Gibbs
2/18/02

A number of students at a high school in Union City, CA are trying to get sponsorship for a bill that would allow them to take cellular phones into high schools. For 13 years, California has had a ban on them in public schools.

Can you imagine cellular phones in high school, in the hands of unsophisticated high school students? Already, supposedly sophisticated adults have these phones and used them in the most offensive, obtrusive, and self-aggrandizing ways imaginable. What would children do with them, if not make public schools even more unmanageable for teachers and administrators?

Those students at a local school (James Logan High School) have been developing a bill they will try to get Legislative sponsorship to allow these devices onto the campuses of California public schools; they are arguing safety and a range of other conveniences. Their claims, however, seem more like fluff than real need. The major problem with phones in the hands of high school students in public schools is that they will find a way to be disruptive to school classrooms and other educational activities.

Students want cellular phones in high school for the same reason the unsophisticated have and use them so vulgarly: To look cool--to hell with how disruptive these cool cats are to others. An unsophisticated child, as most high school students are, will do anything for attention. A phone call in the classroom is a certainty! Calling each other in classroom during class discussions and lecture lessons is a certainty. Oh, I forgot it was on is also a certainty. And on….

Cellular phones in high school is a bad idea! []