by Juliana Murris

Created on: July 09, 2008

Walking back from lunch, my friend took out her iPod and shared an earbud with me. We began to watch "Trapped in the Drive-thru" by Weird Al, but that was interrupted after about 15 seconds later by the Dean's voice booming "YOU GUYS CAN'T LISTEN TO THAT IN THE HALLWAYS!"

I began questioning myself, "If we can have them in the lunchroom and outside, why not the hallways?" The school allows [almost] anything BUT a cell phone to be carried with you. PDAs can be used and carried around at any time, but not iPods. Teachers often put on music anyway during worktime, so if a student doesn't like the music, why can't they listen to their iPod instead? Schools come up with these crazy reasons that hardly make any sense to us why we can't have iPods - "It makes you go deaf", "You guys don't listen to appropriate stuff", so on and so forth. I think personally that the school is trying to trick us into not being able to listen to our iPods and mp3 players at ALL, in school or not. I also think that if the student wants to do deaf, that's their own personal choice and not the school's responsibility. So is it a real and legit reason to not have iPods in school? Absolutely not.

iPods and mp3 players can be useful in the school environment, and this is proved by doctors and lawyers that listen to their lectures on their fancy video iPods, and they sure get an educational benefit from it. Studies have shown that music + work = better education depending on what type of music you're listening to. As far as listening to inappropriate music, the school has no say in that because fights break out on school grounds all the time and kids pay attention to that, they watch the news that has bombings and the like on it, and health class is not far away from some of the "seemingly sexy songs" that some kids enjoy. If you walk into the mall, you see intimate apparel and lingerie in the windows of Victoria's Secret. On public TV, you can watch two strong men hit each other with gloves until one falls down. In my point of view, the school has no say in what is appropriate or not, the parents do. And that's something the kids figure out at home, not at school.

All in all, I think that schools SHOULD allow iPods and mp3 players to be listened to during class/hallway time/whatever. We as kids probably can't do much about it, but it's just food for thought now... if we can listen there in the lunchroom, why not here in the hallway?

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