From luxury to appendage.....

And the latest from the front in a guerilla war that was becoming another major nuisance in my last years of teaching:

"But parents and students have a legitimate point when they argue that kids need cell phones to help coordinate after-school activities, and for safety along the way."

Ah, yes, there's no way anyone even HAD a life before cell phones, that's for sure. And as for safety? The problem at the local university is that no fewer than three students have been killed in recent years by vehicles (in two cases, city buses), two while talking on cell phones, and one with a headset on, all three perfectly oblivious to their doom. There's safety for you.

The recurrent notion that a cell phone is going to provide some salvation if a latter-day Columbine or Virginia Tech is under way is the other mantra one hears. These massacres have transpired with such speed that it's unclear what use a cell phone would be. If even a few of the thirty-some dead at Virginia Tech had been armed and willing to defend themselves, it's very probable that the shooting would have stopped at that point. I wonder what an interview with the survivors who had cell phone would yield? Not much, I suspect.

The only way I'll concede that a cell phone is going to bring the cavalry to the rescue in time to do any good is if the local SWAT team happens purely by chance to be driving by the scene. Unfortunately, real life just doesn't work that way, and I'll eschew my cell phone for a .40 Glock under those circumstances.

In conclusion: There is no cogent rationale for allowing students into the classroom with cell phones, pagers, music-listening devices, etc. They are distractions from the learning process, pure and simple, and anyone of average sense and sensibility should be able to see that. Of course, I've heard that Diogenes finally gave up on the "honest man" thing, and is poking around corners with his lantern held high, attempting to illuminate "a grain of common sense."