CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: A Cellphone Ban in Larkfield’s High Schools Debate

Students returning to Larkfield’s three public high schools next September may find their phones unwelcome. A policy before the school board, scheduled for a vote six months beforehand, would require devices to remain switched off in lockers throughout the day, lunch and breaks included. Trustees report receiving more correspondence on this issue than on any other in recent memory.

Trustee Sandra Kwan, the motion’s sponsor, contends that teachers have sought assistance for years. Existing regulations prohibit phones in class “unless a teacher allows them,” a formula applied so inconsistently that it has become meaningless, with the opening minutes of lessons squandered on negotiation. She also invokes the board’s own survey, in which over sixty percent of students acknowledged feeling obliged to answer messages during school hours.

Vice-principal Martin Leclerc, a fifteen-year veteran of Larkfield Secondary, endorses prohibition during lessons but considers the lunch-hour restriction excessive. Adolescents, he argues, acquire self-management only through practice, “and they won’t learn that if we simply lock them away.” He further wonders who would monitor hallways and cafeterias, where adults are comparatively scarce, and fears that staff would end up confiscating devices all day.

Parent Olivia Mensah objects on different grounds. Her daughter, who has diabetes, monitors her blood sugar through a phone app. The draft does provide medical exemptions, but only once a family has explained a child’s condition to the school; some, Mensah predicts, will simply go without. “In any emergency at the school, I expect direct contact, not a belated email from the office,” she says.

Grade 12 student Ravi Bhatt, the board’s student trustee, readily admits that phones distract many classmates and accepts keeping them invisible during lessons. “A lunch-hour ban, though, would chiefly penalize responsible students arranging rides, checking work shifts or finding a bus,” he says. His compromise: a strict classroom prohibition, applied identically everywhere, with phones permitted at lunch and between periods.

Kwan professes herself receptive to amendments, while remaining convinced that half-measures have already failed. “We’ve tried leaving it up to individual teachers,” she observes. “The result is the situation we have now.”

I teach math at a Larkfield high school, and Trustee Kwan isn’t exaggerating. The present rule, which lets 6. Choose…phones stay in lockersparents ask for exemptionseach teacher set the termsthe principal decide for everyone, has turned my first ten minutes into a daily argument.

Mr. Leclerc’s anxiety about 7. Choose…students’ privacypolicing the lunch hourstudents’ bus scheduleslost teaching time deserves a hearing, though anxiety alone is no policy. Ms. Mensah raises a fair point too, yet the draft already allows for 8. Choose…students with part-time jobsemergencies at the schoolcases like her daughter’sstudent trustees, and the board can handle such matters sensitively.

As for Ravi Bhatt’s compromise, lunch would simply become the new battleground. Most students, after all, have told the board that they 9. Choose…can’t ignore their messagescheck their shifts at lunchwould support a full-day banare distracted during lessons. A break would do them good. Trustees who pass the full-day ban in 10. Choose…SeptemberJuneMarchthe fall will give families a whole summer to prepare.

Noah Pelletier, Larkfield