You’ve been served with a referral for using your phone. You think this unfair when you only used it to capture memories, but decide to put your feelings aside because you disobeyed the rule. But then, you see three other peers receiving the same referral and then another peer and another peer! What the heck is going on?!
The absence of cell phones have sparked safety concerns among parents as they are unable to reach their children during the school day.
Kara Arundel, senior reporter at the K-12 Dive, writes that “78% of parents polled want their children to have cellphone access during the school day in case there’s an emergency.”
From personal experience, Bryce Sabio, a Junior at Landstown High School, expresses, “Occasionally my mom will text me and I can’t respond to her or look at my phone.”
The cell phone policy inconveniences parents in the case of family emergencies which can lead to anxiety in students not being able to be updated on important instances such as a family member’s health.
According to Schneide, “Banning them can create unnecessary anxiety and limit accessibility […] in the event of power failure and lock down conditions cellphones can be used, [and the] security of students who drive to college or travel in public transport find cellphones useful.”
Cell phones are essential when it comes to being updated on transportation out of school and can lead to a student not making it home which is a major safety concern.
The policy has also negatively limited socializing and promotion at Landstown High School, making it difficult for students to express school spirit leading to a decline in student involvement.
Coy Mendigorin, the Senior SCA President, recites, “For like the promotion standpoint of it, we’re not able to have as much freedom with what we do; because yes, we can promote with physical media, but also the fact that we’re in such like a digitized community right now, it’s way easier to promote online rather than in person.”
Due to social media being a crucial factor when it comes to club/spirit promoting in this day and age, students are not as easily inclined to want to participate when most did it for the fun pictures being posted on social media.
From a socialization viewpoint, Schneide states, “For some students, cell phones are a primary means of staying connected with their friends and family; a ban might lead to feelings of isolation.”
An academic drawback to the policy is where students typically enjoy studying through mobile games and flashcards when preparing for a test or quiz by implementing information in the fun games to memorize information better, but the cell phone ban limits the use of these studying strategies. Students in turn feel unmotivated to study and may end up scoring low on assignments.
Along with this, a large range of students rely on music to help them focus on completing assignments to tune out potentially distracting background noise. Without cell phones, students may find it hard to study or complete tasks in a distracting environment.
Mendigorin states, “I will say it’s kind of a bum that I can’t listen to music during class because it helps me focus and not being able to do that; I kind of have to listen to everyone, which I don’t want to do all the time.”
While many students may agree with Mendigorin, Schneide says, “A survey of 2,889 National Education Association members this spring, 90% support school policies prohibiting cellphone and personal devices during instructional time.”
While there is a range of students who use their devices during instructional time without any educational purpose, most students rely on their phones to listen to music in order to focus on assignments and tone out irrelevant outside conversation. Through this action, it has greatly been proven that music can help ease the mind and focus on certain tasks at hand.
The cell phone policy should be more lenient when it comes to school promotion and using it during instructional time. A solution would be for the student to step out during instructional time for communication in order to prevent distracting their peers.
For school promotion, certain students such as SCA members, Yearbook members, and Journalism members should have less restriction to promote and showcase the good at Landstown High School.
