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May 06, 2005
"We REALLY appreciate your mom's service to our country. That's why we're not going to lock you up. Now GIVE me your phone, punk!"
Picture it. You’re a junior in high school. Your only living parent is serving a one-year tour of duty in Iraq. You get to talk to her about once a month via telephone. With your mom gone and father dead, you live with a guardian who has five children. Think that would be fun? Well, it would be even more fun if you got suspended from school for talking to your mom on your cell phone when she called from Iraq!
Enter the world of 17-year-old Kevin Francois. According to a story in the Ledger-Enquirer, Kevin was suspended for ten days from Spencer High School when he refused to give up his cell phone at lunch, choosing to talk to his mother instead. The Muscogee County School District Board of Education has a strict policy: students are allowed to have cell phones in school, but they cannot use the phones during school hours. According to Assistant Principal Alfred Parham (feel free to click his name if you’d like to email him your thoughts), “[Students are] not supposed to use [cell phones] for conversating back and forth during school because if they were allowed to do that, they could be text messaging each other for test questions.”
For the record, “conversating” is not a word. (There’s no indication of what teaching experience Assistant Principal Parham brought to his position, but my hunch is that he's probably a math and science guy.) The school suspended Kevin because he was “defiant and disorderly” when asked to give up his phone. Apparently Kevin was particularly defiant and even used profanity (the horror, the horror) when he was brought to an Assistant Principal’s office because he wasn’t allowed to answer the phone when his mother called the second time. Don't forget, his mom wasn't calling from the local Piggly-Wiggly market to find out what type of cereal Kevin wanted her to buy; she was calling from Iraq. (Kevin's mom left an angry message asking her son why he hung up on her (the hang-up happened when a teacher grabbed his phone) and telling him to answer the phone when she calls.)
Let’s consider the situation from both points of view. Kevin wants to talk to his mom. The Assistant Principal needs to keep kids from talking on their cell phones because he is worried that students will use their phones to cheat on quizzes and exams. Thus, when Kevin’s cell phone rings while he is in an Assistant Principal’s office, Kevin swears up and down that it’s his mother calling from Iraq. The Assistant Principal refuses to let Kevin answer the phone because, well, I think it’s clear why he couldn’t risk letting Kevin answer the phone (and I think we all would have done the same thing). It’s easy to see how an Assistant Principal would err on the side of caution. After all, we know how crafty teenagers can be. Kevin might have answered that phone and it might have even sounded like he was conversing with a sergeant in Iraq. In truth, however, how could Assistant Principal Parham really be assured that Kevin was not actually conversing in code with some equally-crafty Spencer High Student who was in the process of taking a test? Not that it's entirely relevant, but we’re talking about a kid (Kevin) who struggles to get low Cs and admits to having an F in at least one of his classes. Clearly, he’s the type that one would (and should) go to for answers.
In fairness to the administration, Assistant Principal Parham told Kevin he would try to work something out with the young man to ensure that he could talk with his mother in the future. Kevin even admitted to bearing some fault in the incident, but insisted that he should have been allowed to talk to his mom. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go with Kevin on this one. If my only living parent calls from any country in the Middle East, especially one in which a war is actually being fought and especially if my parent actually is fighting in that war, I say, the hell with your rules, and I ANSWER the phone, consequences notwithstanding. If somebody strips the phone out of my hands, I might even drop an F-bomb or two. I want to talk to my mom!
Fortunately, the story ends happily. Although he could have had Kevin arrested for disorderly conduct, Assistant Principal Parham chose to be a really nice guy. (Remember the last three letters of Assistant Principal spell "Pal!" - thank you, Mr. Belding.) “Now being that his mother is in Iraq, we’re not trying to cause her any undue hardship; [so we only] suspended [Kevin] for 10 days.” Not a written reprimand, not an afternoon of after-school detention, not even a one-day supsension, but a TEN-DAY suspension for talking to your military mom when she makes her monthly call to you from Iraq when you are on your lunch break and not even in class!!! Yup, sounds fair to me! I wonder if Assistant Principal Parham provided training to my friend in the registrar's office.
Comments
(1) I highly doubt Assistant Principal Parham was a math or science guy. Math/science types tend to speak with considerably more precision than evidence suggests he does.
(2) In addition to "conversating" (which I had to type twice because when I got to "conversati", "on" was, by virtue of habit, the next thing to hit the keyboard), this stellar educator also apparently thinks that "being that" is an acceptable substitute for "because" or even the slightly-less-precise (and forbidden by many style manuals in this context) "since". No wonder Johnny can't read.
(3) Speaking of incredibly nitpicky grammar points, I'd just like to register my protest at the use of "real" as an adverb in the first sentence of the last paragraph. Yes, yes, it's technically correct (though Webster says it's still "more suitable to speech than writing"), but that's just because The Barbarians are taking over our language. Nevermind the extent to which Barbarians assisted in its creation in the first place; "real" as an adverb still rubs me the wrong way. But then, that's just me.
(/nerd)
Posted by: erosophe at May 6, 2005 08:36 PM
I agree with your nitpicky grammar point regarding "real" and have made the appropriate change.
Posted by: Fool at May 6, 2005 08:40 PM
Really good points fool, but my question is how is all this information going to help me pass my ADR final on Monday?? Unless you think we should utilize the old "cell phone call from mom serving in Iraq" trick in the middle of the exam to share our answers. If this past posting was your subtle way of suggesting this course of action then all i have to say is touche thinking fool, touche.
Posted by: Jew-boy at May 6, 2005 11:24 PM
The Assistant Principal should be fired. Or better yet, drafted.
Posted by: buddha at May 9, 2005 03:48 PM
I had a really long post typed up, but it just got lost in cyberspace. The gist:
a) “[Students are] not supposed to use [cell phones] for conversating back and forth during school because if they were allowed to do that, they could be text messaging each other for test questions.” Most tests, unless formatted like Jeopardy, provide students with the questions.
b) "The incident happened when Francois received a call from his mother at 12:30 p.m., which he said was his lunch break. Francois said he went outside the school building to get a better reception when his mother called." Most exams are not administered during lunch breaks.
P.S. Are 1st Amendment rights surrendered once you walk into school?
I don't think so:
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969)- "First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
Posted by: NYU Jew at June 5, 2005 07:46 PM
