The Cell Phone Policy . . .

You know what they say, “What has been seen, can’t be unseen”. Just keep some seriously disturbing, although legal stuff on your phone. have someone send it to you, so you can be sure that the stuff appears under received messages and is more likely to be viewed if your phone ever gets checked.

Like RuPaul or Pauly Shore?

I tried to write a letter to a television station once, only to find they didn’t accept written letters preferring emails. My bank statements are emailed to me because of a surcharge for postage mail. E-commerce? New (young) homeowners aren’t getting landlines. Decreases in postage mail volume.

Perhaps the only pressure here is the pressure to change.

I am very sure the reason why the might have such drastic requirements is because just asking the students to be polite must not have worked well for them

Without a doubt. Would you confiscate a phone used during breaks? There are teachers at my school who would.

I’m not completely against a phone usage policy, I’m against certain aspects of it including searching phones, blanket bans and strict enforcement. The law isn’t enforced as strict and as to word as the rules at my school are. There are teachers at my school who walk around with detention books in their breast pockets, its hardly the right attitude

I was in a lecture where a prof did actually smash a students cellphone. Was quite amusing :D.

I think it is too far to smash or read messages. However, in an exam or even a test (or a summative practical, etc) being caught with a phone should result in a fail. Having the odd phone ring is OK, as having the teacher making a huge fuss about it just stops the lesson for more time. However, if it is a regular occurence, the teacher should see the student after lesson, to avoid disrupting the other students.

I guess the major thing for me is to avoid disruption of learning. Why should a teacher have the right to disrupt the class by confiscating a phone, and why should a student have the right to interrupt the rest of the class as well?

All in all, if it’s not disrupting the class, just the student, let em fail.

ps. I speak as one who never brings a phone with me. The one time i did, it rang my parents! That had the potential to be very awkward. My phone is a brick.

Well, if it’s a real emergency, they can always call the school office and the school will make sure you get contacted. :yes:

I’m not a lawyer either, but while I can see that confiscating the phone for the duration of the school day could be quite appropriate, I agree with you that doesn’t give them the right to search the phone for it’s content.

The big gotcha though is if you have signed an okay to this policy then they are covered. The second gotcha is that if you are a minor, that signature may not bind you as in general contracts with a minor are not binding, so they are not okay. The third gotcha is that ultimately, it all depends on how much justice you can afford. If your parents back you and can afford good lawyers you can take it all the way to the supreme court. If not, perhaps you can interest the ACLU. If they don’t bite, then keep a phone for school that has nothing on it that you don’t want seen.

As you may have guessed, law is never black and white. It’s almost always a muddle of murky greys.

I can keep my phone turned off for the whole day easily, I never use the damn thing anyway.

But it’s not about that, it’s about that they “should have the right” to break your stuff because it annoys them that ticks me off. It is about human rights and the laws. If someone was to destroy your car you would do something about it, so why should the teachers have the right to destroy our personal belongings?

Also I could not care less if a cellphone goes off in the middle of the class. It happens more frequently that our teacher’s cellphone rings during class anyways.

I find these kind of restrictions interesting but I find they are some times cumbersome. An example of this is the fact I pretty much only get called on my cell for important things. If I answer my phone during class and excuse my self I cause less of a disturbance then if my parent/other calls me through the school. I can see why during a test they have the right to confiscate the phone but reading the text’s are a bit iffy to me. I would see it as less intrusive if they had they said there allowed to look at the text’s from the previous hour after the phone was confiscated. This also all fall under the fact that people have the phone on vibrate if they have the actual ringer on then I find that a huge annoyance. My biggest view on this though is that as long as the phone is on vibrate and there not actual in a call they can text all they want. One thing I do have to say is that I dont think Ive seen anyone use a ring tone in years aside from outside of school. I’m sorry if anything I said is confusing just post if it is and ill clarify.

Man you guys make excuses and a belly dance around such a simple thing.
Just turn the phone off during class and don’t use it during exam.
What is there so difficult about?

It works in every other country but for some reason only here people always
make it about their own rights - gosch this is like a circus sometimes.

As yourself why the school is forced to have such laws - because of students past actions.

Andrew your examples don’t really count as society.
How do people make it through live who do not even have internet?

Still with exams, it’s shocking what they try to get away with. Notes on the brim of baseball caps, on arms, on tiny pieces of paper.

Personally, i don’t mind it. Unobtrusive and it’s fine. But in a test/exam get confiscated and then a fail. Nothing else.

Some of the graphics calculators are as good as anyway. I know QWERTY ones are banned, but it’s heaps easy to type em up anyway. And clearing the memory doesn’t work too well when you back up the files beforehand and can just restore em in the middle of the exam.

Confiscating it is one thing, I’m okay with that but I highly disagree with Jay’s statement that they should be able to break our phones.

We are poor students and saving money for a phone takes well over a year. If a teacher can then break it because I forget to turn it off I see that as a great intrusion of my personal space. They made a law saying that teachers can’t hit students anymore because it was considered barbaric and inconvenient as a learning method.

As I said before, you wouldn’t want someone to break your things because of their own logic, then teachers should not be able to do so either.

Based on the replies here, many of you are still in school or college, as students. This means that you have never taught a class or gave a lecture.

Breaking the phone is wrong, maybe even confiscating the phone is wrong. But so is leaving it on during class. If you want to leave it turned on, leave it on silence mode. If the call is really important, leave class and answer it.

Someone said texting doesn’t disturb the class. Yes it does! When you are in the role of a student, you might think “I’m just writing a message, there is no way this can disturb anyone!” This is very, VERY disrespectful.

In school, sometimes I used to read a book during boring classes. I used to think “this way I won’t bother anyone.” Well, I was wrong. But it took me some more years to see and understand that, until I was on the other side.

So, the thing is really simple. Turn your phone off during classes. Bad news travel fast. If there really is something important happening, you will know about it. Also, I don’t think that someone in school has such a busy life and so many responsibilities that justify leaving the phone turned on during class.

The perfect solution I would propose in the cases on whether or not students should bring cell phones to class risking the possibility of it ringing during a lecture.

Don’t buy one in the first place, I have never owned a cellphone and still don’t at 21 years of age, so far it hasn’t been a major problem:p

I’m serious about the fact I don’t have a cellphone, and it’s not because we can’t afford them.

Ninth

do you really think he meant it word by word? Man seriously guys open your minds.
He puts a fact into a dramatic picture to illustrate a meaning and your run after it like a dog chasing a rabbit.

It is common sense that faculty should and cannot break private property.

It is also common sense that student should understand responsibility and not only rights.

Andrew your examples don’t really count as society.
How do people make it through live who do not even have internet?

They are probably the same people who arrive at a train station 20 minutes before a scheduled train arrives and then complain about waiting 20 minutes when the train does arrives. I’d like to see how they live life without internet 10 years in the future.

Let us settle on our differences, we’re never going to fully understand each others viewpoints.

P.S searching a students phone is wrong, unless that student is showing material on it which caused it to be confiscated in the first place.

This is a reasonable suggestion and it would work except I have observed that cell phones have created false sense of urgency among people. All things can never wait texts, calls and emails must be replied to immediately no matter where you happen to be.

lecture halls, cinemas and people driving are particular problems. At my old university we always had a full fifteen minute break between each 45 minute class yet every class someone just had to interpret the class with a call. And this wasn’t an emergency call but the usual chit chat call.

Tyrant monkey,

that is pretty much it. Funny that many do not see this but follow the hype to be hip.
Some must lack life experience.

Andrew what do you do when internet fails? Give up?

Yes I did, apparently I missed this “obvious sarcasm” or whatever it was because I cannot see how “they should be able to break your phones” could mean something like “They should be able to (confiscate?) your phone”, it is not as easy to detect if someone is being sarcastic through text as if you would be speaking to that said person. It is even harder if you don’t know that person.

Also his reply to my first message made it even less obvious.

lol

that is why I write so often lost in translation since English is not even my native language.

And again lost in translation on my side - where is the page were I marked how often this happens :wink: