Mobile phone in school- Necessary of not?
And how do you provide a parental control?
Many thanks in advance
And how do you provide a parental control?
Many thanks in advance
I don't doubt that's true, but it's an illustration of how location- and lifestyle-dependent the choice to own a cellphone is. Why? Because three years ago I was exactly like you and yet now, with kids growing up fast and circumstances changing in ways I could never have anticipated, I can't imagine our family coping without cellphones.I don't have a cell phone myself, so I see no reason why my 5th grader needs one.
Well, I realize this is not the situation at every school, but at our local school when there is a power failure (which happens several times every winter) the PBX land-line system goes down. If the power goes off early in the day, the school begins to get cold, and the staff and teachers who don't have cellphones have been known to borrow them from the kids to contact parents to let them know that school is closing early. And of course even if they don't close school early, there's no land line for emergency contact.What 'emergency' will happen that they need a direct line to you that cannot be provided from a landline at the school?
Absolutely, if I found that I needed to communicate changes in plans to my child every FEW DAYS, a cell phone would make sense! But in the five and a half years he's attended public school so far, we've had to do this exactly once--to tell them that I was in labor so his godmother would be picking him up that afternoon. The rest of the time, we make our plans in advance and stick to them, or if something is ambiguous we have a backup plan: "If Daddy's not home yet when you get here, go to Abby's house."I think that a text messages from parents about changes in plans that students receive upon taking phones out of airplane mode at the end of class eliminate an real drain on school secretarial resources. One message every few days to your kid may not seem like much, but school-wide it amounts to dozens and dozens of such messages a week, each of which takes at least a couple of minutes to pass along, amounting to hours a week.
This is straying off-topic from the original post, but I think these are quite different situations. At 18 you were legally an adult. With a 15- or 16-year-old I still have a legal duty of care. That doesn't mean I have to be in touch with my kid every moment, but it does mean that I have to ensure that she has reasonable access to parental support and supervision or someone who is in loco parentis. Without a cellphone we would probably have to pay for her to be housed like an exchange student in a home with responsible adults to ensure that the legal duty of care was being satisfied.As for the kid living on her own while she goes to high school... I still don't see it as truly necessary. I went to college 1,400 miles away from my parents when I was 18.
You raised some excellent points, Snydley. I think that self-reliance is really important to nurture and I can see that the way cellphones can be used could interfere with that.I think it's important for kids to have times when they feel completely on their own, without the tether of mom and dad just a text away in their pocket.
I agree with uIf the student/child is in danger and they don't have their phone on them in school. ... If the school allows there students to keep their phones during school times, they can also give them a sense of security. If they end up followed or need to call their parents or even emergency services.