Week Six Post One

Because I'm "old" I definitely have a hard time believing that students "need" cell phones. Even when I was in college the only students who had cell phones were rich kids with new gadgets. And they were mocked for talking on them in public! It seems in the last several years that parents are perceiving more danger than before. Have murders, rapes and kidnappings really increased to the point that parents must be overprotective? Sometimes I wonder if their paranoia is really a function of overexposure of those stories in the media. When one child is kidnapped every ounce of that story is all over the news. Of course parents should protect their children, but isn't the point of having children that we raise them into adults? I was in cars that broke down in high school on the side of the road. We didn't have cell phones and no one died or was raped or murdered or kidnapped. Honestly, those incidents came as opportunities to develop problem solving strategies. Now I know how to contact a mechanic, a tow truck and find a water pump for a 1989 Volvo. It seems today that in the same situations adolescents call their parents to the rescue; to solve their problems for them. I hope to press students to solve their own problems rather than using the phone to get the answers.