Rep. Kim Hendren this week filed a bill to prohibit personal electronic devices for public school students during the school day, including cell phones, pagers, beepers, digital media players, digital cameras, digital game consoles, and digital video or audio recorders.
Each school would create a designated area for students to drop off their electronic devices before school started and pick them up at the end of the day. The bill allows for exceptions in the case of an emergency or for another reason determined by the school district.
Hendren told KATV: “If it’s going to allow a young boy in that class to email, or however they do…Instagram or whatever they do, a girl in their class to send him a nude or partial nude picture, which is going on now in the public schools, it ought not be done in the classroom.”
Some school officials have said that implementing the bill would create massive logistical hurdles because so many students have cell phones.
Anecdotally, I have observed that addiction to smart phones is destroying the minds of children and young people. When I was a classroom teacher in New Orleans, I did not allow them.
p.s. You’ll recall that in 2015, Hendren sponsored a bill — now law — that mandated elementary schools teach cursive.