Completely banning them is absolutely ridiculous. I understand banning them from classrooms, because it is disrespectful to the teacher and the other students who i would hope are there to learn. Yet, banning them from school in general is just stupid because what if your car breaks down, you miss your bus, you cant get a ride, you need to inform you ride of staying after, etc.??? My son attends East Broadway elementary school in Levittown, NY, and the Principal of the school a first rate biotch Susan Waidenbaum has stubbornly refused to budge on this issue. Sure, kids could use the school phones, but i know at my school there is only one phone that we are allowed to use ((unless a teacher lets us use theres)), so other rules would have to change if students were prohited from cell phones. It seems like just alot of trouble thats not worth it.
So, you have a child in school and are still in public school yourself?
Tell me again why an elementary-school-age kid needs a cell phone?
When I was in public school (not far from Levittown), the school banned Walkmen (or is that Walkmans?)
I can understand the powers that be banning them in class, but what was the BFD if I wanted to use one in the lunchroom on my free period, or after school while running around the track? If teachers or administrators spotted them on school grounds, they’d confiscate them.
As far as cell phones go, I think it’s even more unreasonable to ban them. What if kids need to call for a ride home? I used a payphone in the pre-cell phone days, and it cost a lot of money over the long haul - more than a cheap mobile plan would, anyway.
Keep them out of classes, yes. Ban them entirely? No way.
Well, like the OP says…what if the kid is driving home from school and his car gets a flat? No 9 year old knows how to change a tire. We have to protect the children.
Do young people think that back in the darke olde dayes before cell phones we just wandered around lost for all eternity if we missed our bus?
[sub]Criminy, I’m only 33 and here I am sounding like an old grouchy fart. Get off my lawn![/sub]
Need? Well, they don’t need them like they need oxygen, food and shelter. “Need” as in, “make mom’s life a heck of a lot easier, as well as that of the office staff” I can perhaps elucidate. It’ll just be easier for me to cut ‘n’ paste a previous post of mine:
Note that 13 here is middle school, not elementary school. However if I had it to do over again, I’d have given him the phone at 10 or 11. I just didn’t know how much easier it would make my life, and I had the old fuddy-duddy attitude that if I’d done without a cell phone as a kid (back in Ye Olde Darke Ages when only drug dealers had pagers and Wall-Street Psychos had car phones) so could he.
Well, in my case it is very nice that my kids have phones. I have shared custody. On the days we spend together, if I am running 15 minutes behind I can reassure them I am on the way. If my son decides he would rather play basketball with his buds then eat dinner with me and his sister, a simple phone call takes care of it. My son is 12, my daughter 16.
Right – I remember before cell phones were invented. In fact, when I went to school, I don’t remember seeing phones there at all, though presumably the teachers had them in their offices. So, when I went to primary school, I walked there and back. (It was about a kilometre each way). And when I went to high school, I caught a train there and back, along with walking perhaps a kilometre to the station. If the train wasn’t available, I could always catch a bus; and, if I’d mislaid my money and my train ticket, I could always walk home: it would have taken me an hour or so, but it would not have killed me.
But, if I were making school rules now, I’d say:
(1) cell phones at school for emergency use only;
(2) cell phones must be turned to a silent mode at school, except when making an emergency call.
Yea, elementary age kids don’t need cell phones at school. I don’t think high school kids do either, but you can make a case (I didn’t have one, though, so I have a hard time understanding why, in the last 10 years, it became so important). But, 3rd or 4th graders? Forget it, no. The kids shouldn’t be calling about this stuff anyway. If a kid gets left at school, they need to go to the office and wait there while their parents come; it’s safer. And they don’t get flats, so that’s moot.
Also, I think it’s really awful to say that the principal of your child’s school is a bitch, and call her out by name like this. You ought to be ashamed, really. If she is so bad, take it up with the school board, or find a private school for the child, but I think saying something like this on the board is reprehensible, especially when your only justification is that she won’t allow a superfluous gadget at school. You need to grow up, unless you actually are in school, like the OP seems to suggest, in which case, you need to find a better home for that child.
elementary? no. High school? Yes. Especially if your kid can drive to HS.
Our HS has a very impractical policy: students are not allowed cell phones, but they are also not allowed to use the office phones during school hours. There is one pay phone per building-last time I looked it took calling cards, not money, but I could be wrong about that. The office staff does not get messages to students-that is their policy. I know this because there have been a few times when I have needed to pull my kids out of school, and have come up against this bone-headed policy. No cell phones, and you won’t get a message to the kids. Yup-that works.
So, when my sister died, I put on my assertive voice and told them it was a family emergency-she still said no and I asked for her boss. I was switched around a bit until someone would get a message to the kids. All of them wanted to know the details of the emergency. That was none of their business. Still, even in less dramatic situations, I should be able to contact my kid and let them know that the eye doctor called an moved the appt up, so they need to miss last period or whatever.
Of course, for every legitimate use, there is that parent who HAS to know how that chemistry test went or that the puppy did ok with his shots etc. There are a lot of parents who want a constant connection to their kids.
Nah, I just walked home.
I usually got there in time to catch the bus for school the next day.
Kidding, I used the school phones. I also think elementary is a bit young for kids to have them (with the possible exception of school trips), but in high school I can see more legitimate uses for them, especially for kids who are driving to and from school, and possibly going other places in between.
I wonder how all the rest of us managed to survive intact, growing up in a world decades before cell phones ever existed?
Clearly the OP is expressing his concern both as a teenager and as the father of a teenager.
So, you missed the part where I said elementary-school-aged right?
12 is elementary school aged
The main reason why schools want to ban cellphones is because they cause a distraction. Kids are texting each other all day in class and not paying attention. Or they are getting reprimanded for texting during class. Or they have to sit there and listen to the teacher reprimand someone else for texting during class. When you only have 50 minutes to teach each class it becomes more trouble than any other argument for it is worth.
Okay, I misunderstood, I guess - in my town, 12-year-olds are in 6th grade, which is junior high, not elementary.
I don’t agree with a no-cell-phones policy for older kids. I just find it a little difficult to understand why an 8-year-old, for example, should have a cell phone. And your quoted earlier message makes a lot of sense and sums up why I got my daughter her own phone when she was 14.
Her high school, BTW, doesn’t ban kids from carrying them, but they aren’t allowed to use them in class or to have an audible ringtone during class time. If they violate the policy, the phone is confiscated and returned at the end of the school day. I feel that’s a reasonable compromise.
Might have come in handy when they were gathering around to rape me.
Yeah, it’s stupid - turn them off in class, but banning an inanimate object as disruptive is attacking a symptom and not the disease. Of course I’m also against banning firearms in schools (for adults, minors are already prohibited from carry), so there you go.
Then again, the rational and coherent argument put forth by m0o0m is causing me to reevaluate my position and I’m now prepared to oppose cell phones in schools.