Student Cell Phone Use Debated

Our society is distracted enough.

I hear about cell phone use in classrooms and start wishing there was a button any teacher could press to jam the wireless signals.

The Associated Press reported parents and students protesting a ban on cell phone within New York City's schools.

"The feeling of not knowing where your child is is horrific," said Deborah Schlueter, of Manhattan.

Her 15-year-old daughter, Krista, asked, "If I want to hang out with my friends after school, how am I supposed to tell my parents? They'll think I'm kidnapped."

The New York Times reported on what police and educators have found in the city's schools over the past two weeks of "surprise" investigations.

In the first 12 days of surprise scanning for weapons and other contraband in the public schools, the police confiscated seven knives, two box cutters, a razor, some marijuana — and 800 cellphones.

This reminds me of the ban on beepers when I was teaching in the Bronx.

The ban then was to curtail drug deals being made in schools.  The ban now could apply to any school in America, where teenagers and adults have become absorbed by their wireless devices.

I get a little annoyed when I hear that Normal Siegel, the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, gets into the act.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Siegel said he was trying to put together a team of lawyers to research the issue, which he said could hinge on whether the City Department of Education could prove that students use cellphones to cheat and to summon friends for fights — reasons that Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein have cited for enforcing the ban.

"I'm suspicious of the arguments that the mayor and the chancellor have put forward as the reasons for the prohibition," Mr. Siegel said. "Since Bloomberg seems not to want to listen to anyone and seems to be using the power of his office to arbitrarily prohibit cellphones, which parents and students are in opposition to, we might not have any choice but to go to court."

Not that I dislike technology nor discount the safety element with cell phones.  I'm also wary of how wireless devices could affect the health of children.  We're a control that freaks over power lines and nuclear power plants -- yet how many of us have already started toasting portions of our brain with electronic toys?

I still don't have my my wrist radio (an early fascination with Dick Tracy has never waned) -- but I'm close.

WABC-7 in New York City also covered the protest, which included petitions with thousands of signatures.