A editorial in the Los Angeles Times supports the growing trend to ban cell phones in public schools. The editorial points out that school districts across the country are enacting such bans. The Just writes:

The 2024-25 school year could be the turning point when adults take action to curb kids’ cellphone addiction and win back their attention. It’s time…. Nearly three-quarters of high school teachers surveyed last fall said students’ distraction by their phones in the classroom was a major problem, according to the Pew Research Center…. In addition, excessive social media use increases the risk of anxiety, depression and cyberbullying, and students use their phones during the day to coordinate drug buys and fights. It’s clear that the presence of cellphones on campus is more harmful than helpful. Kids need an intervention, and schools would do well to curb this technology now before another generation suffers.

I have a better idea. Instead of banning cell phones in public schools, we should ban government interference in education. After all, there’s a good reason why students reach for their cell phones: public school classes are boring. Citizens just can’t bring themselves to admit it.

The much bigger problem that government supporters refuse to acknowledge – apart from the fact that public school classes are boring – is that it is not cell phone use but the public school system that destroys children’s natural joy in learning and turns them into good little automatons of the state.

After all, a child loves to learn from birth. With eyes always wide open, they eagerly absorb everything they see around them. After 12 long years in the state school system, this joy in learning has died out. That is no coincidence. That is a cause.

The ultimate goal of the state is to make every child a good little citizen. That’s what public school is all about. It’s really just a scaled-down army, with an emphasis on instilling an attitude of submission to authority, obedience to orders, and regimentation. And that’s why public school classes, like military classes, are so damn boring. It’s the most natural thing in the world for a student to resort to cell phones to relieve the boredom of public school. It’s also a smart thing, because it keeps students from falling asleep out of sheer boredom.

Unfortunately, too many government supporters who are themselves public school “success stories” just can’t see that. They see all those kids trying to stave off the boredom of public school with their cell phones and conclude that there is something wrong with the students, not their beloved public school system. So they take away their cell phones or, worse, inject them with drugs like Ritalin or Adderall. The goal is to get students to “clear their minds” by getting them to see the public school experience as something exciting and useful, even if that requires drugs or just banning cell phones.

There is only one solution to this massive government-caused dysfunction. That solution is not to ban cell phones from public schools or to drug children into becoming “good little citizens.” Rather, the solution is to ban the government from education entirely, just as our ancestors had the wisdom to ban the government from religion. That way, families would have the freedom to take control of their children’s education, business owners would have the freedom to offer families the best educational opportunity for their children, and most importantly, children would have the freedom to continually nurture and build on their natural love of learning until they reach adulthood.