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School System Considers Jamming Students' Phones
An anonymous reader writes "The St. Ansgar, Iowa school system is considering buying cell-phone jamming equipment for up to $5000 if it is deemed legal. The use of the equipment would be suspended in the case of an emergency, but one has to wonder if they would be quick enough to shut it down should an emergency arise. 'A Federal Communications Commission notice issued in 2005 says the sale and use of transmitters that jam cellular or personal communications services is unlawful.'"
In most places, and correct me if I'm wrong, but no one can impede the function of a cellphone when it is calling emergency services. Hell, a 10-year-old cellphone with no service provider still has to be able to connect to 911 - many cities solicit old phones for use by women in domestic violence shelters as emergency phones for just this reason. If the jamming can be rigged to let 911 calls through, then this might be legal from that standpoint.
Whether the FCC allows such things overall, though, is quite another issue.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
If the phone is seen or heard anytime during school hours, it's taken away, and the parent can come claim it. Parents will get sick of having to do that pretty quick, and the students will learn what happens if they use them during school. In our school district, each school can make the specific rules regarding cell phones, and this is generally how they handle the issue. The best part is, the policy is free to implement and only affects a small minority of phones (the offenders) in an emergency situation.
How about instead of investing in high tech, non-legal solutions, we go with the old fashioned solution to problems.
If an item is found to be distracting, that item will be confiscated for the rest of the class period (hour/block/day as appropriate) and/or the student using the distracting item will be sent to the office.
Way I figure, this rule should still apply to cell phones just as much as they did to papers being passed back in the day.
If cheating is the issue, then maybe the teacher should proctor in a more active manner (ie walking the aisles).
Removing the ability to use cell phones for anyone near/in the school is dangerous, irrisponsible and illegal.
In my day, we didn't have emergencies in school. I graduated before Columbine. Back then if someone made you mad, you just beat the shit out of them instead of shooting up the whole school. I saw stuff like a jock stealing a nerd's backpack in the lunchroom, and then the nerd smacking the jock in the head with a metal chair repeatedly until he was down and taking back the backpack. The lunch monitor didn't even flinch. No one gave such fights a second thought; not teachers, not parents, and not students.
Still, this is a simple solution. Kids don't need cell-phones in class. If there's an emergency, the principal can inform the student involved. So, block cell-phones.
However, active transmitters are illegal - And there are valid reasons for that. So use passive blockers. The cost is probably a little higher, but the result is the same. And you're not tangling with the FCC. Our local movie theater does it (although they built it in during construction, lowering the installation price).
Heck, call installing chicken-wire a "make-work" program and you may get a chunk of the stimulus $$.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I'm one of those "what the fuck does a kid need a cell phone for?" people, but I'm also one of those "as long as they're not whipping it out in class and turn the ringer off, who the fuck cares?" people.
You don't need a signal jammer to keep kids from using their phones during class. You just need a teacher to tell them not to do it and follow through on consequences for using phones in class. Seems simple enough to me. I can, however, see the appeal of a cell jammer from the administration's point of view. After all, considering all of the violations teacher's are found guilty of in school -- from smacking a kid, to duct-taping a kid's mouth shut, to duct-taping them to their desk, to going on angry tirades, to strip searching half a dozen pre-pubescent girls because someone said their pencil was stolen or whatever, the LAST thing you want is for a student to be able to make a phone call right away to get help from an adult who will act as some sort of advocate for the child. Much better to keep them stuck in school, on school grounds, without a way to contact anyone in such cases so that you have until the end of the school day to think up an excuse, explanation, scape-goat or otherwise manipulate the situation and the information.
Hell, your child is more likely to be abused or molested by their teacher in school than they are being shot up by a classmate.
I think the main problem is really the fact that the school is not designed for the 21st century. Students should be -encouraged- to collaborate because the real world is built on collaboration and research. Memorization ends up being part of it when you research the same thing. Think of programming, even if you use a reference book, eventually you start to memorize it to the point where you hardly need to look in the book. Really, the school system needs reformed, more critical thinking, less multiple choice or single-answer questions, because like it or not that isn't the real world. You aren't locked in a dark room with no internet, no reference materials, no collaboration and being handed a sheet of questions. That isn't how it works. Schools should not be teaching the way they are, teach in a way that allows collaboration because that is how the real world works.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So do you work for Fox News or do you actually have even one single example of your scenario ever having occurred?
Because mommy and daddy will take little Timmy's side on everything. So they will take the school to court because a teach took Timmy's phone away because he was playing with it in class.
Students know that the teacher can not do anything to them, and that in some cases the parents don't care if they misbehave in school, or misbehave at all. So they do not respect authority figures.
It is one think to not respect authority when your rights are being violated, it is another thing to not respect authority when other people around you are trying to learn.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
I work at a Law School. If my building full of lawyers couldn't figure an angle to make this work, I'm pretty sure it isn't going to work.
It isn't legal, and if it were, it will open up a whole lotta liability for the school.
Scenario: Columbine-like event. Students & instructors try but cannot call for help because attackers first control the prinicpal's / Dean's office where the equipment can be shut off.
Sceanrio2: I'm a (age of majority)-year old (substitute teacher | student | janitor ), and my (Parent |spouse | child | ward) is (sick | giving birth| dying | being attacked | at the hospital | being sent home from school) .. and I'm the number they were able to reach on speed-dial. .. but I can't receive signals.
Possible solutions:
1) make a no-phones rule and enforce it. Make parents sign consent to confiscate phones as condition of attendance.
If a student is disruptive with a phone, confiscate it and make parent come to school to retrieve it. Inconvenience the parents and they'll deal with the kids.
2) Actually teach. In many (not all) cases, the teachers/professors most upset by this are the same 'educators' who can't keep a student's attention for more than 15 seconds.
If you made your class interesting ( presupposing: you care, you know the material, you work at presenting it fresh).. then students would watch you, and not try to find something else to do.
3) Make it worth Verizon's or ATT's investment. For the right price, you know there's got to be a switching solution.
(a) - refuse to route calls unless the parties are registered in advance.. i.e.: Johnny's cell can always rcv calls from 20 numbers his parents register plus appropriate emergncy numbers, but during school hours, and while in the school+corporate "cell" range, he cannot rcv any other calls / send to other numbers at certain times. Optionally leave recess and 'free period" schedules open.
(b) - make it a condition of class attendance that -Privacy is lost- all cell phone records of calls made inside the School's cell are open for School officials to review. If caught using a cell phone for anything non-emergent during any class or exam, penalize, suspend or expel student.
(c) come up with (or activate existing) remote programming modes. While ( in [area of school] and [hours= school time]) force ringer to (vibrate) + disable email / internet browsing + limit text count to 3 - 5 per hour. ( naturally, allow fairly easy remote or local override by parent or LE when necessary and appropriate)
What if instead of jamming phones, the school put up their own cell antena. They could work with the other local providers to tweek the handoff rules such that phones in side the school are significantly more likely to stay on the school's tower.
Once you have all of those phones on the school's tower it would be simple to shut down texting and internet access while still allowing access to 911 and emergency numbers listed in the student's records.
Sure, it'll cost more than $5000 to get up and maintain, but it is much more likely to pass muster.
Personally though, I'm all for the confiscate and return rule. It's cheaper AND it reinforces lessons in personal responsibility.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Very true, but that all depends on how the jamming is done. If it's done in cooperation with the cell companies, perhaps the "jam" can be some form of signal that puts the phones in "SOS Mode" (911 calls go through, everything else is blocked). I know when I have marginal signal on my AT&T BlackBerry (not enough to have any chance of completing a call, but enough to see that a tower is out there) it goes into this mode. Still, this seems to be something better solved by a simple, enforced rule. Cell phones are allowed on school grounds, and may be used freely during break periods and between classes, and during class only with permission (if the student is done with some assignment early and is on "slack time", for example). If a student is caught using a cell phone during a time when it is not permissible, the cell phone will be confiscated and (and this is important) A PARENT will be allowed to pick it up after school, or must give verbal consent for the phone to be released back to the student. None of this "the worst that can happen is your cell is returned at the end of the day". If the student is using a cell as a distraction while they are in class, this should prompt at least a brief discussion between a school representative and the parent. Then the parent has enough information at hand to do their job. In case you have a parent who refuses to do their job, make repeat "cell offenses" the same as sneaking any other banned item into the class (answer key, crib notes, etc). Student is unable to take any test that may take place that day and gets an automatic zero, after-school detention, revocation of privileges, etc, on the usual escalating scale of severity.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
You didn't have school shootings? Depending on the definition, you would have to have been in school before 1891: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks
.sig withheld by request
We also used suspensions and expulsions to deal with those that broke rules such as not bringing certain items onto school property.
But these days the kids have turned the table on us. Now dropping out is so common that schools can not regulate the children as the schools are under pressure to keep kids from dropping out.
In order to turn things around we need to get rid of the G.E.D. and let kids know that if they drop out they will live in poverty and follow that up by demonstrating that we are more than willing to toss kids out of school.
That may sound cruel but it could stop the current loss of lives and futures that now are consequences of a broken educational system.
You have no idea the growing levitation power of the new, modern, helicopter parent. They would scream if you even thought of proposing that maybe, just maybe, the kids should leave the burning building BEFORE calling them. (So they can immediately schedule a meeting with the principal and teacher about the lack of fireproofing in the school, and how it affects their childs chances of getting into a good college) For once, think of the parents, not the children. If they can't reach/see their children every minute of every day, then obviously, child molesters are trying to kidnap them...
the last few years, I have started feeling very, very sorry for teachers..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
When exactly were you a senior? A student assaulting a teacher is illegal. The teacher defending themself is legal. This has been ruled on many places. I know that doesn't stop lawsuits from happening, but it sure as hell would stop them from succeeding most of the time.
Sadly this results in teacher's just completely snapping. Most of the time it results in them crying or shouting but it has potential to get much worse.
There was a recent incident in here in the UK where a teacher had come back to school after recovering from a stroke and wasn't quite back to normal. The kids noticed this and in the class they started singing "I'm looking at the psycho in the mirror" (to the tune of the similarly named MJ song). He demanded they stop, the lead kid swore at him in return.
What happened then? The teacher bashed the student over the head with a metal weight, dragged the student into a supply room where he almost beat the student to death before he was dragged off by a load of students.
The surprising thing was the reaction. There was very little pity for the student in question and huge amounts of support for the teacher (who's now on attempted murder charges).
It's unrealistic to say to a class, "Students, use your cell phones' web browsers to research the February Revolution" when not all students are going to have cell phones with web data plans. I know mine sure doesn't. It's more equal to either go to the library or get a mobile computer lab.
Also, not all kids who have technology are brilliant students who are only going to use it for research or other related activities. I knew this one kid who brought his laptop into school and would be playing World of Warcraft during class. Do you think every single kid packing a powerful cell phone is appropriately using that power for anything more important than texting their friends? No way! With a cell phone like that, I could SSH into my home network, I could easily research things while on the go, etc. Other students think their only purpose is a glorified gaming machine and texting machine.
Disclaimer: I do have games installed on my graphing calculator.
I'm torn on this. When I was in high school cell phones were just starting to phase out pagers, but maybe 3 kids out of 80 had them. Our school was proactive and implemented a strict no cell phone, no pager rule. Anyone caught with one would have it confiscated till the end of the year. If there was a real emergency you call the school and they call the student into the office.
That was how it was supposed to work, unfortunately this was a school with disproportionately high percentage of helicopter parents. Basically the office got 3 or 4 'emergency' calls a week, mostly for dumb things like forgotten homework, lunch money, and 'can you check to see if my kid is sick, he had the sniffles'. It got to the point where the lady answering the phone would tell the caller that she would leave a note and have the student paged between classes. It was a system that worked well 99.9% of the time.
Then one day my Dad, (who was on the other side of the country at the time) got into a car accident. In the course of the accident he crushed one lung and punctured the other. Due to some of his other health problems the doctors were very concerned that it would be fatal, and immediately started pumping his lungs. When that wasn't working they gave him some down time to make a phone call while they pulled together a surgeon and drastic measures. They pretty much told him that there was a very small chance that he would survive the next hour. You've got time to make one phone call before you die, make it count.
He tried calling me, however due to his lungs filling with fluid his voice was raspy, and he had a hard time getting the words out. The office couldn't understand him, and, doing what they normally do, took a message and told him that I would be paged and told that "Your Dad called" when class ended.
Needless to say he was in surgery by the time I got out of class, and dead very shortly after.
Just saying that 99.999% of the time kids will be using their cell phones in class for stupid crap. But that .001% happened to me. You can't say it'll never happen, because it did. But how do you weigh the one 10 minute phone call that matters vs the thousands of hours of lost productivity in the class. It's not a cut and dried answer.
Slow down there chief. I myself got a GED because high school was a waste of my time (dropped out after junior year). Now I'm 26 (going on 27) and am already worth enough to never have to work another day in my life (sold my company; started another one, etc). Attending high school/college doesn't guarantee success any more than dropping out guarantees failure. Some people will just work hard to succeed while other just don't give a fuck. Getting rid of GEDs isn't going to change that one bit.
I'm going to assume there are exceptions for dangerous items in your argument. If a teacher sees a student with a gun or a knife, and they have the ability to safely confiscate the item, I'm presuming that teacher has the right to act in the best interests of the classroom and remove those items, correct?
That point aside, Let's run with your argument for a second. A student who is reading a book or doing something else that is not part of the expected behavior within the class is a distraction. You can remove the object that is distracting the student, or you can remove the student. Which is in the better interests of the student (and of the classroom)?
Each individual student has the absolute right to decide for him/herself whether he or she wants to participate in the learning experience, and you are correct - that DOES have its own consequences. But an individual student has no right to decide whether OTHERS get to participate.
Personally, I agree with you. No student should have anything confiscated from them, ever. The teacher should ask for the item and if the student refuses the student should then be removed from the classroom and get to sit in the Principal's office for the remainder of the day until a parent comes in to pick them up.
Longer term, if a student does not want to take advantage of the education the taxpayers are shelling out good money for, they should have the right to leave the classroom as soon as they sign their "no welfare if I fail because of my own decision" disclaimer. But they don't have the right to blow it for anyone else.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I think the schools live in constant fear of being sued, because they have no money to handle a suit. At the same time that some parents insist no one even talk loudly at a student for disciplinary reasons, some parents also insist on zero-tolerance policies on drugs and such, and the schools respond by trying to be both passive and aggressive at the same time. Education is a secondary issue for schools. Worrying about getting students ready for the real world and becoming good citizens is so far down on the list it might as well not be there.
In all fairness, you probably represent far less than 1% off all outcomes of students that drop out. Yeah, I know a guy too that dropped out as a freshman in high school, bought a fake ID (in his name with an older age), got a G.E.D, and then attended community college. Very bright and successful guy. He just could not put up with the bullshit in high school and wanted to go straight to the more advanced stuff. That and college girls put out.
You are the SECOND person in my whole life that sounds like a success story of a dropout with a G.E.D. I have been forced to interact with far more people with a G.E.D, that are quite frankly, making tremendous achievements just tying their shoes in the morning.
So, although I will agree with you that dropping out does not guarantee failure, it has a much higher likelihood of failure than you seem to be indicating.
Give it another 20 years and the social stigma of cellphones should go away and we should see less of shit like people complaining that a cellphone can be used anywhere, etc.
I don't see it is a meaningless "social stigma". Using a cell-phone in a learning environment can be seen more as "causing a distraction". Most schools frown on you wearing headphones in class, or talking to your neighbors during inappropriate times, cellphones are no different. They are devices that make annoying noises at inappropriate times and are used inappropriately in a school setting. This isn't "stigma", this is the same as banning boom-boxes from public libraries. There is a place for cellphones, school, though, is not it.
Actually, I would be a fan if theaters, libraries, and decent restaurants were allowed to have jammers. A lot of people completely lack social graces, and force others to suffer because of it. Just because your a moron who has to talk to your family about your rousing day of grocery shopping and traffic jams, doesn't mean EVERYONE should have to suffer through it. There is no reason to annoy people because your strange need to constantly discuss banalities with people who really don't care (they care as much as you care about their banalities). Hell, I don't even feel bad about "emergencies", since our species managed to survive very well for the 100k+ years before cellphones. Sure, we might be blocking certain essential "on call" people, but thats fine, they can choose to go out when they don't risk annoying the hell out of the rest of us. That is for the actual "essential" people, not the rest of us who just think we are.
Don't drop the "rights" card either. Your right to be annoying doesn't trump my right to peace and quiet (in the appropriate settings).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
In most local school districts teachers are no more permitted to use cell phones in class than students. Sure, it would be a minor inconvenience when they have a break, but their classrooms and offices likely already have phones in them.
The problem with this is that most teachers I know (I used to date one) practically live in their classrooms... they are always there, between breaks, during "off hours", during lunch, and before and after class. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to use their phones during those times.
If a kid is distracting itself when it should be learning, that's it's problem (I used to read science books in my lap during social studies). If it's distracting other students with a phone, then you do the same thing you do when it's distracting other students with anything else... take the distraction away, or send the kid away. The teacher I dated would take away cell phones, ipods, etc, and require the parent to come pick them up from the school. If the kid wouldn't give up the item, she's send the kid to the office.
My teachers used intercept any notes passed in class and read them aloud. I see no reason why they can't do that with text messages too.
You are partially joking in your response, but you are more correct than, perhaps, you even realize.
I've been a public school teacher at a high school for 4 years now, and to be honest, cell phones are an utter nightmare. The cheating of students using texting to get answers is rampant, well beyond anything that, as teachers, we were never warned about. Students have become masters of texting "under the table", and it has gotten bad enough that I now feel the need to make 12 different versions of a test for the 6 classes I teach a day - versions A and B for each period. I know that if I don't, by the end of 1st period, all of my students in periods 2-7 will have the questions (and answers) by the time I get to them. The "rookie" teachers who haven't learned that realize it awfully quick when the grade distributions go steeply upwards by the end of the day. Even then, with the prevalence of iPhones and Blackberry phones, cheating is becoming even more widespread since students can easily websurf to the answers for test questions. I have to hawk around my room constantly looking for phones under desks. It's amazing.
As a county, we've tried everything to penalize the use of cell phones, to no avail. We've tried detentions (students never serve them), we've tried suspensions ("Oh, a day that I don't have to go to school, great!"), no deterrents worked.
Then we tried getting "tougher". We tried to take the cell phone away from the student until the end of the school day. That lasted about 2 weeks, until we were told we couldn't do that any longer because a parent decided to get a jazzy lawyer and sue the district. They, apparently, were convinced that we were endangering their student by taking away their ability to call for help in an emergency. Rather than fight it out in court (and risk losing, as these things tend to go), the county settled and changed the policy. Now, supposedly, the plan is to confiscate the battery, but let the student keep the phone. Of course, students now carry spare batteries, so it doesn't matter.
We were the school a few years back that had the lockdown that made CNN news, when a deputy sheriff and his police dog were both shot and killed less than 2000 feet from our school. It was a massive manhunt that made national news. We were locked down for about 9 hours, with about (literally) 200 police with assault rifles and body armor, with armored vehicles, and eventually they bussed us out of the school under very heavy armed guard. During that time, the cell phones became a fiasco. Every student with a phone was calling their parents, and every parent was coming to the school to try and get their darling children out, despite the reality that a gunman with 2 automatics who had already killed a cop was anywhere around. The police were stretched thin trying to keep the roadblocks up to keep the idiot parents away. Insanity.
It gets worse then that, of course. I've had cases where I pass back a test at 8am to a 2nd period class, and I get an email from our secretary at 8:30am saying that the students parent called and wants to talk to me about the grade their daughter got on the test. Last year the newest craze was students getting "disposable" cell phones and using them to call in bomb threats to the school. Of course, any time a threat comes in you have to go through the evacuation drill, just in case, and according to our resource officer it can be difficult for them to trace the "disposable" cell phones. Plus, as before, any time some drill does come in, it's only a matter for 15 minutes before a bunch of parents show up ready to check their kids out of school.
I couldn't be happier as a teacher than if they blocked every last cell phone on campus. I don't have a phone in my classroom (very few of us in our high school have one in the room), but we each have intercoms we can use to reach the main office, and we had no communication problems during the dangerous lockdown. I don't need to use a cell phone during the school day, at least not once in the 4 years I've been there.
Londovir
Amen to everything you said!
I teach in an "inner city" high school with a minority rate of somewhere around 65% or so. By definition of the vocabulary word, I myself would be qualified as a minority when I walk on campus.
If I try to punish all of my students for infractions like cell phone usage, cheating, disruptive behavior, etc, it is a statistical certainty that a majority of students thus affected will be a "minority". Still, I have been called a racist by parents at least three times over the last 4 years of teaching. Luckily I've had the support of my administration, along with a fair number of letters of praise from past parents of students that attest to my integrity and equity. It still shakes you a bit, though, to have someone call you a racist when you're just trying to do your job. (Reminds me of this whole Gates fiasco, actually.)
We're also not allowed to discipline students by punishment any longer. It's part of the county-wide PBS system (positive behavior system). We've had teachers written up for using referrals. You are to encourage positive behavior by giving out rewards, and presumably the worst attitude students will magically become attentive learners once they realize they won't be earning a pizza party. Never mind the students who have been caught with weapons on campus, of course.
We're on our umpteenth teaching methodology this coming year (I've gone through Bloom's, to Pioget's, to Curriculum Maps, to Avid, to Kaplan, to Write Score, to I don't give a crap). I've watched as the newest drive is to put every kid possible into my Advanced Placement Calculus course, including those kids who got Fs and Ds in every math class they've ever taken, because the "newest thing" in educational theory now is Kagan learning, and somehow the kids who have difficulty with basic Algebra skills will magically learn by being paired with the "MIT graduate by 18" student. I'm expecting osmosis learning to come next.
I got into teaching because I have a passion for helping students learn new concepts, but with the shackles of insanity that I face every day now in public school I've accelerated my plans to earn my Masters Degree and move on to teaching in the community college (or higher) level. The ability to teach and innovate young minds has been lost to bureaucracy and paperwork, along with constant parental threats. I don't recommend teaching in K-12 any longer to anyone I know either.
Londovir
I have been teaching in a high school for 2 years now. I totally agree, but cell phones are just part of it. Now, they have internet access, cameras, games, show movies, and tons of music to entertain (or deafen) students. The new thing this year was to direct dial the phone in my room. I ended up taking it off the hook. I've gotten to confiscating them. The first time for the class period. The second time the parent has to pick the cell phone up to get it back. As for lawyers, every student has to sign a rules agreement that specifies that cell phones are not allowed and will be taken if brought on campus. (doesn't help much) Our school was overcrowded for a while (3300+ students). Rules are seriously hard to enforce. Plus we had the added bonus of the school being 79% minority with most parents being non-English speakers. Drugs, guns, gangs, and dropouts are a bigger problem, so the admin doesn't take cells phones and music players as serious an issue. Now, the people who don't actually DO the work are talking about merit pay? How about combat pay?