You've missed the point of what I was saying or more likely, I have not explained my point well enough.Nice comment about low quality parents here. My personal context here: Here in Switzerland kids are expected to travel to school alone from the age of 4 years old. Not being Swiss I found packing my 4 year old off to walk alone pretty horrific. In hindsight it was perfectly okay.
When this involved walking around the corner and meeting friends on the way it was kind of okay, however, when, at the age of 9, this became a bus ride to the neighbouring village we bought him a phone so we could keep in contact if needed. This gave security at both ends of calls / messages. I do not see this as low quality parenting!
As this has become the norm, classes now have hangers over the doors where kids are expected to leave their phones during lessons. That's also not bad as they are expected to focus on the job in hand.
I reckon it's a fairly good idea when parents equip their kids with simple, low tech phones for security/emergency/admin purposes. What I meant by "low quality parents" is the sort of people who are happy to give their kids a full blown smart phone and then take little or no interest in policing their use of it.
RogerS mentioned above a parent taking no interest in her child as she (the parent) was buried in her smart phone. I'm sure we've all seen many of examples of parents ignoring or shushing the child at their side in favour of their phones. I also imagine that many parents are happy that their children are occupied with their phones as it saves them having to do some parenting.
We only get one shot at childhood and it more or less forms us for life. IMO parents have a duty to regard the raising of their children as their main priority in life. Too many kids end up in the courts or in care because their parents did anything but bring them up responsibly.
And of course the schools can do their bit in the manner you describe by making the kids hand over their phones on arrival and only giving them back at the end of the school day.
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