Don’t shake your head at me; I know you have one with you, right now.
Whether you hurriedly stowed it out of sight as you crossed the bridge, or simply stored it in your locker to wait until your lunch period, the guilt on your face makes it obvious. You have flouted school rules on the first week of the new term and brought your cell phone with you.
Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein imposed New York City’s school cell phone ban, following numerous complaints that students were abusing the privilege to carry a cell phone and using them to cheat on tests, take inappropriate pictures and play games during class. The logic behind Bloomberg and Klein’s consistent defense of the ban is that removing cell phones from classrooms prevents students from cheating on tests, taking inappropriate pictures and playing games in class, thereby allowing students to focus on their education.
Any day now, we expect high schools will be flooded with students bearing 100 averages as testament to this remarkable plan.
But if that doesn’t convince you that it is a brilliant idea, just think of the money spent on the cell phone ban. With an ever-growing budget that needs to support lawsuits, random screen tests and defensive press time, the money wasted on one silly, avoidable ban means money that can’t be spent on not-so-silly, not-so-avoidable drug screenings, metal detectors, ID scanners and heavy textbooks.
Standing in the way of this utopian future are the over-concerned parents who have consistently raised a war cry against the ban, opposing any reform that would improve the well-being and education of their children. This summer was no exception to the resistance, marking the city council’s first attempt to pass a bill that would allow students to use cell phones when traveling to and from school. Once within school grounds, the bill proposed that students be required to store their cell phones in a school-prescribed area until the end of the school day.
Naturally, Bloomberg—recognizing how hazardous to a student’s education it would be to use a cell phone outside of school—vetoed the bill, despite the 46 of 48 city council members in favor of it.
The city council’s 46-strong majority—all supporters of the new resolution—is expected to override the veto soon. After all, in most democracies, there is strength in numbers once the minority runs out of ways to defend their faltering position. Negotiation and compromise worked in ancient Greece; now, they’re just old school.
Though we expect a turn of events within the first weeks of the new term, for now, at school, it remains cell phones away and smiles out. Which may not be so terrible. After all, we are considered some of the brightest kids in the city—we certainly don’t need cell phones to talk to each other. Telepathy is always preferable.