Banning young students from using cell phones during non-class hours, like lunch break, infringes upon their human rights, the state rights watchdog said Wednesday, disapproving moves by local schools and teachers' organizations to closely regulate students' on-campus wireless communications.
A 17-year-old girl, whose name was withheld, filed a petition with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in May of last year, claiming that her boarding school's excessive cell phone restriction violates her human rights. She said her school collects phones from students and allows them access to their phones only between 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., after all regular classes end and before self-study hour begins.
"It is excessive and beyond the limit that (schools) ban cell phones for study purposes or times other than regular class hours, self-study hours and sleeping time," the NHRC said.
Story and video report in Korean via YTN.
15 comments:
It seems a reasonable ruling. If they can ban them during class time that's one thing. But to ban access during lunch or breaks, I think that's somewhat excessive.
I'd like to see the commission's full logic leading to this ruling. My main issue is that cellular phones are still a relatively new technology and students seemed to communicate just fine without them in generations past. Anybody know if there is established precedent in Korean law that recognizes the right of the school to act in loco parentis?
Retarded. I never knew that people had an inalienable right to cell-phones.
"Retarded. I never knew that people had an inalienable right to cell-phones."
But they do have an inalienable right to do as they please when they're not on the clock.
FREE SOLUTION: To give teachers the ability to sleep all phones in their respective classroom only (all emergency and parental numbers remain active) and allow students to use their phone before, after, in between classes and at lunch, got to http://facebook.com/cellphoneprotocols and click LIKE.
Cell phones, gameboys, DS, etc., distract from the learning experience in a number of ways, including at the level of the brain's chemistry.
You put a kid in class without a cell phone, and eventually that kid stops thinking about their cell phone and who they're going to text or what they're going to play. They might actually start paying attention after an hour or so.
But if you give them the cell phone back during lunch, their brain's activity has shifted back to all that, and when class resumes in the afternoon, it takes time to "come down" again.
I side with any school that wants to keep those things out of their kids' hands even during lunch.
It's an interesting hypothesis, Kushibo, but do you have any evidence to back that?
Cell phones are indeed the bane of any ESL teacher who is truly serious about providing Korean families with value for their money. As an ESL teacher, I certainly would have approved of any rule my school implemented that banned cell phones from the building etc.
But at the end of the day, it seems reasonable that when a kid is not on the clock, the school can't dictate how the kid spends his/her down time. It's a question of precedent.
When I was at high school phones were banned from the school premises and none of us felt our human rights were being abused. Any excuses like needing a phone to be contacted in an emergency are invalid as the school office has a phone and this can be used to contact students and teachers.
Having phones in a school is just asking for trouble, just look at videos being spread round the internet on various things happening in schools around the world. Admittedly some of the videos do expose bullying and abuse by teachers but the majority seems to be showing students acting up in front of a camera just so they can show friends later or as an aid to bullying.
A sensible way of doing this would be to allow students to carry phones to school and home again but they must be turned off when in the school grounds, this means they will have a phone for emergencies when travelling but have no distractions when in school. The same rule should also apply to teachers, they are some of the worst offenders in Korea, when a teacher sits in a class playing with a phone how can you expect students to listen when they are told not to.
I thought for a moment the headline said "Ban on HIV testing as country violates human rights". Wishful thinking?
G-d forbid that teenagers should be separated from their glowing rectangles for a whole school day...
Puffin Watch wrote:
It's an interesting hypothesis, Kushibo, but do you have any evidence to back that?
There's stuff online about what parts of the brains are activated and various neurotransmitter levels. Some games are quite helpful to the learning process, but there's an excitatory process involved with games and frequent short communication that derails the learning process.
This thing came up a few months ago and I should look up some studies to cite (but they do pop up on their own from time to time).
I saw this first hand while taking care of young relatives this past summer in California. They were taking summer school reading classes and they were completely distracted and agitated if they were playing the DS on the way to class. When they weren't, they came out of the class at the end of the day with a completely different attitude. That DS just set them up for a distraction that lasted the whole class (morning to lunchtime). That's anecdotal, to be sure, but it went along with what I've seen before and read about.
So bottom line, Kushibo it's just a hypothesis.
Again, look beyond that is a ruling about cell phones. For a society where kids have zero freedoms, kids with naturally lighter hair are beaten because a teacher refuses to believe the kid isn't dying his/her hair, it's some what encouraging a government organization within Korea is recognizing Korean students don't have to be under the iron and potentially arbitrary rule of a single authority.
Would I have enjoyed my school telling me on my lunch period I couldn't read God Delusion or engage in debate? I couldn't bring my netbook to the school caf and publish a pro-abortion blog? I think not.
Its possible the article has worded it incorrectly, but is this a boarding school and do they give the cell phones back after study hour?
Banning cellphones from start to finish of the school day is fine and actually a good idea, but banning the cell phone from being used after school is not good. Need more info to form a solid opinion on this.
In most other situations I would say the ruling is nonsense, but in the context of Korean high schools in particular, I agree with it, simply because I feel that Korean high school students already have too much of their life absorbed by school. Between classes and mandatory study time, school takes up most of the waking hours of their day, literally. Let them use their phones when they're not in class.
I don't have a problem with kids using their phones in breaks between classes, but if the school wishes to ban them outright I think that's their prerogative. Schools are not democracies. If not being allowed to use phones is an example of a human rights violation then what about the enforcement of uniforms, hair length/colour, or even the right of teachers to discipline students without any direct evidence of misdemeanours?
In fact my mother teaches at a private high school where the off-campus consumption of alcohol or cigarettes is a violation of school policy and a punishable offence, even if the student is at the legal age to do so (18 in Australia.) I imagine this could just as easily be construed as a violation of human rights, but if you start playing this card, you are in danger of gravely undermining the authority of schools to discipline their kids.
Of course the whole education system is probably seriously outdated, but that's another issue entirely.
Post a Comment