It is a rare lawmaker who’ll admit that the world would be better off without a law that he or she sponsored. State Rep. Mary Flowers (D-Chicago) apparently is one of that breed.
In 1990 Flowers sponsored a bill that made it illegal for students in Illinois’ public schools to have cell phones. That was in those long-ago days when such phones were bulky, cumbersome and expensive. So expensive, in fact, that it was felt the only students who would have them would be drug dealers.
Times have changed. Today, according to one market research firm, three of every four teenagers have cell phones, which have become small, convenient, nearly ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive. Increasingly, parents equip their children with cell phones so they can keep track of them.
Flowers says it’s time to repeal her 1990 law and let cell phones into the schools. The Illinois House has agreed with her and passed her repeal bill. The Senate ought to do the same just as promptly as possible.
As a practical matter, Flowers’ repealer isn’t really needed. Her 1990 law gave school boards the authority to allow cell phones into schools if the boards and their principals agreed on rules for their use.
But the repeal would signal a shift in the legislature’s bias–from opposition to cell phones to support of them. According to a spokesman for the Illinois Association of School Boards, boards would still have the power to exempt their districts, but they would have to vote to prohibit the devices and, not incidentally, would have to explain such a policy to their constituents.
At least twice in the last few years, parents have seen the utility of cell phones demonstrated in situations of grave danger and high anxiety: during the Columbine High School killings and during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks last year.
During Columbine, some students inside the school were able to call out to parents or police. And while cell phones were largely useless to people in New York during the terrorist attacks, people elsewhere used them to check on family members and friends.
Cell phones are not without drawbacks. They always seem to ring at the most inopportune times. And the disruptions they create are made worse by the fact that newer phones play a variety of tunes in place of a simple ring.
Also, telephones can be almost as addictive to a teenager as any drug. Control will be a challenge. But it is a challenge that some districts already have met by a combination of judicious rule-making and reasonable enforcement.
Cell phones are too much a part of modern American life for schools to simply try to ignore and keep out. It’s time to repeal the ban and let students and schools learn how to live with them.