Florida: Parents must police bullies: In Palm Beach County schools, keep cellphones turned off.

By THE PALM BEACH POST

Posted: 8:19 p.m. Friday, April 30, 2010

Monroe Benaim believes that "cellphones will become tools in the classroom." His optimism about gadgets is no surprise, coming as it does from a man educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cellphones are evolving into personal computers, the chairman of the Palm Beach County School Board says, that will allow students to search the Internet, take tests online and, with teachers monitoring student responses, "we'll almost know instantly whether the lesson has been absorbed."

But Dr. Benaim also is a father, and has longtime experience in the schools. So it's also no surprise that he recognizes the gap between what cellphones might become and what they are today. Today in schools, they are a distraction at best and, at worst, a weapon for bullies. Along with social networking sites, blogs and regular e-mail, cellphone texting can create a forum for students to attack and harass each other. Says Dr. Benaim: "Emotionally distraught, immature brains are receiving very derogatory messages."

As Post reporter Kevin D. Thompson showed in a story last Sunday, the consequences can be severe. In March, Deerfield Beach Middle School student Wayne Treacy stomped fellow student Josie Lou Ratley nearly to death after the girl allegedly sent Treacy a text message about his brother, who had killed himself. "I don't know how we control those kinds of things," Dr. Benaim concedes. Until there is a way to do so, school districts such as Palm Beach County - which is considering policies that would ease a ban on cellphone use at school - should go very slowly.

School districts in Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Martin counties allow cellphones on campus only if they are turned off. Palm Beach County has been considering looser policies, but Martin and St. Lucie have not.

When bullying was a matter of kids getting into fights on the playground, schools reasonably could be expected to stop a lot of it. Now, with so much "virtual bullying," the responsibility more than ever belongs to parents. Schools can't demand to see what students are posting on Facebook. Parents can, at least in theory.

Of course, in theory parents also can prevent their kids from buying violent video games. But, as shown by a Supreme Court hearing into whether states can ban the sale of such games to minors, too many parents don't do that, either.

Parents think of cellphones as safety devices. But to the extent they facilitate bullying, they're the opposite of that. And though visionaries see them as classroom tools, to the extent they are distractions or weapons of intimidation, cellphones are the opposite of that, too. Every day a student is bullied or harassed is a day the student loses from school.

Teachers don't have the time or means to be cellphone police. The non-virtual reality is that, for now, the best policy for cellphones at school continues to be that if they're there at all, they must be turned off. Parents who resist such a policy are parents who are part of the problem, and there are too many of them already.