ShopCell.com - Cell Phone Accessories Blog

Now that the Summer vacation is coming to an end, parents are starting to stock up on school supplies, uniforms etc. We feel that during this time it would be appropriate to discuss whether students should be allowed to posses cell phones while being on school grounds.

On a day-to-day basis, it can clearly be said that cell phones are disruptive to the educational environment. This has been the general position of many school districts over the years. Some schools banned pagers and cell phones starting a decade ago because of their connection to drug and gang activity, as well as due to the disruption to classes. However, parents have increasingly lobbied boards to change policies primarily based on the argument that phones will make students and schools safer in light of national tragedies.

We do agree that the use of such devices is more for convenience purposes today than it may have been 10 or more years ago. But from an educational perspective, cell phones present a great disruption problem to the educational environment on a day-to-day basis.

Why are Cell Phones Disruptive to School Environment
Ringing cell phones can disrupt classes and distract students who should be paying attention to their lessons at hand, forcing them to listen to the cell phones ringing tune rather then the lesson. Text messaging posses a problem that it's used for cheating on tests. And new cell phones with cameras could be used to take photos of exams.

In terms of school safety, cell phones have been used by students in a number of cases nationwide for calling in bomb threats to schools. In far too many cases, these threats have been difficult or impossible to trace since they have been made by cell phones. The use of cell phones by students during a bomb threat, and specifically in the presence of an actual explosive device, also presents a greater risk for potentially detonating the device as public safety officials typically advise school officials not to use cell phones, two-way radios, or similar communications devices during such threats.

Cell Phones and Text Messaging in Schools Contribute to School Rumors and Fear
We also track more and more school incidents across the nation where rumors have disrupted schools and have even resulted in decreased attendance due to fears of rumored violence. The issues of text messaging in particular, and cell phones in general, were credited with sometimes creating more anxiety and panic than any actual threats or incidents that may have triggered the rumors.

So should cell phones be in School Buildings?

School officials should maintain an adequate number of cell phones on campus for administrators, crisis team members, and other appropriate adults. Additionally, while not necessarily advocating that schools provide cell phones to teachers, we do believe that school policies should allow teachers and support staff to carry their cell phones if they choose to do so.
While a number of schools have looked at this issue, and some have reversed their past positions of prohibiting cells phone in schools, we find that the majority of schools have not done so. In fact, our 2002 national survey of school-based police officers shows that 68% of surveyed school-based police officers from across the nation believe that student use of cell phones in school would detract from school safety in a crisis and another 10% believe they would have neither a positive or negative influence. 81% of school resource officers indicated that their schools continue to not allow students to use cell phones in school, supporting our observations that the majority of schools have not reversed their prohibition of student use of cell phones in schools.

If students should b allowed to have cell phones in school or not, that's up to the school administration to decide, however parents should decide for themselves if they want their children to posses cell phones while attending school.

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