There is a frightening penchant in today’s gradually feminizing America for people to abandon their God given ability to think and reason. True authority – the kind that summons respect, reverence and even a touch of fear – is being pushed aside, condemned as antiquated patriarchal nonsense, for more “progressive” methods of trying to maintain order. Thus, authority itself is emasculated, common sense is effectively castrated and unintended consequences create new difficulties where there should be none.

In New York City, for example, students are not permitted to carry their cell phones into school with them (except in very specific circumstances). Apparently, the beeping, chirping and ringing in classrooms was enough of a distraction to prompt a flat-out city-wide ban – even though the vast majority of students do not use them while in school.

Most kids, in fact, use their cell phones to stay in contact with parents after school. Seeing as city-street pay phones are quickly going the way of the eight-track tape, cell phones have proven – at least in this context – a positive thing. So, what’s wrong with that? Yet, instead of each school being allowed to formulate its own rules regarding cell phone usage during classroom hours, an easy, dismissive, all-encompassing, band-aid-type fix was applied to a bigger wound, namely the weakened hand of authority.

When void of reasoned thought, ban, ban, ban.

I must ask … Why not just confiscate the phones of disruptive students the way teachers used to take away sling shots, secretly scrawled notes or, when I was kid, those hand-held electronic football games? Blaming the technology instead of the student sends the wrong message and it tenderizes the backbones of those charged with power. Instead of just prohibiting cell phone use during school hours and, say, making it compulsory for phones to be turned off upon entering the building – and then having the backbone to actually enforce it – a cowardly ban was made law.

One unintended consequence? Having kids out of touch with parents or guardians after school when they absolutely don’t have to be.

Perhaps more importantly, banning the phone doesn’t teach or enforce the value of having to exercise discipline. Despite the popular notion from leftists everywhere, technology is not the problem. As citizens of the greatest, freest and most advanced country the world has ever known, we should want to improve our standard of living, shouldn’t we? Why are cell phones somehow beyond the sphere of influence when it comes to teaching our kids restraint, responsibility and self-control?

I make this point, not as an advocate of the cellular phone industry, but as an authentic lament for the changing and misguided role of responsibility and influence in our society.

People simply throw their hands in the air too easily.

To make a somewhat peculiar comparison, it is precisely this thinking that is behind those that blame guns for crime instead of those who use them recklessly or illegally. Indeed, the argument of everything having a time and place is well-taken. However, law abiding citizens who possess firearms are absolutely no threat to society. Only criminals are. Banning guns doesn’t keep bad people from acquiring or using them. By the same token, students who abide by the rules (and have the value system to know what’s appropriate and what is not) by keeping their cell phones turned off during school hours are no threat to disrupt the classroom – not with the phone anyway. Conversely, kids who have no regard or respect for the school and its authority will still manage to sneak them in and disrupt things.

It is about values, not technology.

In Cedar Lake, Indiana, the latest move by school administrators to foster a culture of safety has been implemented – namely, the banning of all carry bags in school, including purses. Apparently, the ludicrous rule has been on the books for three years but is only now being enforced. The reason? To make it more difficult for students to carry weapons and drugs into school.

Nice.

Book bags, purses and other lethal carriers must be left in lockers during school hours. One student commented, “People even got yelled at for carrying fanny packs and too big of a pencil holder, which is ridiculous."

How about a push to ban pockets?

Perhaps an all-sandal policy should be executed to keep students from sneaking things into school via their sneakers?

At one time, clearly defined boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable were the norm. If rules were violated, the offender was punished. Behaviors that once had stigmas attached to them became more accepted. What were once good old fashion expulsions from school became in-house suspensions. Fostering discipline and maintaining order were replaced with getting in touch with one’s feelings and having the “right” to express them. The line of thought that endorses the handing out of awards and medals to kids for simply “participating” in a given activity (so as to cheapen the kid who genuinely earns the award) is prevalent almost everywhere. The burden of actually having the courage to instill and reinforce good values in students is apparently too much for educators these days, lest they offend anyone. Citizenship classes have been replaced with “save the earth” curriculums, safe-sex programs, and free condoms on demand.

How delightful. It is the feminization of society.

Denene Reppa, mother of one of the Cedar Lake, Indiana students who now must run to their lockers in between each class to get the needed book instead of being able to carry several in a book bag, said, “Those types of organizational skills will transfer when she goes to college. Very important … She can keep her other things in there as well that kind of relate to her being a female."

Priorities, I guess.