Schools Have No Right to Endanger My Child

America once again is in mourning over the 18th or 19th school shooting of 2018. Surely, common sense gun safety legislation is necessary, but educators also need to look in the mirror and ask why kids feel so alienated and aggrieved by schooling that they choose to shoot up their classmates and teachers.

Earlier tonight, I tweeted, “Can we please cool it with the irrational mean-spirited bullshit about banning cellphones in schools? They quite possibly saved lives today.” Immediately, I received a supportive response about the pedagogical potential of cell phones. With all due respect, this issue is much simpler and more fundamental than whether cell phones have a place in the curriculum,

There are two reasons why schools should stop banning cellphones.

1. It is wrong to be arbitrarily mean to children. If learning is to occur, educators need to do whatever they possibly can to lower the level of antagonism between adults and children.
2. The school has no right whatsoever to endanger my child or cut her off from communication. 

This has nothing to do with standards, teaching, or curriculum. It is a simple matter of human decency or common sense.

Then I remembered that I wrote about this very issue in the long-defunct Curriculum Administrator Magazine back in its November 2001 issue. For those of you playing along at home, that is nearly 17 years ago.

In 2001, I wrote the following in my column, Back to Rule:

Some technologies make our students and staff safer

Cell phones are perhaps the most often banned legal devices in American schools. Aside from the obvious convenience they afford, cellular phones have become lifesaving tools. In both Columbine and the terrible terrorist strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, cell phones preserved life, called for help or offered comfort for family members. My childrens’ high school has unilaterally banned cell phones from the campus as have many schools across the country.

I adamantly believe that a school has no right whatsoever to jeopardize the safety of my daughter who is forced to wander a dark locked campus at 10:30 PM after drama practice. The payphones and vending machines are often more secure then the children. As a parent, it is I who should have the right to locate my child and have her call for help in case of an emergency.

Reducing classroom distractions is often cited as the rationale for this rule, but this is nonsense. If you walk into Carnegie Hall or an airplane, a polite adult asks that you please turn off your phone for the comfort or safety of those around you. Why can’t teachers do the same?

If a student disrupts the learning environment then that action should be punished in the same way we address spitballs, note passing or talking in class. It is irrational to have different rules for infractions involving electronic devices. We must address behavior, not technology. This approach will make our schools more caring, relevant, productive and secure. Our kids deserve nothing less.

Read the rest of the column for other examples of callous authoritarian school assholery and then be extra nice to some kids.

You might also be interested in my 2014 column, Why the NYC Schools Must End the Student Cellphone Ban.

Gary Stager

Veteran educator Gary Stager, Ph.D. is the author of Twenty Things to Do with a Computer – Forward 50, co-author of Invent To Learn — Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, publisher at Constructing Modern Knowledge Press, and the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute. He led professional development in the world’s first 1:1 laptop schools thirty years ago and designed one of the oldest online graduate school programs. Gary is also the curator of The Seymour Papert archives at DailyPapert.com. Learn more about Gary here.