School Districts Banning Camera Phones

There's been a lot of talk recently about the push by school districts to ban camera phones. It's a bit amusing. A decade ago, many schools banned mobile phones in general, because they felt they were either distracting or (more honestly) mostly used by drug dealers. After Columbine and September 11, many schools adjusted those bans, realizing that many parents wanted their kids to have mobile phones for security reasons. Now, as soon as those phones add cameras, the school districts are freaking out again, and banning them. However, that's not exactly what's happening in Fayette County, West Virginia, where they've just banned camera phones from schools. Here, the school district already bans "cell phones, pagers, tape recorders and other electronic devices." So... why do they need to call out camera phones separately? Aren't they included under the cell phone ban? Furthermore, it's interesting that they stated: "We feel we could not figure a time when that (camera phone) would be a required item to have in school." This is unfortunate. Here's a tool that has many positive potential uses, and the institutions that are teaching our kids can't think of a way it might be useful. That's what we're teaching our kids?

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