Cell Phones & Education

Dojogirl has been bugging us to buy her a cell phone, for going on two years now. Pretty much every adult I know has one of these devices, and a good number of the teens now have one as well. Cell phones have gone from being an expensive item used mostly by adults who needed them for business, to a fairly affordable device without which most people over age 13 won’t leave home.

As cell phones have become more sophisticated we’ve seen increasing costs related to things like text messaging, and there is also the need to replace a phone frequently in order to keep up with the latest technology. Besides the question of whether we want to encourage our children to create this kind of negative environmental impact, there is also the financial burden which is generally borne by parents. Teens can easily fall into expensive usage patterns that they will later be unable to afford, rather than learning moderation with their first phones.

When we started seeing kids bring their phones to school a whole other can of worms: Students using cell phones to cheat during tests. Bullies using picture phones to take inappropriate photos in bathrooms and locker rooms - and subsequently distribute them so as to humiliate other young people. Teachers reporting that cell phone use was distracting their classes.

So it wasn’t surprising when schools banned cell phones. Some schools and districts simply banned their use during class time. But much of the inappropriate use can take place outside of class, and cell phones are now the item most often lost or stolen at school. It doesn’t take a genius to see why some districts have banned bringing cell phones to school altogether.

New York City is one place where all schools have banned cell phones completely. The move was made in 2005, and the issue is still being dragged through the courts. In April 2008 New York Supreme Court Justice Angela Mazzarelli ruled in favour of the ban, but it is likely this decision will be appealed by angry parents who feel their children need the phones with them at all times, in case of emergencies. In the meantime, students are apparently smuggling phones into school or paying bodega (that’s “dépanneur” for my Québecois readers) employees to “babysit” them - a practice which resulted in at least one case where the employee absconded with both the money and the phones…

I tell you, the debate just gives me one more reason to homeschool my kids - right through the high school years! My way of looking at the safety issue is this: if I can’t trust my children’s own behaviour, or if the world has become so unfriendly since I was their age, that I don’t want them to be out unsupervised then the best place for them is with their family. No cell phone is going to take care of them better than their parents can. In fact, that phone might just give us all a false sense of security.

I’d rather my kids were prepared for life in the world by a few more years of spending time with family, and being not only supervised but having the opportunity to discuss potentially risky situations and behaviours as the opportunities arise in daily life. This is something you will never get in a school group, whether private or public, because as soon as you’ve got one adult supervising more than 5 or so kids you’ve become institutionalized and you have to take special precautions to compensate for the fact that one adult really isn’t equipped to watch that many kids.

Schools have buddy systems, name tags or uniforms, younger kids holding onto ropes, checklists and travel by chartered bus, locked schools where kids are kept within the gates and walls, and even a parent with legitimate business must sign in and get a hall pass in order to gain access. While I do not at all deny these measures are important to the safety of such a large group of children in the care of a handful of adults, the fact is that this is not preparation for the real world. It might be preparation to be part of other institutions, but it isn’t going to do an adequate job of teaching anyone’s kids to behave on the street, in the library, at the park or the grocery store or the city hall - well, except in those instances when we need to stand quietly in a line or raise our hands and wait to be called upon before we speak.

Institutions tend to take both choice and responsibility away from anyone, young or old. Be it a school, a long term care hospital, a prison, etc. an institution involves a large group of clients and a significantly smaller group of staff. Routines and regulations are made chiefly with the goal of keeping order, with being fair and giving the same treatment to everyone - rather than with giving each client the things he or she needs. This kind of system can actually encourage abuses such as cheating, because the clients (like high school students) sense its rigidity and frequently feel they do not have a say in making the decisions that affect them on a daily basis. So while on the surface an institution is supposed to promote respect, order and ethical behaviour it is not unknown for it to also teach coping skills like lying, cheating and plagiarism to at least some of its clients - probably a large number if the rules and procedures are perceived as especially unfair.

I’ve rambled quite long on this one, but I just wanted to leave my readers with one last thought about school/public safety and cell phones. Many parents who felt that the cell phone ban was unconstitutional remarked that they wanted to know where their children were at all times, and they particularly mentioned concerns over school shootings and terrorist acts. Indeed, in some recent cases it was a call from a cell phone that was the first alert to 911. In the case of an event that knocks out school wide communications this could mean help would reach the school promptly. However, it is important to keep in mind that if every person in a school of 1000+ students got on their cell phone at the same time - whether to report the emergency to authorities, to communicate with parents or check on the safety of friends, or perhaps simply out of boredom during a lock down or evacuation - networks could easily be overwhelmed.

This is what happened after the fall 2006 shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. I don’t think it made a very big difference to the delivery of emergency services in this case, as police happened to be already on the scene and were able to bring in all the required services by radio rather than cell phone. But I imagine that a number of families were disturbed when they couldn’t reach the students who were evacuated and needing help to get home. If there is one time when I do think we should fall back on institutions, it’s during an emergency. Especially in large cities with so many strangers to coordinate, the best equipped people to deal with communication and logistics are the emergency services providers. It’s something to think about…