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Our schools encourage the kids to have cell phones in school-less phone calls/message running for the office staff. They are not allowed to use them during class but they can use them during study hall or lunch. I often text DS17 during school if I need him to do something after school-pick up siblings, milk, etc. Not that they don't have a few problems here and there but for the most part since kids know they can check their text messages in the hallway or at lunch they are pretty good about not using them during class. A little common sense goes a long way and a total ban is only going to make kids sneak them in more.
I don't agree with the ban. What about the kids who don't drive to school, but still need or want access to a cell phone after school hours (and don't have time or want to go home to pick one up after school)? They can be required to keep them in their bag or locker during school hours (or during class, or whatever), but banning them from in the school at all seems unnecessarily harsh.
Interesting that the article noted the possibility of having to install a phone for use by students. That suggests no pay phone on campus? It is harder and harder to find a pay phone, which of course adds more reasons for people to carry cell phones. Given that some kids go straight from school to jobs or after school activities might as well let them carry a phone. That doesn't mean they need to be allowed to use it in school, though; I see nothing wrong with telling kids that while they are allowed to have on in their bag or locker, it will be confiscated if they are seen with it out during class, regardless of whether it's on or off.
NYC banned cellphones, iPods, etc. and as a child who's still in school (not now because its Summer) I don't agree with this ban, one time there was an emergency and I had to call home but couldn't because the school's phone could only call one area code, luckily I had my cellphone. A lot of schools in NYC now allow cellphones as long as they are not visible (even at lunch), I agree that they shouldn't be used in school unless its necessary, the constant sound of Sidekicks swiveling open starts to get on my nerves.
I agree with the ban. It's hard to police though. We have a no cell phone policy where I teach but with 30 students in a class, they can be hard to catch. I wish they'd come up with some kind of blocking technology that just renders them useless inside the school building.
Funny that you mention it. I had a professor at a school that was working on a device that would do exactly that, block cell signals within a room. He was thinking about marketing towards movie theatres though.
I see absolutely no reason to have or use a cell phone in class.
I see no problem with storing one in one's locker, if it is not used during the school day. I grew up very rurally, and drove to school in a fairly unreliable beater farm car...I had breakdowns on the way to and from school more than once. This was slightly before the advent of cell phone use by teens, predated that wave by a couple of years. Had I been born a few years later, I would definitely have carried a phone with me to school for this purpose...emergency roadside stuff out in the country.
Funny that you mention it. I had a professor at a school that was working on a device that would do exactly that, block cell signals within a room. He was thinking about marketing towards movie theatres though.
They already exist, and they're illegal. The FCC takes a dim view of deliberately interfering with electronic communication devices.
There are already devices that block cell phone signals. They're legal in some countries but are illegal here except in certain situations and even then it's with permission from the FCC. It's not the telephone aspect of the cell phones that are the problem. The problem is all the features that are built into the cell phones parents buy for their children. Features like camera (used to take photos in locker rooms or up skirts), internet access (used to look up answers to test or to look for porn while at school), text messaging (used to pass answers on test), video games (sometimes used in class to ignore the teacher), mp3 player (same as video games), and video camera (used as a bullying tool, used in locker rooms, and other immoral uses).
Here is an example of the problem of cell phones.
In my workplace, cell phones were outlawed except for the lunchrooms after an employee was hit and almost killed by a fork lift. Both the employee and the fork lift driver were talking on their cell phones and not paying attention to their surroundings.
In the same workplace, I worked as an accounting supervisor under the plant controller who had a hearing problem. We were sitting in her office with two auditors having a meeting. She never refused to answer her son's call. Because of her hearing problem, she always kept her cell phone on speaker. Her 12 year old had called to share with his mom the fact that he was taking a really big S**t accompanied by a lot of gas which he broadcast to the whole room. She thought this was funny. I wanted to join the two auditors and sink into the floor. After that, at the request of the auditors, management requested that I take over the rest of the audit. I cannot ever remember having a meeting with my boss in 5 years that she was not interrupted by these kinds of calls. In my mind, she was cheating the company by wasting company time for no good reason. Her son called her about 25 times a day.
I think it is great that we have all this technology, but what is going to happen to the new generation someday when the lights go off or the signals are blocked for some reason? How will they survive?
Everyone needs to have basic survival skills before they take on all of the conveniences we enjoy. If we don't teach our children, we are cheating them.
I work in a hospital. There have been cases around the country of nurses taking photos of patients using their cell phone and sharing the photo with friends and family. Not only is this morally wrong, it's highly illegal. Because of where I work, we're allowed to keep our cell phones with us as long as we don't abuse them. If we had a camera on the cell phone it would also enhance our work in that we can report a problem to our boss verbally and with a photo of the mechanical problem. Photos help to get budget approval for major repair jobs that cost a lot of money. We get paged for repair calls all the time and our pager is a voice message pager. There is no telephone on the roof of a hospital. Our cell phones help to save the time it normally would have taken us to go down stairs until we found a free and working phone. It also helps us to refer the problem to someone who is available to take the trouble call. But we also know what areas we're not allowed to use them.
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