Okay, it looks like I may need to clarify a couple things that may have been mis-interpreted in my last post. If anyone doesn't understand what is going on, feel free to read my last blog, all comments as well as David's blog and comments.
Based on both Amy and Alison's comment it seems that my post was understood to be saying that if we do not agree with a law or rule we should not have to abide by it. That is completely not the case. In fact no matter how much I don't agree with a law, because it is a law, I think it needs to be followed.
In that case I agree with Amy's analogy of of the 25 mph speed limit. I wasn't trying to say if we don't agree with a speed limit we should be able to go faster with no penalty. What I was trying to say is A) I think it is a stupid rule, but that asside B) if the speed limit is 25 mph for me it should be for everyone. I say that based on the comment that it may be alright for teachers to use their cell phones as they are probably more responsible. That may be true, but if we all saw cops driving 35 or 40 mph down that street just because they were trained to drive faster safer, it would totally undermind the law, and so the law should apply to all, even those tasked with enforcing it.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I also am very much for rules and laws as I think they are necissary to have a peaceful safe society. However, I think it is possible to have too many rules, which can actually take away our rights and freedoms and goes from governing to controlling. I will give an example. Lately Lilly has decided to turn on her light after we put her to bed, as soon as we leave the room. That then leads to her getting out of bed and not going to sleep as she should. Now we have talked to her about this and even given her punishment as we saw fit, but she would still do it. So we started trying to figure out other things we could do. Well she is able to turn on the light because the switch is by her bed, so we talked about moving her bed to the other side of the room so she couldn't reach the switch. Although this would make her keep our rule of not turning on the light, it would not teach her anything. It would just make it impossible for her to break the rule. If I remember right, there was once someone else that wanted to do that to. Make us do what was right by taking away out ability to choose, or controlling us. As we know, those of us here on earth are here because we wanted the ability to choose, we did not want to be controlled. Now I realize that is a pretty big difference than just whether there should be a rule about cell phone use in a public school. However, my whole point is although rules are good, if the take away our choice and make it so we cannot choose, we are not teaching anything, we are just controlling things. I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids growing up where they do the right things because they don't have a choice. I want them to have laws and rules to govern them, not control them. Fortunatly we live in a country where we do have those choices. Unfortunatly people choose to break the laws and make it worse for the rest of us. So if our kids grow up with the schools not teaching us anything, but instead controlling what we do, what is going to happen when we go out into society when we have to make those choices. We will have no idea what to do, because we won't have a teacher telling us what to do.
I feel like I am going to just start saying the same things in different ways, so I will end it now. I am just saying rules can go too far, and if there is going to be a law or rule, it should apply to everyone, not just some.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Clarification
Posted by Potterspot at 11:31 PM
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3 comments:
Okay, I really can see your point. I still feel like adults are different from kids but I ran this one by Taylor to see what he thought. Currently they have the no cell phone use rule at school too but they are still allowed to have their phones at school as long as they keep them turned off. The teachers however, don't have the rule and he says they do use their phones too much and he would agree that if the rule is good for the kids, then the adults should have to abide by it too. He pointed out that they have phones in their classrooms where they can take calls that the office passes on to them, so they shouldn't have to rely on their cell phones either. So I guess it does make sense that they should have the same rules as well. I guess my feeling is that I don't see why not using phones at school is a big deal at all. I think people rely far to much on their cell phones these days and it's taking away from real face to face communication. It just seems like everywhere I go, I see people with phones glued to their ears (or fingers if they prefer texting to talking). I don't know. Maybe I just have cell phone envy becuase we don't have one yet. Anyway, I'll end now before I just start repeating myself too.
I agree about the too much cell phone use thing. I am guilty of that myself. However they are really nice to have too.
I do see your point and I would have a real problem with it if my kid had a teacher who only talked on their phones all day. BUT, at some point kids have to realize that their teachers are authority figures and as such may be entitled to certain privileges kids just don't have. This will be the same throughout their lives, whether it is their boss or military superior or whatever. Rules aren't always fun and don't always seem fair. But I still think we have to follow them. Kids need to realize that you can make more progress by sticking to the rules and proving you can be responsible than by continuing to try to get away with something that may or may not be fair. I have a feeling that if all the students ONLY used their phones to check the time in the hallway there wouldn't have been a need to make that rule in the first place.
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