantrums like toddlers.
Id feel safer sending my kid to school without a smartphone if I wasn’t scared there would be a school shooting or some other reason my kid would need to call me for help. I get the sense a lot of other parents feel that way too.
My kids are still too young for that but when they are in high school and maybe depending on the middle school I’ll probably start thinking about a phone of some kind.
Also my kids are bored all the time haha. Taking away their tablet or games is the best punishment most of the time when they argue. We are big on drawing over here though. Hard to stop a kid from drawing lol.
In a school shooting situation, cell phones could make things much worse. During my active shooter training, we were told to ask students to turn them off if we were in a shooting. The noise is an obvious danger, but the lines need to be kept clear for communication with emergency response personnel. There would be structured ways that the school would want to communicate with you - they don’t want the chaos of parents showing up to an active scene. I think it would be better to rely on things like the Rave app.
In other situations, the front office is there. That is the function that they have served for generations. Give the office aides something to do.
There’s just little reason for students to have smart phones in school. They cannot control themselves. We are asking them to have more self restraint than most adults do. It is not developmentally appropriate and it is harmful.
When I was a kid, there were pay phones so that kids could make calls for when they wanted to be picked up. And we had landline at home so that if you needed to make a call, you could.
Those things don’t really exist anymore. And now we have phones with apps that monitor medical conditions like diabetes. Let’s single out those kids?
In other situations, the front office is there. That is the function that they have served for generations. Give the office aides something to do.
So make the office staff stay after hours so that the kids with after school activities can make a phone call? Yeah, because fuck the school staff, right?
The horse has already left the gate. You’re not going to get it back.
At my school there was an office phone outside the office that anyone could use. No need to staff it.
504s exist for kids who need them for medical purposes. (Had a diabetic kid - her mom made sure she knew the phone was only for monitoring) While there aren’t pay phones; there is a landline in the office at every school that students will be able to use.
The office workers are hourly and are already scheduled to stay for at least an hour after school. That’s part of their job.
Good luck banning them from schools
I spent 12 years in American public school during which greater than 70% of the student body had cell or smart phones and 100% of them were successfully banned. If the phone is visible during the school day and you aren’t currently receiving a phone call from the President or from your parents on their way to the hospital, phone goes in the teacher’s desk. You get it back at the end of the day.
Its not that difficult at all.
they kinda are Ireland, in primary school mostly but even in secondary school teachers are allowed to take your phone for 3 days if they see you on it
What’s the difficulty? If they’re being used they’re out in the open, and if they’re out in the open they can be confiscated.
Is there research consensus on when children should be given phones? I would personally be very conservative about it, honestly.
I agree! There’s a campaign pushing to avoid giving kids phones until 8th grade, but I think even that seems a bit too young
Good luck with that, the highschool I went to had a hard enough time getting students to stop vaping at school and during class, smartphones would be a much bigger battle. I graduated in 2019 and I still remember when they would try to crack down on cell phone use, never really affected me that much cause I only ever used my phone during class if I was done with everything but I still saw it go the same way every time. It would always only ever last for a month or two before the teachers just gave up because in the end if someone doesn’t wanna pay attention during class taking away their distraction isn’t gonna make them. They’ll just find some other distraction like talking to people or just zoning out. The problem is school just isn’t engaging and sure you can blame cell phones and social media for making it harder for people to pay attention to things that they don’t wanna do. But that doesn’t mean the solution is to not allow them during school, cause I’ve seen from experience that doesn’t help even if you manage to take away the phones, which already is really hard without impacting students who are following the rules negatively.
Man I remember being in school and a cellphone or pager was instant suspension.
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If I had a kid I’d straight up tell them do not listen to anyone who tells you you cant keep your phone on you, get in trouble if you must and I’ll take care of the rest. If it becomes a distraction Ill deal with it as a parent, but the last thing I want is a kid caught in any kind of emergency without even a chance to phone help.
“But the teacher has a phone”
Okay I dont care. What if the teacher becomes the emergency? What if the teacher steps outside to see what that noise is and doesn’t come back? Not leaving the safety of someone im responsible for in someone elses hands.
I can teach a kid anything they miss in elementary school. I can’t re-alive the dead.
I said “smartphones” not all phones. If I had a kid, I’d get them a flip phone so they could call or text me, but one without internet capabilities
Wouldn’t make a mite of difference to me unless they’ve already prooven they’re not responsible enough for a smart phone. Can’t expect them to learn to stay focused if you eliminate all possible distractions, your just setting them up to fail for once they get old enough to make and buy their own distractions.
Keep in mind that teaching the students to deal with distractions isn’t the teachers job. They have a list of teaching standards and goals they’re expected to achieve, and they’re expected to provide the most effective environment and instruction available to meet those standards. Eliminating distractions is an extremely obvious and practical way to do that.
Did I not say if it becomes a distraction Id deal with it as a parent? Im aware of what a teacher does.
Apples don’t fall far from the tree I suppose.
The sign of a man who commented on a chain without reading shit, and got caught. Just slinging some insults, and not even good ones. If I were you, other peoples apples would be the last thing im concerning myself with.
Is your kid going to save the day with a cell phone? Do you think in that situation there is not going to be another adult who can call 911?
When you tell your child “just get in trouble and I’ll take care of the rest” you are telling the child that they don’t have to respect school rules. And having dealt with parents like you, your children turn out to be absolute terrors. (“Im texting my mom!” as you hear the fucking Rizzler song for the sixth time)
As part of my teaching training, I was in a program where I was not allowed to have my cell phone on me at all. 6 am to 9 pm, for almost two weeks. I survived.
Is your kid going to save the day with a cell phone? Do you think in that situation there is not going to be another adult who can call 911?
Yes and yes. Not every emergency effects every room or even every person.
I work in a developmental capacity with people and kids with disabilities. I’ve had clients in classes with their phones in pocket without issue. The Social Workers, Clinicians, Doctors, and other mental health professionals I work with daily prettymuch all do the same for their children, which came up when that wierd ‘national school shooting day’ tiktok trend or whatever happend encouraging it. All of this is coming from a professional place from people who actually have kids of varying ability, who get on just fine like that.
And I’m not sorry that upsets you. I am sorry you got a class of shitty kids, but if you think that ends if cell phones are in back packs I’d say think back to when you were in school, I don’t imagine there was a lack of horrible kids then either.
The cell phones do not stay in the backpack. They don’t. Sorry, a fourteen year old does not have the capacity to ignore the absolute barrage of notifications they get.
Also - every class room I have ever taught in had a phone. The classroom next door has a phone. The lab cabinet has a phone. If it’s really that important that you have 24/7 access, get a dumb phone. They’re cheaper anyway.
That’s great that you work with kids, but a classroom Is an entirely separate context. I invite you to go substitute in a classroom to get a better understanding about how my job differs from your job.
Few if any of the classrooms I’ve been in have landlines, from my schooling to today, speaking of, I do work in classroom setting frequently with my school age clients, and none of that changes the opinion of other professionals who I interact with and what they do for their kids.
Middle school removes mirrors so as to not distress vampires.
And why can’t we get blood on the lunch menu, huh?
L😂
So now they need to pull their phones out to see themselves. That’s totally logical.
Kids: press switch to front-facing camera button anyways
Most profile pictures I see suggest they don’t know this button even exists.
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The selfie camera, starting with iPhone 11 (both reg and pro) is 12MP, just like the main one. That’s plenty of good. Only the iPhone 15 line has 48MP main while retaining the 12MP selfie.
Not sure what you are smoking.
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I am in agreement with your confident assessment.
Resolution is hardly the only thing that matters for picture quality. The two cameras are quite different in that aspect.
Yes, though the optics on the front facing camera are quite lacking in comparison. You’ll always get a better picture with the back cameras, but it’s just easier to use the front.
That said, I do just use the front facing camera.
It’s funny how this repeats every generation.
20 years back, my school removed mirrors in both the men’s and women’s washrooms, girls kept leaving lipstick on the mirrors, and the guys kept drawing on them with Sharpies.
They even removed toilet paper and hand towels because kids kept soaking it in water and throwing it up on the ceiling.
After that they even removed all the doors to the stalls in the men’s because kids kept leaving black marker “doodles” on them (ie. graffiti).
On my third year they ended up painting everything a very dark green colour. This included the walls, stalls and the ceiling to cover up all the black marker. The green made it almost impossible to make our any new graffiti added in black marker.
Was anyone else here brave enough to shit without a stall door? I had so much anxiety as a kid, but when u gotta go u gotta go.
Some kids tried to bully me and I was just like… I’m taking a shit, we all do it so fuck off. Still nerve wracking tho
I did it a couple times when I really had to go. I usually waited as along as I could after class started so no one was randomly in the bathroom in between classes.
If I were a school bully, I’d be concerned about the readily-available projectile that could emerge in this scenario. Only one type of asshole should be doing its job in there.
Most buildings or schools will have a barrier free washroom. If you find the school you are in removed the doors in the men’s and women’s the barrier free washrooms may be a good stop gap for privacy. Or try and find the faculty washrooms if you can sneak in. Another option is the gym/athletic change rooms, most times these get overlooked.
Edit: seems people do not know what a barrier free washroom is and assume it’s a washroom with no door.
Ie. Barrier free is a wheelchair accessible washroom commonly referred to as a handicapped washroom. This is a large single room washrooms usually located between the men’s and women’s washroom or off to the side. The washroom is self contained with a door toilet and sink. These washroom are unisex.
Hard disagree, we had similar issues at our high school and they removed the stall doors, and I was so petrified of my school bullies coming in while I was doing my business that I either used the faculty toilet or would just not go all day.
Barrier free washrooms should not exist anywhere, for any reason. What the fuck are you on about. Have some sense of basic human rights and privacy, please.
If you want to go drop a turd on live TV, that’s on you, but under no circumstances are the rest of us to be subjected to that. Absolutely fucking not.
Back in my day they removed mirrors so we wouldn’t summon Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary.
Bloody Mary. 🫣
Bloody Mary.
Given that mirrors have never been an issue before TikTok, maybe, just maybe, the problem is elsewhere?
15-18 years ago when camera phones became commonly available for teenagers, but before front-facing cameras were built-in, we took selfies in the mirrors all day, most often to then upload them on our local pre-fb social media site for young people… I refuse to believe we were the only ones doing that.
However, I agree, that doesn’t mean the mirrors are the “problem”. Rather, there seem to be misaligned interests between the kids (some more interested in socializing, attention-seeking, being popular etc.) and the State-owned public schools (probably more interested in turning the kids into obedient “valuable citizens”). I think it’s better to reform the system than trying to deform the kids, but removing the mirrors doesn’t seem like the needed change…
How do they do that? IIRC, mirrors are required per building codes?
That’s a surprising inclusion in a building code. Do you have a reference for it?
I think it’s actually the ADA that requires them, now that I think about it, but I know in commercial buildings there are requirements for size and location of mirrors in bathrooms (maybe only if you choose to install them).
Probably if you offer mirrors to people who can stand code requires you offer them to those who can’t.
Maybe.
A good move by the school.
Or how about you give the kids extra space to let them practice their creativity?
Or how about those kids get back to class since they’re at school.
The school could provide a time and space for learning how to make better videos. It doesn’t have to be a fuck off and make tiktoks in lieu of going to curriculum classes. Make it something akin to a vocational class, even if an extra-curricular. Less a space for kids to fuck off during the day to make lame tiktoks and more of a means of teaching video production and the things that go into it. Photography, editing software, basic equipment operation, how to properly record audio, lighting, all of that type off thing.
This may sound ridiculously expensive, but I have seen schools have classes, and clubs, that do just this for just over two thousand dollars. This won’t stop kids from being disruptive with whatever bullshit is popular at the time, nothing will, but it can enrich those that do these things with actual interest in the craft.
I hope that works better for other schools than it did for mine.
Most of the students that went to the school that I went to opted for a “spare” class instead of taking photography, business, arts, programming, or any of the other creative courses. The tools were there in my case, but most people just ignored them in favour of being able to leave school early, or in favour of taking an extra long lunch. They ignored the after school stuff too, because they wanted to spend time with their friends somewhere else.
We had a pretty good photography course too, they covered almost everything and there was even an option to take it for multiple years/grades if you wanted to learn even more about it. The kids at my school who usually did things like Tik Tok and Vine in the bathroom didn’t seem to really care for those courses. Social media was just fun for them, they never intended on making anything of it.
There has to be some solution that we aren’t seeing yet. There has to be some common ground between “let the kids do whatever they want, regardless of their education” and “dystopian hell”.
It would also help if kid’s parents were more involved overall, although you could also argue that a huge part of the cause is the insane hours that many of the parents have to spend working to let the family survive.
This all sucks. I hope someone is able to make your idea work, truly. We need a solution, asap.
My school had a TV production class that went into a lot of what you’re talking about. Stuff like setting up multiple cameras for an interview/news-type show, following the action while maintaining a sense of the big picture with a single camera at a sporting event, that sort of thing. Even had a workstation with shiny new digital editing software and a DVD burner so you didn’t have to shuffle VHS tapes (or their various forms) around.
I’d love to see an updated version of this where they also get into privacy, safety and bullying/harassment since those don’t tend to be the first things a kid will think about when installing the video app of the day. Let them know what they’re giving up and then teach the methods to do it right.
GOP’s master plot of defunding public schools is years in the making in NC. Teacher pay, at least before I left, was one of the worst in the nation. As a result, this is sadly on point for the area.
Someone is always going to be the worst in the nation.
And if we were in a really great place, maybe that’d be okay.
Even then though, you have 49 examples of how you could do better.
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Holy christ yes. This post is stupid, everything about the situation is stupid but how the hell do you get from ‘some random ass school took down the mirrors because of tik tok’ too ‘GOP EVIL1!!1!!11’
Believe me…I get that the GOP is evil but holy fuck do people stretch to get to that subject here.
Well, sure, but not the bathroom. I don’t need my bathroom activities accidentally included, visually or acoustically, in someone’s TikTok
They do. It’s called art class.
Idk what kind of art classes you had at middle school but creative is not how I’d describe it. You got assignments. You draw this bird. Has to be a bird. Okay now were doing clay, you have to make a pot. Music time you have to learn this song. I feel so creative.
Not exactly the best for expressing creativity true but it something and in the end of the day school is more about learning anyways? Do the kids literally need tik tok time in school like he’s saying? No time to explore their creativity for that at home?
Because a huge part of art class is actually having…you know…STUFF to learn and explore with. The paint and whatnot you might not have at home? So…im not sure what tik tok class is supposed to provide?
So many people always seem determined to completely suck the joy out of schools, like it’s the 1950s again. Everything is so strict and anti-fun.
TikTok and social media in general are popular amongst kids today. That’s just how it is. I think schools should try to embrace youth trends and find creative ways to incorporate them into the learning environment.
