Posted on 03/30/2005 9:23:34 AM PST by thefactor
Kids spend more time in high school sending text messages than reading textbooks, a New Jersey father discovered to his horror — after his 16-year-old daughter rang up a whopping $1,058 cellphone bill.
The bill covered a month and a half, was more than 200 pages long and listed more than 12,000 text messages, said John Taylor of Oaklyn.
His daughter Ashley had sent and received almost all those messages while she was in school, where students are supposed to stow their cellphones in their lockers before classes start.
Ashley, a junior at Gloucester City HS, "no longer has a cellphone," said Taylor, who now knows why his daughter has been failing math and social studies.
"She was busy text-messaging in both classes and she got F's in both — from not paying attention," he said.
Her cellphone bill showed messages sent "at 8:01, 8:02, 8:03, 8:04 — all the way through to 3 p.m. on some days," he said.
"Everyone in school" is doing it, he said.
"The kids are using their cellphones to contact other kids or to get answers from each other," he said.
"My daughter told me some kids use them when they have tests, they text-message answers."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Thought you would enjoy this one.
that's crazy...i go through about 200 a month at college
Dr. Phil demonstrated how students are using text messages to cheat on exams/assignments while in class.
Why?
all those repeated votes to American Idol
Wrong answers, apparently.
I graduated college in 1998. Never had a cell during college. Now that I have one I wonder how I ever survived without it, but this case is a little out of control. How could someone type that much?
YARK!!!
Can you say grounded for life?
I'll bet somebody has a job here real soon.
I'll bet there will be a lawsuit against the cell company providers soon...lookout Cingular, T-Mobile, etc.
I don't suffer that kind of crap...my 14 y.o. daughter was given a Tracfone and an allowance of minutes every month - go over the minutes and you don't talk until the next month rolls around. Period.
And voting for her favorite songs on MTV's TRL show.
That's what happens when you don't pay attention to what your kids are doing.
When we got another line for our daughter when she was in HS, I believe initially we may not have even allowed text messages.
Either way, hubby would check her phone every day, and call in checking on minutes etc.
She wasn't even allowed to have her phone on during school except at specific times.
Oh, wow. I used to teach at a university in Japan. The use of cell phones is 10X worse there.
Any bets on how long it took the ACLU to contact her about suing her father after they read this?
Something tell me a paper route won't quite cover this one. Plus, if she has to get a job, how will she ever find time to study? Being a kid nowadays is so tough.
Wow, and I thought i was tricky writing in reeeeeeaaallly small print on my calculator all the physics formulas during tests(not that it helped any).
LOL.
What is wrong with these parents. They need to do what my hunting buddy did, he got his daughters prepaid cells, he paid the first $50 then when they ran through that they had to pay or go without. It taught responciblity real fast.
Sounds like Ashley isn't the only one who wasn't paying attention...
Am I missing something here? Why are they even allowed in school?
I'm PO'd not at the kids, but at the school administration that lets this happen. Kids will be kids and need discipline. It's up to the schools to provide it. If they have rules about leaving cell phones in lockers they have to enforce it.
How does a teacher NOT KNOW the kids are doing this under their noses in class? How does a school administration NOT KNOW their students are sending and receiving text messages in class?
These Board of Education Union Drones know full well what these kids are doing but DON'T CARE. I guess if they made "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" today, Mr. Hand would be telling Spicoli what toppings he wanted on the pizza.
Ouch. I assume your child's mistake was an honest one. But this was an egregious abuse of a privilege. Most kids see their cell phones as an absolute right.
If kids want to waste away their hard earned money on stupid text messages, let them - it is a lesson on the value of a dollar. If this girl can make 6 bucks an hour, its about 200 hours of work after taxes. If she can work 10 hours a week, it will take her almost half a year to pay off one month's cell phone bill. I think it will be a good lesson.
However, sending 12,000 text messages while at school is completely insane. She would be grounded for a long time. And the father is right - how the hell did teachers not notice. 12,000 messages divided by 30 school days over 6 weeks is 400 messages a day or 50 per hour. How does anyone do this without getting caught???
It's a public school. God is the only thing that is verboten.
Ah yes, the old TI-85 graphing calculator. Got me through calculus II. Barely. Last math class I ever took.
Same here, and I graduated in '02. Bought one when I got out because I took on some responsibilities that require me to be in more or less frequent contact, and didn't want to get a landline as well. But I survived college fine.
But, seriously, and I feel like I'm really old for saying this, what the devil do high school students need cel phones for? In school, especially? When I went to high school, they were actually forbidden. I wouldn't have a problem with that. I'm actually now interested to know what our policy is (I'm on my local school board is) about cel phones...
It just doesn't seem good. Kids + driving + cel phones? Or maybe it's so they can call up their sweethearts easier to hook up?
Wow, do I sound like a codger. I'm really not.
I had to know that was coming. :-)
What rationale is given for allowing them to have them on during class?
Exactly. If an emergency message needs to be delivered, call the principals office like in the "old" days (Only 5-10 years ago). What radically changed in our society that requires kids to have a cell-phone in school?
He was probably 45 and was standing in line talking on his cell phone. He finally hung up and glanced over and saw my 88 year old grandmother staring at him.
When he looked at her she said “you must be mighty important.”
Well, you sorta had to be there to appreciate it, but he turned all red.
In my son's college, a couple of the math profs are now handing out graphing calculators before a test.
You aren't allowed to use your own calculator...too many kids programming in equations that they should memorize.
I can't imagine life without a computer, and have no idea how I would get by in college without one today.
A cell phone, on the other hand... I have gotten into the habit of taking it with me only when I absolutely have to.
My calculator already had the physics equations on it. But most of the time we could not use a calculator on the tests, so it didn't really help.
Here's the other side of the equation..which I'm NOT nevessarily advocating...After Columbine, the number of parents getting cell phones for their kids went through the roof....they want to be able to reah them in an emergency..and if the phones are locked up in the lockers during the day..they don't serve their intended purpose..
When I was in HS, there was no such thing as cell phones.
And BTW - am I the only person that has a cell phone that doesn't text message? The only reason I even know about it is because a friend has it.
It happened to me. My daughters phone was stolen and several months later we got a used Sprint phone. The next months phone bill was $150 higher and I eventually found out it was due to this exact thing. They informed me that the old phone was not compatible with the existing technology so it use a different technology to do what she used to do on the old phone. Except it was charging us for it big time. I told her that she was responsible for the charges. She doesn't do text messaging any more
Meanwhile, they reversed the charges.
And she still got F's?
Darned if I know. But since it's a public school, I'm sure they have one.
Whoa, dude...no cel phones. That must have been, like, a drag. How did you communicate while you were riding around on your brontosaurus? :-) j/k
I use text messaging infrequently...sometimes when I'm at a loud event where it would be inconvenient to talk or want to convey a quick message without actually talking to the person, lol.
Dang...all I did was write some notes in pencil on the desk(smeared off afterward) and used the TI-82 calculator memory for storing math formulas......
I got no problem with kids having cell phones; we give one of ours to our son a lot, such as when he's umpiring baseball games. We don't give him one for school, although that's not my beef. Sure, I'd want my kid to have a cell phone to get in touch with me if he needed to. But, I would expect him to not use it in class, and if he did, I would also expect, and want, the school to come down on him.
Well, sine me and the girls had a "Come to Jesus" session about this, and I re-did the contract with T-Mobile, things are under control. But I do feel this guy's pain...
How does somebody type that much. The family plan I have typically has hundreds of minutes roll over at the end of the month. I think we've got about 3,000 minutes rolled over, and we've got 4 people with 850 minutes.
According to the article, they aren't. The teachers just didn't seem to be too alert.
I just don't see how they can miss it.
Move out now while you still know everything.
My guess is that they don't see enforcing the rules as their responsibility.
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