The obsession with school smartphone policies coninoues and it is narrowly focused on distraction. How stupid!

Here is another such study! How relevant is it how often a student checks his/her smartphone!

It is high time to integrate smartphones into school curricula!!! Banning is stupid!

Again this study also resorts to the totally antiquated term "cell phone" as if we are still living in the 1970s/1980s!

"A new RAND study finds that stricter school cell phone policies are associated with less student phone use in class, but even the most restrictive policies don’t completely stop students from checking their phones.

The study draws on survey data from the RAND American Youth Panel, a nationally representative panel of middle and high school students. Cell phone policies and how those policies are enforced vary widely among schools, so this approach provides a clearer picture of how those differences relate to student behavior. ..."

How School Cell Phone Policy Strictness Shapes Student Phone Use: Selected Findings from the American Youth Panel | RAND

School Cell Phone Policies: Do They Work?

From South Korea, China to India: The High Cost of Asia’s Education Pressure with Palki Sharma

Very recommendable! What a madness!

Schools and Cell Phone Bans in the US

A controversial, but pertinent topic! In general, prohibition is in many cases the dumbest way to regulate!

Is there a smart way to integrate smartphones into K-12 education? I would think so.

Banning smartphone to prevent inappropriate photos and video recordings in restrooms, locker rooms etc. Should it not suffice to punish specifically those few students doing such things instead of banning all smartphones?

"Across the United States, cell phones seem to be causing issues for students and headaches for educators. That's why more than two dozen states have passed legislation restricting cell phone use in K–12 schools. Many school districts have rolled out their own bans, too. ...

What schools are doing: Nearly all K–12 schools that took part in the survey allow students to bring their phones to school. But two-thirds prohibit cell phone use from “bell to bell”—that is, during the entire school day. Other policies range from allowing cell phone use at teachers' discretion to all-out bans. ...

Sixty percent of youth support at least some limits on cell phones, mainly to cut down on distractions. But most are skeptical of bell-to-bell restrictions. ..."

"Cell phones are overwhelming K–12 schools. Teachers are pushing for cell phones to be removed from schools, citing constant disruptions to classroom instruction and concerns about what responsibility they might have for the content that students post while in their classrooms (Hatfield, 2024; Langreo, 2023; Walker, 2025).

School administrators are worried that cell phones have negatively affected students’ academic learning, mental health, and attention spans (National Center for Education Statistics, 2025). Beyond the impacts of cell phone use on student learning and mental health, cell phone and social media use have created a rash of safety problems for schools, including cyberbullying and threats (Moore et al., 2024; Vogels, 2022). ...

As of June 2025, 29 states have passed legislation restricting cell phone use in K–12 schools (Ballotpedia, undated), and many school districts in states with and without state-level policies have enacted their own cell phone policies. In fact, in a survey administered to school districts in spring 2025, nine in ten said that they now have some form of a cell phone policy  ..."

Policy Currents Newsletter: October 9, 2025 | RAND

Principals See Many Benefits of Cell Phone Policies, but Youth Remain Skeptical "Selected Findings from the American School Leader Panel and the American Youth Panel"

Figure 2. Percentage of Schools with Cell Phone Policies, by Grade Level

Figure 3. Percentage of Principals Reporting School Safety–Related Benefits or Drawbacks of Cell Phone Policies

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in the UAE

Ever heard of this university?

I first and only once mentioned this university here on my blog in September, 2020.

"The Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) is a research university located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Established in 2019, it was the first graduate-level research university focused on artificial intelligence. It launched an undergraduate program in 2025. ..."

The president of the university is Eric Xing (former visiting professor at Stanford U and professor at Carnegie Mellon U). According to Google Scholar with lifetime citations of over 82,000.

I just rediscovered this university through this new preprint paper on arxiv: K2-Think: A Parameter-Efficient Reasoning System 

MBZUAI - Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (university  website)

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (Wikipedia)

Credits: Last Week in AI

Estonia's AI Leap Brings Chatbots Into Schools

Good news! Bravo! Compare that approach to other Western countries silly efforts to prohibit smartphones etc. in class rooms!

"Estonia has a reputation as one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world, thanks to its efficient digital platforms for government services and its startup-friendly culture. Its citizens’ digital prowess is largely due to the government’s decades-long campaign to bring technology into schools. Now, the government is launching AI Leap 2025, which will bring AI tools to an initial cohort of 20,000 high school students in September. Siim Sikkut, a former member of the Estonian government and part of the launch team, says the AI Leap program goes beyond just providing access to new technology. Its goal is to give students the skills they need to use it both ethically and effectively. ..."

Estonia's AI Leap Brings Chatbots Into Schools - IEEE Spectrum "Students are meant to use AI for learning rather than cheating"

An Expanded Curriculum For High Schools

Privatize Public Schools

There are no convincing reasons why high schools need to be run by government. Why are secondary schools in the US organized as public schools? I suspect for some historical reasons. Wikipedia had this to say “In France and much of Europe from 1650 to 1790 educational aspirations were on the rise and were becoming increasingly institutionalized in order to supply the church and state with the functionaries to serve as their future administrators.” (Emphasis added).

Privatization would also automatically take care of labor unionization of teachers issues and how labor unions have been extorting ever so willing politicians to agree to unsustainable, sometimes outrageous contracts and work rules to benefit teachers at the expense of students and the general public.

I am not an expert on the history of secondary education in the Western world, but a little research suggests that some of the oldest Western high schools were founded and run by churches, e.g. Royal High School in Edinburgh, Scotland, which was founded in 1128 AD and it is still in operation.

The Imminent Transformation Of High School Education

The exponential advances in information technology have the power to completely transform how we teach our children in the future. Purely theoretically, one teacher, let’s say the best in one subject, can teach all children of the world via the Internet. A few educators can put together exercises, questions etc. for all children. This concept would completely change the role of a human teacher in a local school. Anyway, what will local schools look like in 10-20 years? Do we still have a class room and one teacher per class? Several states have already setup virtual schools. I believe Australia has a long history of long distance learning.

Here is a recent article by the Hoover Institution on the subject titled “The End of Teachers Unions” by Terry M. Moe published on 7/18/2012.

Economics

Since I am not very familiar with the high school curriculum in the US, I kind of have to speculate. From my own high school experience in Germany, I know I was sort of brainwashed with leftist ideas and prejudices against free market economies along the lines that capitalists are criminals, workers are exploited victims, and government is the good guy.

I also remember well that economics was taught as a tertiary subject with little emphasis. Now, I speculate that the situation is not much better in the US. From my observations it seems children learn more from their parents about how a free market economy works than in high school.

To teach free market economics well is as important as mathematics or science so the next generations will appreciate the benefits of free markets and limited government more than previous generations. Too many of our elected representatives in the US Congress or state legislatures have not much a clue about economics. President Obama is hostile to businesses and he is absolutely clueless or ignorant of how a free market economy actually works.

Law

If my memory serves me correctly, then I did not learn much about law in high school. Only when I entered college to study economics I was systematically taught in law. Everything else I know about this topic is self taught.

Understanding of law is fundamental in a society that is governed by the rule of law. One cannot start learning about law early enough. How many high school children learn the inscription on the east pediment of the US Supreme Court building, i.e. “Justice The Guardian Of Liberty”? This inscription was chosen by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in 1932. He was one of the great Justices who opposed the New Deal and prevented President Franklin D. Roosevelt from doing more damage. Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court’s document on the East Pediment does not contain much about the origin of the phrase “Justice The Guardian Of Liberty”. I wrote a separate blog about the inscription.

I would easily argue this inscription is the more important inscription than the more well known “Equal Justice Under Law” on the West façade or main entrance of the US Supreme Court.

If you look at some of the more recent decisions of the US Supreme Court, e.g. Kelo v. City of New London or ObamaCare, you doubt that even the supreme justices know the above mentioned inscription on the east façade of the building they work in.

If teenagers were already taught in law perhaps we had fewer bad decisions by the courts of justice.

Trading Assets

Too few teenagers ever learn how to trade assets like stocks, futures, forex etc. Those, who are so fortunate to learn how to trade in assets as teenagers happen to learn it most likely from their parents or from a close relative.

In a free market economy everybody should be able and comfortable to trade in assets. Capital markets are an essential part of free market economies about which every teenager should as much as possible.

Medicine

Why are children or teenagers not trained in basic medicine? High school students ought to know more about healthy life styles etc. Repeated first aid training would not hurt either. E.g. why is it an important to get two opinions from different doctors even of different disciplines in important medical situations? Trust your doctor, but verify. Where do you find reliable medical information?