The conversation turned to the ban in classrooms, and my husband, who I have apparently failed to bring up to speed on cell phone issues, brought up what he felt to be an issue of common courtesy: that kids should have cell phones turned off when in class, and their attention turned to the person who is trying to teach them. Reasonable, right?
My riposte: if a teacher can't hold someone's interest enough to keep their eyes away from their iPhones, what are you accomplishing by banning them? At first he was held up by the common courtesy thing, but I hammered away at the whole give-and-get-respect thing, and if he wasn't a quivering mass at the end of it....
Nah, he wasn't a quivering mass; he still holds that until the great education transformation,when all kids are pursuing their passions in and out of the classroom, we should still ask kids to be courteous to the teacher by leaving cell phones off.
A lot of people haven't yet considered that when kids sneak peaks at their phones, when their fingers itch for the keypad during a lecture, it isn't a story that begins and ends with teaching simple manners. Yes, we need to expect common courtesy, but we also need to read the signs when we don't get it.
The message is that what kids are being asked to learn doesn't interest them. The attractive immediacy of connecting with their friends matters more. Contact with the living, instead of the dead material they are supposed to be learning, matters to them.
So what, my husband asks, if half the class is distracted by the other half that are texting away?
