Cell phones for scholastic achievements

Teachers and school officials are always looking for ways to keep students motivated and reward them when they have steady accomplishment levels. Now, there's a new way. A new pilot program at three Brooklyn middle schools and four charter schools rewards high achieving students with pre-paid cell phones and 130 minutes to start with. Good behavior, attendance, homework and test scores will be rewarded with more minutes. Teachers and officials will be able to access the system and send students text messages, reminding them of things like test dates, homework assignments and report due dates. But is this really the way to keep students motivated to do well in school?

Some would say that it is a good idea because primarily, all students have cell phones anyway and use them constantly. Giving them cell phones from the program would keep them on track scholastically, giving them no excuse to forget important information regarding school.

Others would say that it is a bad idea because you would be rewarding students with the thing deemed as a "distraction to the learning process". Rewarding a student with a cellphone would most likely tempt the student to bring it to school, violating the ban on cell phones in school.

"I think giving students cell phones as a reward of doing well in school won't change anything" says a student who wishes to be anonymous. "I already have a phone but I don't bring it to school because I don't want it taken away. That doesn't mean I don't want to though".

Giving students something forbidden in school as a reward makes it even more tempting to want to bring it to school. Even high achieving students feel the temptation of bringing their phones to school, against the rules, risking confiscation.

This new motivational method may or may not achieve it's goal but, either way it won't effect the main factor: Cell phones aren't allowed in schools and if your caught with them, they will be taken away. So giving a child a phone would defeat its purpose because they won't have it.