Students are still passing notes

Writing about the cell phone explosion and texting takes a bit of courage on my part since I mostly use my cell phone only to call other people. They usually can't call me because I haven't turned it on, or because I haven't charged it in the first place.

I hate being tied to the thing, carrying it around, and remembering to keep it charged. I suppose that out-of-the-loop is an understatement where I am concerned. Perhaps “uninformed” is the better term, but “staying connected” is something that I obviously don't get.

From my perspective, cellphoning or texting puts too much control in hands of the connectee. What I don't want is to call someone who has a cell phone which they do keep glued to their hand or their ear and get screened out. If I want to speak to someone, I want to be spoken to. Totally selfish on my part.

Most of the forms of non-face-to-face communication (faxing, emailling, texting) preclude the knowledge of actual communication. And if my children are driving, which they do almost as much as they communicate, I don't want them talking or texting anyway. What I don't like is not actually communicating when I am communicating, or more precisely, not knowing whether I am actually communicating.

I know, that is just what happened in that last paragraph. But texting is open-ended because you don't know whether your message was actually received. Last weekend my son had to borrow my car to drive to a friend's house to find out whether she received his text message since she didn't reply.
That's high-tech communication for you.

When we were in grade school, we passed notes. We weren't supposed to pass notes, so that was part of the attraction of passing notes. Getting a note to its intended receiver without getting caught was half the satisfaction. It was also a challenge to get the note to its intended without someone else taking the liberty of opening up the little ball of paper and reading it, in which case, again, the intended may or may not actually have gotten it anyway. Reading others' notes was social taboo, but of course some kids didn't follow the rules. If the teacher caught up with the note, it was read in class, (contrary to social protocol) and that curbed the practice for a minute or two.

The coolest notes had check boxes which was shorthand for “decide and pick the best answer.” “Do you like me?” The recipient then made an X” in the appropriate box (yes or no) and passed the note back after crossing out his own name on the outside,and writing the new receiver's name. It was polite to mark the “yes” box.

As near as I can tell, texting is the techno-age equivalent of passing notes. Part of its attraction is that the older generation (teacher) tries to limit it. The similarities don't end there, either. Apparently, like passing notes, it is often done in school or in class, and kids don't often get caught. That part I don't get—how do you compose a text message from inside your pocket?

I guess that a common in-school text message is “BTD” (bored to death). I am not commenting on teaching presentation or skills, just reporting. But the obvious solution here is for the teacher to text-message the day's lesson to the students. Some kids will be sleeping and not get the message, but what else is new? They will at least have the option of getting it later—or deleting it. Again, what else is new?