Schools Look at Cell Phone Policy

Educators want to ban cell phones from classrooms in part because students can secretly record them; is this fair? What are they hiding?

In New Jersey recently, there was an incident in which a public high school student recorded his teacher expressing (inflicting, really) his religious views to the class. Most high school students know that this is a violation of church and state, and being a public school, these views should have been kept by the teacher to himself. In another school, also in my home state of New Jersey, there was another recording incident, in which a teacher was freaking out over a student not standing during the Star-Spangled Banner. While the teacher yelled at and berated the students, demanding that they stand up, a student recorded him. The teacher focused his attention on one student in particular, and then yanked the chair out from under him.

Both of these incidents have led the school boards at these schools to examine their cell phone policies (due to the cameras and recording features on them).

My question, and being an educator, I may catch a little flak here (being human as well, I expect a little fall-out), but how are these teachers still teaching? I know none of us is perfect, and we sometimes have a bad day and yell at kids when they frustrate us, but pulling a chair out from under a kid to make him stand up? How degrading is that? Whatever happened to sending a student out of the room, calling his parents, and giving detention? Fortunately, the stubborn brat was not hurt (I am not totally on his side, but the handling of him was not right, and from reports, it is known that he and his friend manipulated the teacher’s behavior—shows a pattern from this teacher). As far as the teacher inflicting his religious views on the students (reportedly, he told them if they were not good Christians, they were going to Hell—so much for diversity), this was also repeated behavior that is not condoned by most school boards. The student felt that the administrators in his school would not believe him if he did not have evidence, so he recorded the teacher. How are either of these teachers’ actions different form bullying? They both used their positions to try to inflict their values or morals. This is the real issue here, not the cell phone policy.

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