OPINION - If there is a fight in a school, and there is no cell phone to record it, does anyone get hurt? - B. Kismet

If there is a fight in a school, and there is no cell phone to record it, does anyone get hurt?

As a result of the recent fight at Chippewa that was recorded by cell phone and subsequently published, the father of the alleged aggressor, has asked that cell phones be banned in schools.

This bizarre abdication of responsibility on his daughter’s behalf, could be an ingenius ploy to shift the debate from whether or not his daughter is an animal who may not belong in school, to whether or not cell phones belong in schools. However, it could also be an indication that the nameless Dad is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. I mean … seriously … if there was no fight … the cell phone would not have recorded anything interesting enough to warrant all this attention. If there was no cell phone, the beating would still have occurred.

It reminds me of the zen koan “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?” I never really cared what the monks had to say about this, if anything, because I always thought the correct answer was: “Who cares???” A fight in a school differs from a tree falling in the forest in that the fight has important consequences, observed or not, whereas a tree falling doesn't.

So, the phone is blameless and irrelevant.

In a similar circumstance, when a popular school teacher propositioned a minor on MSN, no one said the answer was to ban MSN. The solution was to curb that teacher's behaviour. It would be senseless to say that without MSN, the proposition would not have occured. Even if the teacher would not have found another way to talk sexy to the child, it would still be crazy to blame MSN.

I wouldn’t even think it makes too much sense to blame the combatants either. When kids fight it is an unfortunate thing. However, most kids who are violent give up violence before becoming an adult. Win or lose, fighting is either immediately, or at least eventually, distasteful to the participants. If you lose enough fights you are going to figure out how to stop getting into them. If you win too many, you gradually realize that you are seen as an animal, which will also force you to modify your behavior. Either way it seems to sort itself out, and I haven’t heard of anyone getting killed in a school yard fracas.

I find it to be very curious that whenever there is a problem, someone seems to think the solution is less freedom. A fight at Chippewa cannot possibly be an adequate reason to strip students of their freedom to carry a cell phone.


Bob Kismet

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