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Kansas Schools Now Collect Phones at the Door – Spends $180K On Smartphone Lockers
(www.gadgetreview.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Technology
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"If you take your phone out you get detention." I don't see why this doesn't work anymore. Do parents have no control over their kids anymore? You get detention twice, 3rd time suspended, suspended twice 3rd time expelled. If I got suspended from school for taking my phone out my parents would have simply taken away the phone.
I think you just answered your own question.
Clearly we've reached the stage of physically taking and locking their phones up during school hours because verbal threats weren't working. If parents had control of what their kids were doing when not in close proximity to them, this wouldn't be happening.
Lot of dumb adults out there these days. I think a lot of parents would be on the "but I need to contact them in case of emergencies" and "you're threatening my child's rights" boat if they just floated the idea of suspension for phone use. So now we're at the physically confiscate them upon entering like contraband stage.
I need to contact them in case of an emergency doesn't mean the phone is out. Also the only emergency that matters is if the kid is in danger and needs to call someone. If Dad falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck you either A, go pick the kid up from school or B tell him when he gets out of school. The kid isn't a paramedic.
Also kids don't have rights at school. That's why they have the ability to search all their lockers, backpacks, and vehicles without a warrant.
There is no law that says you have a right to have your phone in your hand, or it would be illegal to seperate us from them to go through metal detectors and such at airports, courts, etc
An emergency means the kids needs to call 911 not the parents need to contact the student. Most schools have a phone/intercom in each classroom which is close enough though. (Back in my day we did have to use this once when something happened, the teacher dealt with the main issue and assigned a student to push the button to alert the office. I wasn't in that class so I don't recall details)
If dad has hours to live you call the school office - you will need to sign them out anyway so they need to know. (plus they need to know because the school has counselors trained dealing with emotional issues like this who need to be at that school when the kid returns).
Which is to say I can think of no reason a kid needs a phone during class hours. They are sometimes useful after school hours.
So what do you do if the kid doesn't lock up their phone at the start of the day and has it in class?
Back in my day you got stuck in detention or pulled from extra curriculars
Then do that if they pull their phone out during class.
"Do parents have no control over their kids?"
Almost never had. Control is an illusion.
Telling them they’re being controlled encourages innovations…so it’s kind of a fucked ouroboros
Kids have no hope these days. Who gives a shit if you get detention? It won't change your future.
Getting expelled from a school most definitely should effect your future. Alternative schools have never been known to be fun. They also don't usually have buses that come near you, so parents are going to hate having to drive you there, and if they aren't going you wind up in a situation where the kid gets taken by child protective services, and that's not a system that has great futures for kids either.
Caring about future wasn't that popular among kids anyway, but when everyone kinda accepts that the future should be sacrificed on an altar of a line going up, it's even harder to care. We're going to burn last available resources and warm planet until we can't grow crops anymore, so we can generate bad videos of Will Smith eating spaghetti. Who the fuck cares about long division or mitochondria when the most popular occupation in 2050 is projected to be "water refugee".
Sure, it's a doom scenario, it's not guaranteed, we can somehow persevere, humanity always does. And even in the doom scenario It's not impossible that we'll conserve the civilization in some form.
What we have lost forever is the trust of our kids, that ship has sailed. When Greta Thunberg asked us not to destroy the planet, the collective response was mockery, anger, and pedo threats. There is a generational disdain bigger than it was for boomers.
You still can work in an amazon warehouse with or without school, same like most basic entry jobs. When kids realise the market is dead and no amount of education will provide a career they will stop caring.
The job market is not dead. It is slightly down, but there are still a lot of jobs. There have been recessions before. History supports the idea that there will be a recovery in the near future, and then a few more years latter another recession.
Of course if you are the person without a job it does suck. However for the majority things are okay.
History never had the threat of a warming climate. A child starting school now will finish high school in what, 2038? We'll be above 2 degrees warming by then. They're in for a rough ride.
History has always had some threat. The exact threat has changed over time, but there was always something.
There have always been threats yes, but nothing like this. On our current trajectory, billions will die by the end of the century. The impacts of climate change will reshape our global society. Never in history has there been a threat so severe.