I kinda agree with you. But kinda not. But mostly.

I believe the important thing is not that the parent is interceding for the child (and you can believe that I define “child” as younger than a college freshman) but rather that the parent is modeling how the child should handle the situation. 

Whining is wrong, regardless of age.  Whining and fit-throwing is worse.  Modeling those behaviors is NOT good parenting. And those are generally the kind of people that are raising spoiled narcisistic children anyway.

Yet, its not good parenting either to expect your child to resolve their own “situations” without the power and authority to do so.  Realistically, many teachers are bullies. Thats just life. But, its also “just life” that when one goes after my child they face me. 

I wish we knew the rest of the story you quoted. Maybe on the surface its seems ... ridiculous. But, there are a lot of questions.  Was the boy a problem student? Defiant?  Why wasn’t the phone blocking incoming calls? Who was the call from? Do they take ALL cell-phones or only the ones that annoy teachers? Why COULDN"T they give it back to the parents? Why the “we’re going to punish you by taking your phone” if the parents used it as a safety precaution? When they explained it to the principle, why the hard-line that “policy is policy”?

I’m sure there are lots and lots of wonderful teachers in the world. Some of them are my friends. But there are also a lot of petty-dictators out there, hell-bent on making life harder just because they have the power to do so.

I remember a professor telling the class (when I was getting a Masters in Education) that a teacher’s worst nightmare was a parent that was both “educated and motivated”.  It wasn’t just any professor. It was a special seminar by a dean.  The entire huge program (at a very large state flagship university) seemed to be designed around the idea that parents are the enemy.

I understand that there are lots of assaults upon the public-school system, and that some people see cell-phones as annoying toys, and that some parents are petty-whiners who rescue their spoiled brat from every inconvience. But I’m not sure THIS particular situation is the best example of that.

Frankly, I see the mother’s point. Especially if my sixteen-year-old had started driving to school. Especially if he were driving on the Interstate, or along an uninhabited stretch of road.  A cell-phone is not a far-fetched safety precaution.

On another note, it does raise the interesting legal question of what a school can do to punish a student, and the role of personal property in that.

"Yet, its not good parenting either to expect your child to resolve their own “situations” without the power and authority to do so. “

Sorry Lucy, there nothing to resolve. The brat broke the rule by allowing the phone to ring, thereby disturbing the class. Therefore he should go to the office and pickup his phone in 5 days.

If my Middle Schooler has a teacher issue, and I believe intervention is required, I would probably make that move.  My High Schooler will receive encouragement and advice from me, but his issues with teachers are going to be his own battle.  (Of course there are situations where I would involve myself but I don’t forsee any of those.  A teacher who is a mini-Hitler is probably not one of those situations...learning to cope with and deal with that is a great life experience - who hasn’t had a boss that behaved the same?)

In this situation, I think the policy is laid out pretty clearly.  Disturb the class with your phone’s ringing, and lose it for 5 days.  Why so harsh a penalty?  A single cell phone going off in church is disturbing enough.  Imagine trying to teach with a call or text message coming in every 5 minutes and breaking the concentration of a class full of distractable students.

I suppose they could ban them from the school campus altogether as a substance harmful to education.

I’m not saying, exactly, that the boy shouldn’t have been punished for letting the phone ring in class.  Its amazingly easy to switch the phone to silent mode.

But I fail to see how taking the phone is appropriate punishment. And why the five days? Is it ok to put the boy in jeopardy for five days so he’ll “learn his lesson”? What if THIS is the week he has a flat on the way to school and can’t call, ends up walking, and killed on the side of the road by a drunk-driver? Or, what if he gets “picked up” by a nut?  Why is putting him in harms way a good punishment?

There are other deterrents that can be used. Detention. Loss of priveledges for school functions like sports and dances.  Automatic “F” for the grading period. Suspension for repeat offenses.  Those things would be annoying, but not life-threatening. None of those things are anywhere near the same level of dangerous as a 16 year old stranded alone on the side of the road.

The reason why the phone was taken probably has to do with the fact that I’ll bet it wasn’t supposed to be on in the first place. I suppose we should just stop class every time a phone rings and give each person a warning to follow the policies that already exist-- but I imagine that the only thing that would be taught then is that you really don’t have to follow rules nor do you ever need to be considerate about disrupting the learning environment.

Imagine trying to teach with 27 cell phones going off all the time, and maybe you will get the idea. And they will go off ALL the time. I’ve actually got a student right now getting medical treatment (including anti-inflammatories) for her stressed thumbs from texting so much, too. No foolin’.