A student walks into a high school classroom. A ringtone sounds on her cellphone and she answers as she walks to her desk.  Classmates take their seats and a bell rings signally class has started.  Should she finish her conversation or disconnect?

A student is working at a biology lab station.  His cellphone buzzes in his pocket informing him that he has received a text message.  All his classmates are busy with their lab assignments and his teacher is in deep conversation at a lab station across the classroom.  Should he check his message and perhaps respond?

The band is rehearsing for a concert scheduled for the following week.  The director has stopped play to help one of the alto sax players to hold a note for three beats when a cellphone rings in the percussion section.  Because everyone but the sax player has stopped playing, band members either look toward the sound of the phone or at the director.  Should the director confront the disturbance or ignore it?

The argument of whether students should bring cellphones into school classrooms has not been resolved.  Across the 20+ years that high school students have carried personal cellphones, the issue of how schools should address student cellphones in school has eluded a universal resolution.  Now that a cellphone also is an Internet connection to a world of information, a networking tool, and a productivity tool, what are the parameters for the use of a cellphone in the classroom?  Is the cellphone an unwanted distraction to student learning?  Is a cellphone a learning tool connecting the isolated classroom to the greater world?  Is having access to a cellphone a right or a responsibility?

Historically, the closest we come to the cellphone dilemma may be chewing gum.  Does a teacher’s view of cellphones mirror the historical view of chewing gum?  For decades students were forbidden to visibly chew gum in class for no other real reason than teacher “say so.”  After introspection, chewing gum in class posed no real distractions to teaching and learning.  In fact, chewing may have calmed student anxiety.  It also is true that some “bratty” students may have made smacking sounds as they chewed.  But, the bottom line was “You can or cannot chew gum in my class.  It is my rule.”  Teacher rules prevailed.

In each representative scenario above, the current practice in most classrooms is the same as chewing gum.  The use of a cellphone, even the presence of a cellphone in class, is that classroom teacher’s rule.  But, is teacher’s choice a satisfactory resolution?  Why would a student walking into class keep talking after the bell or a student engage in text messaging in a lab class or a band director not respond to a phone ringing during rehearsal?  Time and place make these intrusions unacceptable.  We need to teach children to understand and exercise the freedom and responsibility of cellphone use.  And, we, parents and educators, need to integrate cellphone technology into contemporary living/teaching/learning design.  Leaving the use of cellphone technology to a teacher’s rule is a very weak resolution.  The exercise of a common standard of behavior based upon sensitivity to time and place is much better.

In 1908, John Dewey, a formative educational leader, wrote the following.

RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM

“The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and the freedom of the individual. His freedom is the greater, because the more numerous are the effective stimuli to action, and the more varied and the more certain the ways in which he may fulfill his powers. His responsibility is greater because there are more demands for considering the consequences of his acts; and more agencies for bringing home to him the recognition of consequences which affect not merely more persons individually, but which also influence the more remote and hidden social ties.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/responsibility-and-freedom/

Dewey certainly did not foresee the advent of cellphones.  But, he understood the dynamics of how the individual interacts in society and those insights speak to the personal use of cellphones in school today.  The lead sentence – “The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and the freedom of the individual” – gets directly at the problem. The purpose of the classroom as a place for teaching and learning requires that a student’s responsibility to that purpose transcends the freedom of instantaneous cellphone activity. As a slight exaggeration, imagine a classroom where the opposite view holds. At any moment when a student’s cellphone rings the student immediately engages in a phone conversation or a series of texts or activates music or video of choice. Or, initiates a phone call to a friend. Or, engages in an interactive game on a cellphone. All the while, a teacher is expected to teach as if the distraction did not occur. If the classroom was lackadaisical daycare, this chaos may be acceptable. The classroom is a place for teaching and learning and such chaos is fully unacceptable.

Changing the use of cellphones from ubiquitous to discrete begins with attitude.  The use of a cellphone is not a child’s entitlement.  I observe an attitude of entitlement when children engage with their cellphone anywhere and anytime with an air of “it is my right to do so.”  They quickly become irate when told to put away their cellphone.  This attitude comes from two cultural phenomena.  Today’s children have never known a world without cellphones, and, most have been raised with digital devices as pacifiers – parents provide devices to children to keep them happy and content – the 21^st century “nuk.”

We replace the attitude of entitlement with an understanding of discrete time and place.  It is important for children to know there are times and places when a child must and should use a cellphone.  As we teach our children to exercise freedom and responsibility thinking to regulate their cellphone use, we must accentuate times and places where cellphone use is both necessary and warranted.

• Calling 911 for an emergency.  No one should hesitate when health and safety are threatened.
• Calling a parent for permission or guidance.  Children who follow parental restrictions need to seek parent permission or guidance when their daily activities contradict what they believe they are supposed to.
• Capturing the moment.  Children know when something unusual is happening.  Using a cellphone camera or voice recording to make a record through a photo or sound recording is a wonderful use of cellphone technology.
• Getting an answer.  As much as “Ask Siri” is an advertisement, it also is an active way of seeking information.  Googling is an accepted verb.  As an Internet device in your pocket or purse, a cellphone is an unbelievably wonderful tool for seeking information.
• What’s happening?  News alerts help children to know the daily events of their world.  More than any generation of the past, children with cellphones can know local, state and world events as they unfold.  If they choose, children can know and study news and how it is reported on demand.
• Finding yourself.  Mapping and location tracking apps help children to know exactly where they are.  “I am here” and “That is where I want to go” are easily displayed with keystrokes or voice commands.
• Personal entertainment anywhere and anytime.  Music and video libraries stored on a cellphone provide children with their “go to” entertainment when they want it.

There are times when and places where a child should not use a cellphone.  Using freedom and responsibility thinking, we do not physically take cellphones away from children.  That is a losing strategy from the get-go.  Also, we do not make lists of times and places where cellphones should mot be used.  To do so, makes the list the argument.  Instead, we want the argument to be an intellectual, observational, reflective, and sensitive decision that the individual makes in certain times and places.  When freedom and responsibility thinking is at work, a child has the opportunity to consider if “this is a time when a cellphone must, can or should be used?  Is this a time when it is my decision to use a cellphone?  And, will use of my cellphone be a distraction or affront to people around me?”  The last condition demonstrates the sensitivity to time and place we want children to consider.

Freedom and responsibility thinking pertains to many things that people do in their daily living.  It is an essential way of thinking about how an individual can live well in the society of others.  Using freedom and responsibility thinking is a reasonable strategy for teaching children to prosper in their use of cellphone technology.