Teenbeat

Print

E-mail

Text

The inevitable has finally happened.

So I thought when last week, the Toronto District School Board put its cellphone ban in motion.

Like many of the other indispensable gadgets, the cellphone, a pioneering invention that has since revolutionized human sociability, will soon join its IPod peers in the school banishment pile - all for the sake of disciplined education.

The decision came about after months of conference amongst members of the school board, in which the proposal - forcing students to turn off cellphones in hallways and to keep them out of sight during school hours - will come into effect later this month.

Essentially, the board's decision was not without merit: cellphones, however mobile or convenient or pleasing to the ego, were alleged to have been a leading factor contributing to classroom distraction and raucousness, with its myriad functions (such as Internet connection and video-capturing capabilities) responsible for academic moral injury during exams and the mysterious appearance of student brawls/ teacher mishaps/ inadvertent bouts of indignity on the ever predominant video sharing site YouTube.

By putting forward limitations, the board hopes to reinforce student vigilance toward teachers and content, while at the same time discouraging the amount of interruptions a learning environment will have to endure due to spontaneous ringing or text messaging.

But not all people agreed with the board's reasoning.

Many parents have voiced their discontent, arguing the ban will undoubtedly put a strain on their communication with their children, especially if the issue at hand was private or urgent, in which the school office could not be directly contacted.

The ban has also garnered some disapproving sparks with regards to health and public safety. The recent Virginia Tech shooting in the U.S., a gruesome catastrophe in which the cellphone played an integral role in summoning help and intervention, before proving its worth by providing police with some much-needed evidence. In other words, under appropriate circumstances, the presence of a cordless calling device at one's immediate disposal can be invaluable.

Then again, there's the disciplinary aspect. Even with these restrictions set, there is absolute no guarantee that the general adolescent population will abide by these new rules or that the 560 Toronto district schools will undertake the necessary measures to monitor and reinforce them.

And what about the many other ubiquitous instruments of convenience that possess similar qualities as the cellphone, which students also use and tote with them on a regular basis that seemed to have skipped the radar of the Toronto District School Board?

Does this mean that an equally prevalent item, say, the digital camera, may be next on the banned list?

When the clouds of conflicted protest recede, one thing seems certain - the decision is matted with both pros and cons, where both sides of the argument cannot truly be satisfied.

If anything, the cellphone ban may only serve as a temporary solution; if our schools and other institutions of learning had truly wanted to cultivate long-term academic honesty and attention in the classroom amongst a generation of future students, they could perhaps best achieve just that by implementing such rules before the practice of electronic mobility had become so widespread and integrated in modern society.

Let's face it, technology isn't exactly progressing backwards.

 

Millie is a high school student in North York.