Schools would like to get rid of student cell phones. Guess who's stopping that, and it's not the students.

I'm Scott Ott with Bill Whittle and Stephen Green. This episode of Right Angles brought to you by the members at Bill Whittle.com.

And gentlemen, there was a story in the Wall Street Journal about, started out, Steve, in a rural school district in Colorado where they tried to ban smartphones

and the parents stood in the way. The parents want the kids to have smartphones at school.

Now, this is probably one of those OK Boomer topics, but I think it brings up some fascinating issues.

You know, obviously, to reminisce just a little bit, Steve, because I'm so much older than you,

when I was in school, if I needed to make a phone call, there was a pay phone that was just

outside in front of the main entrance of the school, and I could walk outside

and I could put money in the phone in the form of hard currency, and I could call my grandmother

if I needed to have somebody come pick me up, and then she would wait until my grandfather got

home from work hours later and could send him to pick me up because we had one car.

But anyway, now every kid has a phone, practically, and schools are finding they're having

problems, Steve, in class, you've got young kids. I'm sure you have a better pulse on this than I do,

but they're having problems not only with distractions

like kids, you know, watching TikTok in school, but kids taking photos in the bathroom,

cyberbullying things that are going on through texting and other kinds of applications where

they're sending threatening or intimidating messages. Steve, it's not a simple question,

is it when you say, because you want to parents should be in charge of their own children, right?

And you send them to the government-run school, basically. Should the government-run school be

able to say, no, we're going to take away this

phone that mom gave you while you're here because we need you to stay focused and we don't

want you to be taunting your fellow classmates?

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