The Valdosta Daily Times
- — The Valdosta Daily Times was ready to take the Valdosta City School System to task for its plans to ban cell phones from the middle and high school levels.
After all, cell phones have become a part of daily life throughout society. Adults regularly juggle business and personal matters on their cell phones either through spoken conversations or texting.
Cell phones have made many people masters of multi-tasking. They can take a business meeting and text a client simultaneously. They can get an e-mail from the office while at the store.
If a cell phone rings in the middle of a meeting, few bosses take away the employee’s cell phone. Often the caller is a client, and the interruption is the price of doing business in the immediacy of the 21st century.
Banishing cell phones from schools, and perhaps even the classroom, seems to do little to prepare students for the world they will enter: A tech-savvy world, which students often better understand than the adults teaching them.
Perhaps, schools should look for ways to incorporate cell phones into class curriculum. Perhaps, schools could utilize texts, etc., to better inform students in a forum which they have already mastered and will likely need in their future careers.
Too often, the older generations say, We didn’t have cell phones when we went to school and we did just fine. That thinking is outdated. That thinking represents the world as it was, not as it is.
The Times still believes these points have merits. Yet, after hearing Valdosta School Superintendent Dr. Bill Cason’s reasons for proposing a ban, we have modified our stance.
Cason paints a picture of schools where cell phones run amok amongst the student bodies: Texting locations for fights, distributing pornographic materials, photographing and e-mailing tests to other students, the constant interruptions, the daily report of a stolen cell phone, etc.
Hearing these horror stories, it’s no wonder schools seek to ban cell phones.
Still, there must be some middle ground between a total ban and chaos.
Likely, Valdosta schools and this newspaper’s Rant & Rave line will be inundated with both complaints and praise for Cason’s proposal.
However, what we need are ideas on how to reconcile this matter. We need people to share real solutions.
Will anyone make that call?
