It's been a long, strange trip for the city's cell phone ban in schools, with many parents urging lawmakers to allow students to openly use phones in school. Earlier this year, Mayor de Blasio said he'd lift the oft-violated ban, which prohibits students from bringing phones onto school property. Hooray, Candy Crush!
Now, though, schools are wondering what to do once students are permitted to tote their iPhones around all day. According to the Times, educators are worried that an impending phone flood will pose a distraction, for some reason, with the principals’ union arguing that phones could cause fights and slow down learning.
Not that everyone agrees: "Did kids never doodle in the columns of their textbooks and always pay rapt attention to their teachers?” Sylvia Martinez, former president of nonprofit education group Generation YES, told the paper “Blaming the cellphone or laptop for kids being distracted is kind of silly."
Schools could certainly limit cell phone use and ban them in classes, like in some L.A. districts, where phones have to be kept in lockers during the school day (this, naturally, will probably result in students texting surreptitiously, much like the erstwhile passing of notes.) Administrators could follow in the footsteps of school districts in Miami, where students are encouraged to use cell phones to amplify their learning.
It's unclear when exactly the cell phone ban death will go down, but until then, let's assume students are still texting surreptitiously in the middle of algebra. Emojis are the paper airplanes and passed notes of the 21st century, after all.
