Pro

Victoria Vital

Having a phone out in a classroom is usually prohibited at schools upon the teacher’s request. But should students be able to use them for their own “self-defense”? Students’ ability to use their cell phones to take videos could pose a danger to teachers who may lose their temper one time; the permanence of the video could cause them to develop an unfair reputation. I can understand students using this as a self-defense tool if a teacher has reoccurring outbursts, but usually that’s not the case.

Most of the time, it’s just a student trying to get back at a teacher, so they record one time the teacher might go overboard when mad. There’s always a flip side to things, and you have to look at it in a different perspective to fully understand the problem.

Cell phones are a big part of this generation, and they shouldn’t be used to ruin someone’s career. They should be used for resources and communicating with your friends and family.

There are situations in which it is reasonable to record a teacher, such as if they’re always being harsh to a student or class. Either way, there should be a first attempt on getting an administrator involved first and have them look into it. Taking the responsibility to hand the situation over to an adult should be the first choice, not recording the teacher and putting it online for everyone to see. Putting a video on YouTube can get the video recorder in trouble, and also hurt the teacher’s career.

Schools usually have rules against using cell phones in classrooms, but that doesn’t stop students from pulling them out. So in the end, how will any of this be resolved or prohibited without having a total school cell phone ban?

Con

Kayla Rand

Imagine you’re sitting in the class of a teacher known for screaming at their students. You’ve tried to bring this problem to the attention of administrators, but whenever administrators come to visit the classroom, the teacher acts much nicer than they normally do so nobody believes you. You can tell the teacher’s getting mad and you want proof. What would you do?

This is a very real situation for many kids, and with the technology we have now, most of their first reactions are to pull out their cell phones and film the problem. Unfortunately, with rules on technology in school, kids could get in more trouble for filming the situation than the teachers would for the way they acted.

Many teachers are worried about students filming them in class because they don’t want the video to end up on YouTube or other social media. If students aren’t provided with any means of proving what goes on in classrooms, however, teachers can act however they want because administration may not believe students who try to bring this behavior to light.

There are already several cases of social media being used to bring about changes in schools—for example, Sunset Senior High School in Miami, Florida was in horrible condition, with rotting food served for lunch and yellow, cloudy water in the water fountains. This problem was repeatedly covered up by administration until students took photos of the problems and posted them online. Only then were measures taken to clean up the school and give the students a better learning environment.

It’d be impossible to completely ban cell phones from classrooms without creating more problems than it’s worth, and we can’t tell students not to record evidence of something they think is unjust.