Submitted by lisa, Oct 16, 2007 21:32

This idea that students need their cell phones to contact their parents is bogus. I taught in WIHS for 9 years. During that time students snuck their phones in breakfast sandwiches, separated the battery from the phone base and gave it to friends to try to sneak in, wrapped them in foil and put them in paper bags, placed them in umbrellas, buried them deep in the lining of their coats, and placed them in their underwear among other things. I now work in a school without scanning equipment and phones/sidekicks and other electronic devices enter undetected. Students text message each other throughout the day, they hang out in the bathrooms making themselves late to classes using the phones, they are busy retrieving pictures, playing games, and making plans to meet boyfriends, girlfriends, and settle 'business' after school with potential 'haters'. None of which serves education or is intended to protect the child from any harm. What phones have done is given students a convenient tool/toy to attend to everyone and everything other than their education. Even the most concerned and involved parent has no idea what it is like to have 34 kids in a room for 45 minutes and in addition to taking attendance, putting notes on the board, giving directions and instructions for a lesson, collecting homework, having to reprimand kids who talk, curse, are bobbing their head up and down with an ear piece in one ear or looking down behind a desk to send a text to a friend. Whatever happened to the day when students came to school with notebooks, textbooks, pens, pencils, rulers, folders for handouts and homework? When did it become so unreasonable for society to expect students to come to school and focus on school work?

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