[spicymapotofu]

Do you mean to imply that education outcomes are unrelated to technology or that advancing technology may make them worse? Do you think there's a defensible abstraction of your claim?

We also did "just fine, if not better" in my role at the bank (vaguely) before digitization. I assure you, the efficiency upgrades of advancing technology pay for themselves many times over, even if there are hiccups and new learning to match.

Phones enable more education than ever before. The limiting factor is now motivation.

[vacuity]

What are the concrete uses of phones in enhancing education? I've only seen

  portable calculator: fair, but why write problems that rely on calculators
  searching things up: just note it down for later
  taking pictures of slides: teacher can just post the slides

Meanwhile, there's genuine and well-founded concern that smartphones lead to firsthand and secondhand distraction, which undermines the teacher and disrupts learning. The main thing I see phones enabling is rampant social media consumption.

[xwdv]

It’s time to have a higher standard of “technology”.

Phones aren’t some magical solution to better education. They are just a source of digital candy, digital crack, that pollutes minds with harmful or vapid ideas.

If you want an advanced teaching device, build one from scratch and make it nothing like a phone.

[pantalaimon]

No, if you are online it’s much harder to pay attention to your teacher or the task at hand. There are a million distractions, all more interesting than class.