Phones are something that have become interwoven into our everyday lives, especially for teens. Phones are used by teens for everything from texting with friends, checking social media, to scheduling conferences with teachers, writing down homework, and taking pictures of problems on the board when we can’t write fast enough. However, they are now banned in schools.
Over the summer, the Missouri legislature passed a sweeping educational bill, which included the banning of phones for students from the first bell to the last.
But is this bill fair?
The budget for the School District of Clayton is around $77 million, or about $21,000 per student. The average for Missouri is around $15,900. The impact of phone bans extends far beyond removing distractions from classrooms; for example, for photojournalism, the cameras on students’ phones are often far superior to those provided by schools. A good-quality photojournalism camera costs around $ 3,000 per camera. While wealthier school districts, such as Clayton and Ladue, can afford the cost that may occur as a result, a district in Independence, which receives less funding, might not. The same can go for computers. Before the ban, depending on a school’s policy, many students could bring their own devices to do schoolwork on. Now, with the language of the bill seemingly banning personal laptops, the job of providing devices now falls to the individual districts, further increasing the financial cost to schools, which cannot afford it.
There is also something to be said for the different policies of each school. For example, different schools implement policies that work best for them, tailored to the specific issue of phones within their own district. At Clayton we had a fairly strict phone policy during class, with some teachers using pouches, or requiring they stay in backpacks, some more rural schools may have used less strict phone policies, some may have used stricter policies when it came to phones, but the district and the school was ultimately in charge of their own phone policy, being able to make decisions and policies which fit their individual needs.
At Clayton, the administrators put an emphasis on personal responsibility, using open campus to help prepare students for college when they are ultimately able to leave campus when not in class, but are then responsible for getting back to school in time, managing this off-time properly by prioritizing schoolwork and teacher meetings. Still, by removing phones from lunch time, it removes a part of learning how to behave once you leave Clayton High School, because, as was said, phones are interwoven into our lives, like it or not.
Missouri high schools do not need policies to stop cell phone use in class. Phone use in class can be distracting not only for you, but also for others. The point is that the state making a one-size-fits-all policy for something like phones not only does not help but actively hurts schools, by removing the choice from the administrators who know their schools, districts, and students best.
It’s important to know that this is a state policy, not a teacher policy, a school policy or even a district policy, so advocating against the policy with teachers, principals or even the superintendent won’t solve the problem. The only way to express how you feel about this policy is to talk to the people who wrote it, the state representatives and state senators. If you don’t like the policy, call them, email them, go down to Jefferson City dressed as a giant phone with a sign that says let me free. However, if you genuinely care about the issue and believe it is unfair not just to you, but to others as well, then advocate for what you think is right.
