Will This Be The Year That Schools Shut Down Cellphones?
From Forbes.com
Just a couple of decades ago, teachers at conferences heard that smartphones were the education tool of the future. Now it appears that the national mood is to take broad steps to keep those devices out of classrooms.
Since students could pass notes in class, student personal communication technology has been a classroom challenge. Teachers of a certain age can remember when digital pagers posed a problem. But smartphones represent a whole new problematic level; students could be distracted by everything from checking their socials to starting or continuing a fight to arranging a rendezvous in the hall, all while the teacher tries to explain quadratic equations.
Schools, trying to embrace current technology or just caught flatfooted, have for years left teachers to develop their own policies and procedures for dealing with the ubiquitous devices. Larger bans have fared poorly. In 2006, the Bloomberg administration banned cellphones in New York City schools, raising an uproar from parents and teachers, with outspoken opposition from everyone from Councilman Bill De Blasio to UFT President Randi Weingarten opposed the policy and parents threatened to sue.
While students often push back against phone bans, parents can be the real challenge for a school district. For helicopter parents, the power to stay in touch throughout the entire day can be irresistible. For families that are stretching resources (two jobs, three kids, one car), cellphones can be invaluable. And in an age with heightened fear of school shootings and other emergency situations, many parents to do not trust the schools to provide the kind of quick crisis communication that they need.
But in the last few years, schools have reached their breaking point. In 2015, Mayor Bill De Blasio lifted New York’s cellphone ban, but New York—both city and state—are now contemplating a new ban. And AFT President Randi Weingarten in a 2024 speech took credit for helping Cleveland craft a ban of their own.