Centerfield

As long as he's supporting things like that, he's a little too Big Government for me. I know it's not probably not a centrist position but so be it. I think the Second Amendment is just as important as the First.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at June 19, 2007 03:39 PM

Me, too.

Some other selected bans that seem wrong to me include cellphones in schools, and a pretty harsh smoking ban. The silliest to me, personlly, is transfats, for which nothing like real evidence of harm is there.

At a certain point, you have to ask if he likes banning things too much (though, I have to admit that at least he stood up for metal bats in school, yay). It's supposed to be a FREE country.

Also, the vast cameras proposed for his congestion plan make me wonder (like I do about all too many 2008 candidates) if he sees privacy as a human right.

Posted by: Jon Kay at June 19, 2007 07:14 PM

Meh. He talks about treating New Yorkers like shareholders, but it seems to me he treats them more like employees.

Posted by: Joshua Macy at June 19, 2007 10:03 PM

If not outright banning, then a very strict policy on cell phone use at schools makes sense to me. Seriously, are you going to make the argument that students won't use cell phones to cheat on tests and to entertain themselves instead of paying attention in class?

Helicopter parents will just have to adjust. If you need to tlak to your kid because it's an emergency, you call the office. Big deal.

Posted by: bk at June 19, 2007 10:46 PM

I will make the argument that teachers can and mostly do the same way they catch and deal with the many other ways of cheating and focusing attention elsewhere.

There is the violent flash mob problem, but I am convinced that's alot rarer than the phones helping in emergencies.

Posted by: Jon Kay at June 19, 2007 11:07 PM

At a certain point, you have to ask if he likes banning things too much (though, I have to admit that at least he stood up for metal bats in school, yay). It's supposed to be a FREE country.

That did seem out of character to me. I fully expected him to support banning metal bats but he surprised me there. Wonder what the story was.

Kids cheat by writing notes on their arms but we don't ban arms (or pens!). Let teachers control their own class rooms. I'm a big fan of less cell phone use but a top-down ban seems like a stretch to me.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at June 20, 2007 08:47 AM

I think they're banning some things in Texas. Destroying Chemical weapons

Posted by: Maxtrue at June 20, 2007 09:40 AM

Kids cheat by writing notes on their arms but we don't ban arms (or pens!). Let teachers control their own class rooms. I'm a big fan of less cell phone use but a top-down ban seems like a stretch to me.

Well if teachers are by and large in favor of such a ban (and I don't know that they are), then a top-down ban would be the simplest way to implement it.

The arm writing comment is just silly. Obviously text messaging takes cheating to an unforeseen level, since it makes it possible for kids to communicate without the the teacher's knowledge.

Tghe reason i think the ban maks simple sense is becuas that's the only way you can avoid making cell phone management a daily or even class-to-class issue. If you have a test, then what, you have to make kids turn in their tech gadgets prior to the test and then retrieve them at the end of class, cutting the class time by at least 5 minutes?

Posted by: bk at June 20, 2007 09:49 AM

Just out of curiousity (the British kind), since when has a ban on anything kept kids from doing anything?

The arm writing comment is just silly. Obviously text messaging takes cheating to an unforeseen level, since it makes it possible for kids to communicate without the the teacher's knowledge.

A. The arm writing comment was supposed to be silly, thanks for noticing. I think banning legs makes way more sense than arms. B. Unforeseen? How is it any different than passing notes? Or having a code worked out ahead of time? You don't have to do anything ahead of time. If someone gets caught using a cell phone during a test, they fail in the same way that if they get caught cheating in any other way, they fail. Why the desire to pass overarching rules on the assumption of guilt? Kids are ingenious, if they want to cheat, they will.

If you have a test, then what, you have to make kids turn in their tech gadgets prior to the test and then retrieve them at the end of class, cutting the class time by at least 5 minutes?

I don't have to make the kids do anything. I would have a rule in my classroom that says "if you get caught cheating, you fail" and then I assume personal responsibility will work its magic. Posted by: Scotch Drinker at June 20, 2007 10:06 AM

Today's Dilbert is strangely appropriate to this discussion.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at June 20, 2007 10:20 AM

Scotch Drinker,

You consider the Second Amendment as important as the First? Wow!

Posted by: Marc Schneider at June 20, 2007 11:16 AM

I can tell you don't have kids in school, Brian. Cell phone bans make sense until you do. And trust me, I'm cheap, and I hate the idea of handing kids cell phones when the bill comes to me!

Schools often shut down the office switchboard as soon as they can after last bell, while the school itself stays open for after-school activities of assorted types. BUT YOU CAN'T CALL IN, and often the kids can't call OUT, at all, on the school system. Leaving them (and you) in parent/child limbo. Kid missed the bus, or the bus never showed? You won't find out until they don't appear at home--and then you won't be able to find out where the hell they are, because all you get calling the school is the office voicemail.

Last year some of us parents ended up buying pre-paid airtime phones for the after-hours school personnel, as a thank you for them letting their phones be used by our kids to call us when the unexpected happened--or when parents just "got lost" and forgot to pick up little Johnny on time. This year the admin conceded we had a point (after lawsuits were threatened) and started allowing our kids to put cell phones in their backpacks. Not USE them during school hours, just HAVE them for those days when life does not go according to plan. My kids were promptly equipped with cheap pre-paid phones of otherwise limited utility (no texting) with the correct emergency numbers pre-programmed into them.

As with so many things, outright bans are usually outright stupid.

Posted by: Tully at June 20, 2007 11:34 AM

BUT YOU CAN'T CALL IN, and often the kids can't call OUT, at all, on the school system. Leaving them (and you) in parent/child limbo. Kid missed the bus, or the bus never showed?

You do what we did in my day... You walk... uphill... in the snow.... without a coat. :)

This just seems pretty effing stupid to me. Maybe this makes me sound old, and I am only 30, but kids don't need cell phones at school, we did it that way for hundreds of years, and it was fine.

Schools often shut down the office switchboard as soon as they can after last bell, while the school itself stays open for after-school activities of assorted types. BUT YOU CAN'T CALL IN, and often the kids can't call OUT, at all, on the school system.

I have never heard of this, but there has got to be a way to fix that problem.

Posted by: Mathew at June 20, 2007 12:54 PM

> I have never heard of this, but there has got to be a way to fix that problem.

My school did the same thing. And even if you did call during school hours, you have to go through layers of people rather than talking to your kid directly. The high bureaucraticness of schools doesn't exactly encourage high service levels.

Posted by: Jon Kay at June 20, 2007 02:05 PM

I don't have to make the kids do anything. I would have a rule in my classroom that says "if you get caught cheating, you fail" and then I assume personal responsibility will work its magic

Know the corollary?...it's "if you don't get caught cheating, you are rewarded." That's the magic of personal responsibility, too.

What you're doing your very best to avoid acknowledging is the obvious dynamic that if technology makes it easier to cheat and harder to detect, it will increase in frequency. Market forces, you know?

The magic personal responsibility of a teacher is to dissuade cheating so that kids will decide to just do the work. It's irresponsible not to anticipate and combat things which can change the dynamics of the classroom to the detriment of learning.

I'm happy to concede the trivial point that cheating occurred prior to the advent of 21st century technology, as well as the point that determined and creative cheaters will be hard to detect. I'm not looking for or expecting 100% efficacy in a policy, I'm just looking for good faith efforts to minimize it. That a horse may jump a fence is a grossly insufficient rationale for leaving the gate open.

But hey, I guess there are 2 types of ranchers in this world. :-)Those convinced they can train all the horses to stick around voluntarily, and the pragmatics who just go ahead and put up a fence.

Posted by: bk at June 20, 2007 02:09 PM

I don't have a problem with gun restrictions and do not in any way see them as somehow automatically an infringement of the 2nd.

Here's my centrist take: the Right errs in illogically opposing anything that resembles gun control as somehow the beginning of a slippery slope just as the Left errs in illogically opposing anything that resembles a restriction on unfettered access to abortion on the same grounds. Both are wrong and illogical, IMHO. More to the point, both stances drive reasonable people towards the Center in search of something resembling rationality.

Posted by: Kevin at June 20, 2007 03:07 PM

I agree that an outright ban is stupid. Foolishly, I was thinking that it would manifest itself sensibly as either "check 'em at the door" or else "keep them in your locker during school hours." IOW, banned from classrooms during class hours.

It's definitely overkill if they aren't available for the purposes you describe. And the combo of banning them AND shutting off the switchboard is just foolish. You gotta be able to plan your day, and know where your kids are. 100% granted.

I just would want to circumvent their abuse for cheating, and say, a helicopter mom phoning in to see how Janie is feeling during the middle of 3rd period math. I'd have ahard time tolerating that as a teacher, which is where I am heading...

Posted by: bk at June 20, 2007 03:44 PM

Typing frantically and giggling when the rest of the class is asleep strikes me as alot easier to notice than more traditional student measures like extre reading material (my personal schoolday boredom response).

Posted by: Jon Kay at June 20, 2007 04:05 PM

You consider the Second Amendment as important as the First? Wow!

I'm not sure what that means but any day that I can truly amaze someone counts as a good day in my book.

Brian, you called my banning arms comment silly but you really think those two types of ranchers (teachers?) exist? Ok.

Early in this thread, you were arguing for at the very least an extremely strict policy on cell phones if not a ban. Now, not so much, you're looking for more sensible restrictions which I would argue is what I've been talking about all along. Don't use your cell phone in class. Period. That seems pretty sensible to me. But bans? Bad idea.

Here's my centrist take: the Right errs in illogically opposing anything that resembles gun control as somehow the beginning of a slippery slope just as the Left errs in illogically opposing anything that resembles a restriction on unfettered access to abortion on the same grounds. Both are wrong and illogical, IMHO. More to the point, both stances drive reasonable people towards the Center in search of something resembling rationality.

Avoiding the issue with abortion not being in the bill of rights, I think the centrist position quite often doesn't involve compromise. I think a centrist position on the First Amendment involves as few restrictions on speech as possible. I'd argue the same for the Second. Equating the 2nd with Roe v. Wade as a barometer for centrist politics is a fairly significant overreach in my view. Posted by: Scotch Drinker at June 20, 2007 04:23 PM

All that kinda worked when I was a kid too, but guess what? The school systems have changed a wee bit in thirty years. My oldest's middle school is not a mile or two over, like mine was. It's closer to fifteen miles, cross-town. She can't just walk home after school. The "neighborhood school" of the Baby Boom years is being priced out of existence. Even in a "tight" regional feeder pattern, the grade school may be three or four miles away, across a few major arterials.

I have never heard of this, but there has got to be a way to fix that problem.

We fixed it. :-) We found a way to let them have limited-use parent-programmed cell phones that would not disrupt school routine.

Pretty much anything you would want to call your child about during school hours is something you probably should route through the office, and they make it tough on purpose so you don't do it for little stuff. I can understand that.

The usual problem is after school, when things don't go to plan. And your kid is stuck on the other side of town, with NO way to reach you.

Posted by: Tully at June 20, 2007 05:24 PM

More Bloomberg related news (tangential but whatever) from a guy with an exponentially better sense of humor than me. And more proof that bans tend to conform strongly to the law of unintended consequences.

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at June 20, 2007 05:52 PM

Darth Nanny.....

Posted by: Tully at June 20, 2007 08:13 PM