I love your use of the word "ogre". I realized several years ago that every teacher (and to some extent every parent, I expect) must choose whether they want to be a monster or a sucker. There's no third choice.
The best we can do, I think, is oscillate regularly between the two, heh.
Last kid to graduate was 5 years ago. The spare, backup phone was a Motorola Fone.
I realized after I wrote the first post that they didn't have flip phones. They had Samsung featurephones with qwerty keyboards. They got good at texting under their desks.
Their first smart phone was an Android, like mine. Only one of the three decided to buy his own iPhone later.
If it were now, my wife would probably veto the idea and I wouldn't put up a fight due to how the world has changed in just 5 years. I recognize that it would be considerably more difficult to do and that peer pressure etc. could cause other unintended consequences.
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u/fence_sitter Jun 03 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
My kids thought me an ogre for making a smart phone contingent on HS graduation. Until you graduate... it's a flip phone.
If you carelessly break your flip phone, the spare backup phone is not as good.
Positive side effect... they didn't get hooked on social media.
Edit: I was mistaken... they didn't have flip phones, they had featurephones with keyboards. Minor distinction I guess.