I have no horse in this race, but I still applaud New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte signing into law a statewide “bell-to-bell” policy prohibiting cellphone use from the beginning of the school day through dismissal.
I’m also one of the few dorks who own a smartphone and still have a landline telephone. The latest figures show that only 24% of U.S. adults have a landline. But if there’s a massive mobile network outage, a landline can usually work. And these vintage phones can also help connect with home security systems and medical alert sensors for immediate assistance during an emergency.
I imagine it hasn’t been easy for Granite State students to give up their phones during the school day, especially since they’ve grown up in a world saturated with technology. It’s not their fault. Their lifestyle includes using phones and social media, but many educators and parents believe that these personal digital devices are big-time distractions in the classroom. Some think cellphones cause students to struggle with concentration and learning, to develop social media stress and comparison or to join in cyberbullying during school hours. Behavioral experts believe excessive cellphone usage can often lead to “student loneliness and a decline in face-to-face communication.”
Gov. Ayotte doesn’t regret signing Senate Bill 206 into law last June, which was passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature. “We want every student in our state to reach their full potential in and out of the classroom, and cellphones were getting in the way of that,” Ayotte said in a recent statement. “I was proud to sign a bell-to-bell cellphone ban into law, giving districts the flexibility to adopt what works best for them while ensuring teachers don’t have to be the phone police.”
How did we manage without these digital devices in the past?
I remember spraining an ankle during gym class as a high school freshman. I “hopped” over to the school nurse’s office, and she called my mom, who came to pick me up. In the event of an emergency, most students would head to the main office to use the phone. We even had the occasional bomb threats back then, unwanted individuals entering the building, and school officials dealt with these things. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked, and we all managed to get by.
It’s a different world today, and a recent article in The Atlantic by Rose Horowitch discusses an alarming trend discovered at America’s top universities. I couldn’t believe it; apparently, the word disabled has come to mean something new in higher education.
More than 20% of undergrads at Harvard and Brown are registered as disabled, and 34% (one in three students) at Amherst College are said to be disabled. However, it’s not about the original meaning of the 1990 landmark civil rights law known as the ADA, or the Americans with Disabilities Act.
One professor without tenure at a selective university, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Atlantic that “You hear ‘students with disabilities’ and it’s not kids in wheelchairs. It’s just not. It’s rich kids getting extra time on tests.”
The ADA law was amended in 2008 to broaden the definition of disability. The umbrella amendment now includes conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, which can impact focus, reading, concentration and learning.
Is this kind of student accommodation an exploitation of the true meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Or, am I just behind the times?
Original article
Comments