Inside the Push to Ban Phones in Schools
Too many teachers have been caught behaving badly on student videos.
A BY ALICE GIORDANO
n aggressive bipartisan movement supported by teachers unions to ban cell- phones in the classroom has
swept the nation. Republican states have joined Democrats in adopting the narrative that phones have to go because they are interfering with teachers’ ability to teach. In New Hampshire, where the
latest proposal to enact what is com- monly called a “bell-to-bell” cellphone ban quickly won cross-party support, Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte heralded it as a “way to let teachers do what they do best without being the phone police.” But is that the real agenda behind
the bans? Tafshier Cosby, senior director of
The Center for Organizing and Partner- ship at the National Parents Union, says that schools are banning phones as an “easy way out” of fi xing a litany of failures in America’s classrooms. “There is a deeper disconnection
that’s happening between teach- ers and students. It is not that cell-
phone,” she said. When President Donald Trump was
elected to a second term, a hailstorm of videos captured by students using their cellphones were posted over social media showing teachers around the country berating students who support- ed him, shouting expletives at them, making vulgar comments, and even calling them Nazis. One of the student videos shows a
frenzied Lake Brantley High School biology teacher in Florida screaming that the nation just elected Hitler and that Trump was certain to deport every- one who isn’t white. In another video, a teacher calls
Trump a “rapist, draft-dodging coward and treasonous scum.” A diff erent teacher tells students dur-
ing a profanity-laced tirade that voters didn’t support Kamala Harris “because she has a vagina, uterus, and melanin.” At the McNeil High School in Aus-
tin, Texas, a student used her cellphone to fi lm a teacher shouting at her class about how she “hated Donald Trump with a burning passion.” Outside of politics, students have used their cell- phones to catch teachers using racial slurs, assaulting stu- dents — even inap- propriately touching them. In California, a
SILENCED A 15-year-old student at Glendale High School in Springfield, Missouri, was suspended for three days after submitting cellphone footage of her teacher using a racial slur in class.
high school junior used his phone to record his science teacher masturbat- ing in the student bathroom.
Shockingly, when the students turned
in their cellphone videos of such bad behavior, they — not the teacher — were the ones who received discipline. In Fort Pierce, Florida, an 11-year-
old fi fth grader was suspended for fi ve days after she turned over footage of one of her teachers violently threaten- ing a classmate. The school administration suspend-
ed the student because it said she vio- lated the teacher’s privacy. A 15-year-old student at Glendale
High School in Springfi eld, Missouri, received a three-day suspension after she turned over a cellphone video to school offi cials of her geometry teach- er referring to Black students in class using the N-word. Missouri has since banned cellphones in schools. At least 30 states, including Califor-
nia, Florida, and Texas, have adopted statewide bans, with the majority of the legislation introduced soon after Trump’s election. Before cellphone bans swept across
the U.S., hundreds of videos of teachers engaging in bad behavior were posted on social media. Since the passage of the bans, the number of new online videos has dramatically decreased. Cosby said a survey by her group
and others shows most parents oppose cellphone bans, especially out of safety concerns, citing specifi cally the dis- turbing delay in police action in the Uvalde, Texas, shooting — a tragedy that ended with 19 children and two teachers dead. A 10-year-old girl who survived
the shooting was credited with saving untold lives by using her cellphone to give law enforcement detailed accounts of the whereabouts of the gunman inside the Robb Elementary School. Nevertheless, despite opposition
from local parents, the Uvalde school district moved to ban cellphones fol- lowing the shooting.
AUGUST 2025 | NEWSMAX 17
CELLPHONE/VLAD KOCHELAEVSKIY ©ISTOCK
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