Technology

Kids should be required to pay attention when they are a student.

I agree with this provided we have supplied them with a reasonable learning environment and expectations. Employees should be required to pay attention when at work, sure, but if we are put in a horrible work environment we would also refuse to work, or if it's really bad, quit. Students don't have the latter option, (nor the monetary incentive to 'tough it out') so the former is, by necessity, what they go to.

I think people have got this backwards: Lack of attention doesn't disrupt the learning environment. Lack of a proper learning environment disrupts attention.

I do believe the teachers and administration need the ability to contain disruptions in class.

Looking at your phone doesn't stop anyone else from learning; that's a disruption to the class. You can't define "class disruption" as "not learning" (you can stare blankly at a textbook quietly and not learn anything). Class disruptions are behaviors that prevent or impede other students from learning, which looking quietly at a cell phone doesn't do.

I am reminded of the axiom of, "if one employee (student) is failing (being disruptive), you have a Personnel problem. If many employees are failing, you have a Management problem". There will always be problem students, but they're not really who we're talking about. We're talking about a widespread disconnect from a large number of students, because they are not being provided with a learning environment that engages them.

I work at a large company, and WFH during lockdown completely changed the employee attitude towards being trapped in a box of our employers' choosing. My entire team is now remote, and maybe 10% of people go into the office once a week, at most, and probably half or more of us would quit outright if you tried to force us into RTO.

Students also experienced this, but they are all being given RTO orders, and (to reiterate once again), cannot quit, which really reinforces that it's entirely possible for them to not be in the school building each day, but are being forced to for someone else's benefit (and kids aren't dumb, the argument that reopening schools was for the benefit of getting parents back to work was very publicly stated, and kids saw that). This does not make for a healthy mental situation that is conducive to (school)work/learning.

Do I think that means schools must run like prisons? Hell no.

But they share fundamental similarities. That's just the reality. What building forces adults to be trapped there, with no choice about whether to leave or not? Prisons. There's really no way around this parallel. The question is then, "how do we make what is in effect a prison, feel less prison-like?", and that has to be by making it an enjoyable environment. But no schools aside from the super-wealthy are even able to do this, and most aren't even trying at the carrot. Instead, they're switching to the stick, and that don't work.