At 7:30 a.m., the bell rings and the hallways flood with students, backpacks slung over shoulders and phones clutched tightly in their hands. Before the first class even begins, screens glow with last-minute texts, TikTok videos, and unfinished homework photos. For many students, cell phones are as essential as notebooks. For schools, however, they have become one of the most debated issues in modern education.
Schools in the country have cell phone policies. Especially in middle and high schools across the United States. Lots of teachers believe that a school cell phone policy is highly useful and needed in order to keep students focused and on pace when participating in class. The cell phone policies also help catch students from cheating in class. The prevention of students using their cameras and other apps help teachers to stop cheating in many ways and makes it a lot easier to track the class and who is doing real work. Teachers said that the prevention of students being able to text each other and send other students answers with their phones is also a big reason that keeping phones away is very important along with texting and more. The use of social media and talking to other people while in class on your phone is not a good use of time and oftentimes students can’t focus and manage their time when they have phones.
A negative thing about the cell phone policy is that people argue that when phones are used correctly and students use them in the correct way they can be a great learning tool. Students can use resources to help get information or to get help finding ideas for maybe a project or an assignment . The counter to this augment is that if schools give their students a chromebook or kids have access to them that they wouldn’t need to ever go on their phones because the chromebook should have all the stuff that students need to access.
The debate has also raised questions about responsibility and preparation for the real world. Critics of strict policies argue that students need to learn self control rather than have technology taken away. In college and the workplace, phones are rarely banned outright. Supporters of restrictions counter that school is a structured environment designed to teach focus and discipline students can later apply independently.
Over time the use of cell phones could go up or down based on how technology evolves over the next few years. This might mean more changes and updating to a cellphone policy would also be needed to maintain a fair and right policy. Technology is always advancing and so would cell phone policies that are put into place. Over time in the real world the use of phones might become higher than it is even at this point of time and the use of them in school might become more important over time.
At the end of the day many schools, parents and teachers are very divided on the school cellphone policies and many schools don’t have the same rules for phones as others. There are many arguments that go both ways on this topic such as focus and cheating but also realizing that phones are used in the real world and many people think students need to learn on their own to take responsibility. Many teachers are also two sided as phones can do a lot of bad and a lot of good. Cell phone policies are very controversial and should be discussed about at all schools.
