Schools rethink cell phone ban!
SHOULD CELL PHONES AND OTHER DEVICES BE BANNED FROM SCHOOL? by Alex Johnson MSNBC.com
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut – More than 100 students were suspended last month at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Conn. They weren’t bullies. They weren’t cheating. They weren’t caught smoking in the bathrooms. They had cell phones. Michelle Wade, a spokeswoman for the New Haven Public Schools, said students had been warned since September that cell phones and other portable electronics weren’t allowed on school grounds. “It was getting just too disruptive to the learning process,” Wade said.
The school’s total ban is at one extreme of a debate under way in schools across the country. As ever more powerful cell phones come closer to mimicking the laptop computers many pupils carry each day, teachers and administrators are wrestling with whether their utility as a teaching tool outweighs the disruptions they can pose in the classroom. “Cell phones aren’t going away,” said Brian Begley, principal of Millard North High School in Omaha, Neb., which loosened its ban at the beginning of the school year in August.
Pupils can now use their phones during lunch, and, what is more significant, teachers have the discretion to allow them in class, even working them into lessons. By focusing “less on the negative and more on the positive, we feel it can be a real plus for our kids,” said Aaron Bearinger, who teaches business at Millard North, where he crafted a project for his students that involved their calling area businesses from class.
TO STUDENTS, A BAN THAT ISN’T
Cell phones have long bedeviled educators, who have extensive research to back up their complaints that the devices suck away their texting students’ attention and, increasingly, their academic honor.That’s why 69 percent of American high schools have banned their use or even possession on school grounds, according to figures compiled by CommonSense Media, a nonprofit group that studies children’s use of technology. But those policies don’t work.That’s why 69 percent of American high schools have banned their use or even possession on school grounds, according to figures compiled by CommonSense Media, a nonprofit group that studies children’s use of technology.
But those policies don’t work.But the American Association of School Administrators itself argues the other side, promoting the use of cell phones in class as “genuine educational tools.”“Handheld devices like cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerrys and iTouch are beginning to offer applications that enhance classroom learning by engaging kids to use tools they are constantly using anyway,” Daniel A. Domenech, the association’s executive director, wrote in an essay last fall. The evidence suggests that the bans, however well-intentioned, don’t work. Sixty-five percent of all students who responded to the CommonSense Media Media survey said that they use their phones at school.
At schools that ban them, 63 percent use them anyway. The Benenson Strategy Group (the pollster for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign) conducted the survey, interviewing more than 1,000 students in grades 7 to 12, along with more than 1,000 parents. It reported a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points among the student population. The figures, which were released in August just before the current academic year began, are consistent with previous studies reported by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the American Association of School Administrators.
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February 4th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
yes yes yes! get rid of all the cell phones, ipods, mp3s so our kids can get back to focusing on whats important. cell phones and video games are ruining our kids and making it hard for us to get their attention.