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Saved by the Bell!
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Written by Candace Chatman, Editor-in-Chief
Think back to the first day of school at Dobyns-Bennett this year; all the jitters and butterflies in your stomach, or maybe the dreaded feeling of having to go back to another long year of school. Remember all the changes you had heard about such as a new dress code, new cell phone policy, and even a new cafeteria. Well, one change I feel pretty negatively about is the “no bells” change. I remember walking into school and chatting with all my friends, but, then, before I knew it, I was rushing to my first class, hoping I wasn’t late; why? There were no bells that said you had one minute to get to class or any bells at all. Our principals at D-B have decided that having no bells will make for a smoother school day and environment. In my opinion, though, no bells is just asking for complete commotion in our school with getting students to classes on time. During an interview with Asst. Principal Mr. Brown, he gave us his reasoning behind removing the school bells. “Having no bells is preparing students for college and the work force; there are no bells in real life. You don’t need a bell to tell you it’s time to go to your movie or tell you when it’s time to go to church,” Mr. Brown stated as his number one reason in removing the bells. Mr. Brown’s second reason stated was, “Due to singletons and lunches, unnecessary bells were having to ring that didn’t apply to all students, thus disturbing students and teachers from their classes.” I agree with Mr. Brown on the fact that there are no bells in life and you have to be responsible for yourself, no one is going to tell you when you have to be somewhere at a certain time all your life. On the other hand, D-B has almost two thousand students to keep in line, and the bells helped ensure all students were where they were supposed to be on time. Some problems I see with having no bells are people being late to their classes by mistake, teachers holding classes over, and students not knowing what time it really is. Not knowing the time is an issue even I have trouble with without the school bells. I used to live off the minute bell so I could still chat with my friends and make it to class on time. The student handbook states that cell phones are not allowed to be used for any reason during school. In today’s society, most teens don’t wear watches to tell time they use their cells phones, and even adults have started to ditch watches and use their cell phones instead. At D-B however, we’re not allowed to pull out our cell phones and check the time to see if we’re going to be late to class or not. Also, the clocks in the hallways are all set on different times and do not correspond to the clocks on the classroom TVs. So, if our school is going to practice having no bells, students should at least be allowed to check the time on their phones in between classes and then turn them off upon arrival to class. This way, students can check the right time and arrive to class on time and phones can still be turned off while classes are in session. Another way to fix the time problem is to synchronize all the hallway clocks with the TV clock so there is no confusion. I do agree there are no bells in the real world, but this is a high school with a huge student body. I don’t think it’s possible for over a thousand students to get to their classes on time, while stopping and chatting with friends along the way, without minute bells and tardy bells.
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August 26th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
I disagree with their are no bells in the real world that tell you when to go to class on time. Yes, there are! I would like to point out that there is an alarm application on every human being's cell phone or plugged into their wall that millions of people use daily. So yes, there is indeed "bells" in the real world.
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