Student cell phones challenge the future

EDITORIAL (OPINION)

Most public school policies in our region state that cell phones are not to be used during normal school hours, and school hours typically include the time when students board busses until they exit.
Cell phone use on school buses, however, is an interesting issue to re-explore, as the Ware School Committee now finds itself exercising. As technology continues to advance, the various uses of cell phones aren’t just limited to talking.
Students now enjoy a multitude of screen options, including text messaging each other, composing prose, posting and sharing photos and artwork, searching and interacting with various Internet engines, blogging, capturing instantaneous video, audio and pictures, airing digital music files and radio stations, and playing endless video games. This just begins to touch the options available now and in the future – all without speaking a word on them.
The big question is where do school bus companies and school policy makers draw the line?
It is relatively easy to concede that young adults talking or using cell phones or any digital device during school classroom hours should be strictly prohibited, unless it is part of a curriculum lesson plan. They are too distracting to the student who is there to learn, and also to their peers and ultimately teachers.
The same argument can be made for school bus drivers. If 20 of the 40 children sitting on a bus are talking on a cell phone, it certainly can mess with a driver’s focus on what’s ahead of them instead of what’s behind. Moreover, at what age do you cutoff any technical use of cell phones? We see grammar school kids carrying them around now texting friends.
The so-called gray area always enters the picture with policy development and revision. Kids will always manipulate loopholes in rules. It is relatively easy to enforce a no-cell-phone use stanza like Ware’s through use of bus video and better parent and driver awareness. The challenge is controlling all of the other uses digital devices present. Snapping and distributing instant pictures of a student riding a bus whose parents have not signed a privacy release waiver form could potentially pose a significant legal and safety issue for a school district and the family.
Likewise, sharing insensitive or disparaging images or music can alarm some. Allowing any cell phone use heightens security concerns of possible theft and then perhaps financial liability for that crime.
A point was made during a recent Ware School Committee meeting that before the advent of cell phone texting, students traded baseball cards around and the like. It is a good point and actually demonstrates how technology continues to evolve. Phone cameras and Internet browsers are like a new form of the flashy color baseball card.
That said, school bus is an extension of school. Kids talking on cell phones does constitute a distraction and area school committees should double check their own stanzas to clearly detail a cell phone use policy as relates to the existing bus company rules.
For Ware, that process begins at its next meeting on Nov. 4. Clearly, kids can’t be allowed to talk on the phone during school hours, which includes school busses.
Here’s the gray area: We don’t think banning personal digital devices will work for other cell uses like texting, and could actually perpetuate the problem, as kids seem to shun bad rules.
It’s like smoking cigarettes in school. Kids will always find a crevice to challenge our rules.