Quote:
Originally Posted by Flem274*
I guarantee you if you tried to enforce those cellphone restrictions there would be revolution before morning tea. That and they'll move on to smashing each others heads in.
Aside from the fact making students hand in their cellphones is an incredibly dire idea (even a blanket ban on them being at school in the first place would be more agreeable, but still unrealistic and dire) and another great way to not teach kids personal responsibility, the main difference with cyber bullying compared to normal bullying is it makes bullying outside the school grounds so much easier. Kids will still get verbally abused at school, it just won't be conveyed via the small screen.
The New Zealand education system and the standard of teaching is already terrible without giving teachers the wrong powers. Tuck in your shirt, have a shave, pass your dumbed down NCEA unit standards which will be heavily scaled by telling the marker what they want to hear, and most importantly, don't think. I'd hate to see them reading cellphones on top of it.
I think teachers have a terrible time of it because quite honestly, some 15-17 year olds shouldn't be at school yet still are, and some poor overworked and vastly underpaid sod has to try and force something through their skulls. Now I hear we're cutting teacher numbers, which will increase class sizes, which will make the jobs of teachers even more impossible, but there is no way blurring the line between the education and prison systems is the way to go about improving things. That will just ensure more kids will stop turning up.
From what I remember of school, any poor kid who felt for whatever reason that smacking the bullies was not a viable option (and it often wasn't), going to authorities like teachers was entirely ineffective, both because they either didn't do anything or simply because most bullies don't care about detentions and suspensions, and everyone knew the bully would just come down like hell on the poor kid.
As for giving out iPads and laptops though, um, wtf? That's a lot of money to throw towards Facebook.
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Do you think your predicted reaction to making students hand in cellphones is a result of 'prison style' enforcement though, or would it be due to the lack of ability to enforce any rules that has been pretty prevalent at our schools for a long, long time? The fact people today equate the enforcement of any rules with a prison system-style governance is pretty funny. I think that's partly what got us to where we are.
It's a nice assumption that kids would be taught personal responsibility by allowing them to have their phones in class and acting accordingly, but I'll bet every single class that has students in them with phones has issues with texting and connecting to Facebook. As I said before, I teach adults who can't leave their ****ing phones alone, and some of them have been teachers before, it's incredible. Phones are simply not a necessary part of being a student, but now they're in class it'll be very hard to get them out. They make the teacher's job so much harder.
I won't use Korea as an example, as it's pretty unrealistic to expect students here to behave in a similar way now the horse has bolted (and there are other punishments there which I don't agree with), but i know there are some schools here in Brisbane that enforce similar rules.
I think you'll find a lot of teachers struggle with the motivation to keep doing their job because they've been totally dis-empowered by the people at the top making the (lack of) rules and parents who can't be ****ed teaching their kids manners or appropriate behaviour. Where I work, which is much, much more preferable to being a teacher at a high school (except for the pay), we get half-arsed rule making because they try to balance the fact that certain rules should be enforced with the fact the students pay money. Guess what usually wins?
Yes, people should be responsible, but some aren't. The one's that aren't don't learn responsibility by being allowed to do whatever they want and, in my experience, the one's that are don't mind seeing rules introduced that stop the idiots in the class from being a distraction. Although, given the teachers can't do anything to the students when they're disruptive, I'd assume taking away the phones would just lead the disruptive students to be annoying in another way
If I had Australian students in my class then I might have another opinion on rule-making too...