Cell phone use on public school campuses is a very controversial topic as it can be both an immense distraction to a student’s learning environment and a tool that makes student life on campus better in a variety of ways, including access to music to increase focus. While taking both of these factors into consideration, we here at the Roar Newspaper soundly object to the implementation of the new MISD district phone and headphone policy.
A cell phone policy that dictates phones must be off and in backpacks at all times except for five minute intervals throughout the day and a 30-minute lunch is absolutely not achievable for a public school setting, especially considering how many students we have on the Heritage campus. To start, having to regulate all parental contact with students through the school is absolutely impossible for a school with more that 1,500 students and limiting the window of time where students can receive sensitive and timely information from their parents can be detrimental in attempts to communicate with them.
On top of that, with how long it actually takes for a cell phone to start up enough to have access to even simple apps such as texts and phone calls, the passing period is nowhere near long enough so most students might as well leave their phone off. Or students that will not actually follow the new rules will just leave them inside of their backpacks since that is an entirely easy way to circumvent the need to turn them off. Here is the thing about a school-wide rule: it may make sense to the people putting it in place but it is not actually changing any of the ways they go about their day.
On the other hand, phone distraction can be significant and, depending on the situation, can distract much more than just one student, maybe even an entire classroom. So, attempting to limit phone usage in order to maintain and strengthen the basis of the learning environment on campus makes a lot of sense on paper. And the throughline of thought for the policy actually has some merit when it comes to the rules it attempts to employ. However, it is not perfect and there are a great many issues with its presentation and execution, on top of the fact that there are many alternatives.
Forcing an entire student body to abide by a rule about phones when only certain students are distracted by their phones is unfair, which is something that is bound to happen because life is not fair. However, the way that the rule does not even attempt to discern between students or the different environments they could be in on campus lacks forethought. Then targeting music listening not only makes a difference to students that get distracted but also students who use it to focus and do their work. Saying that no students can use their phones instead of distracted students cannot use their phones is a horrible way to mitigate classroom distractions. Having such a broad ruling also punishes students who actually want to focus and use music to help them do so.
This brings us to another point: a very significant amount of the student body will not completely follow this rule as it stands and many teachers may not enforce it entirely because of the holes it may have. That completely removes the effectiveness of the policy as the administrators who made it at the district level and the administrators putting it in place at the school level are not the people actively affected by phone use in their classroom, nor are they the individuals enforcing the rules of class or disciplining students in a classroom. The teachers are, and if they decide that phone use in their classroom is not an issue they may not enforce it, removing the need for the policy in the first place.
The best strategy would be to let teachers have their own rules for phones and decide how they will handle them in their classroom with the ability to leave phones with the administrators whenever they see fit. That way there is no conversation about appropriate phone usage on campus because every teacher decides what that looks like for them in the variety of situations that exist on campus and students know what to expect.