Summer is drawing to a close, and soon thousands, even millions, of children will find themselves back in the classroom, just as generations of children did before them. For this particular generation, however, a new concern has arisen.
That's right, cell phones. Students reading texts instead of textbooks, and paying more attention to a liquid-crystal display and less attention to a flesh-and-blood teacher, thereby preventing them from getting a proper education. But all is not lost. Here in Ohio, the governor a few months ago surrounded himself with some smiling, well-groomed middle-school aged children (presumably the kind that do read textbooks and do pay attention to flesh-and-blood teachers) and signed into law a bipartisan bill requiring public schools across the state to implement cell phone policies rather than have digital chaos reign supreme. The reason I'm writing about this now instead of back in May when the bill was signed is because I'm suddenly seeing news stories from around the country about similar efforts to ban cell phones from school. I don't want to ignore a trend, and if such news stories continue, well, it could end up being a bigger trend than the advent of cell phones in the first place. Honestly, try as I might, this isn't something I can be too snarky about. After a couple of years of news stories about books banned from school, a prohibition on cell phones is a refreshing, as well as a much more justifiable, change of pace. Still, a note of caution. Once students find themselves deprived of their mobile devices...
...an older form of social media could make a comeback.
