Gadfly Bites 8/27/25—Filling the gap with distraction

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1. Not much to talk about today, but let’s dive in anyway. Here are some interesting details on how Cincinnati City Schools is handling distribution and use of transit passes to students this year. There are tiers of passes—based on travel needs of individual kids—available for students in grades 7 through 12; there appears to be detailed knowledge among Metro staff as to how many kids are expected, when, and where (passes will supposedly have the students’ addresses on them, but surely that can’t be right, can it?); and several agencies including Metro will have specially-trained staff members assigned to routes, ticket offices, and transfer hubs specifically to help students. There is even a note here that bus drivers and other transit staff might be able to take kids back to their schools if they get lost in the system. Finally, one assumes this all applies to charter and private school students as well, but no details are provided on that facet of the story because…who cares, right? Sure is a big difference from my kids’ experience using public buses for school transportation here in Columbus a few years back: “Here’s your COTA pass; see you tomorrow!” (Signal Cincinnati, 8/25/25)
   
   

2. One wag noted on X.com yesterday that no student in his classes mentioned the Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift engagement news until after the last bell, thus proving to him that their ban on smartphones during the school day was airtight—as intended. So if it’s all going as planned out there, why is it that the adults running all the schools featured in this Washington Post piece on the topic—including two in Dayton—feel compelled to fill the hotly-desired (and self-inflicted) phone-free lunchtimes with numerous other school-provided “distractions” for kids? A lot of distractions. These include board games, mah jongg tiles, puzzles, craft corners, foosball, and more. One librarian in New York says that she “bought a lot” of such toys for the students and also appears to spend her time overseeing the students using them. (What? Books not good enough for you suddenly?) They call it “old school”, but since I am old school, I can assure you that none of these things were available at lunchtime in any school I went to or knew about. But another New York high school’s principal probably tells us more than she intends to when she asserts confidently that without these “distractions”, she knows that phone-free kids “are going to get into mischief.” She oughta know, I guess. (Washington Post, 8/27/25)

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