Once upon a time, little Susie was sent to the office for the errant spitball or wayward paper airplane landing in Ms. Beasley's coiffed beehive. Fast forward to 2009 and Susie--or in this case, a 14-year-old troublemaker from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin--has instead landed herself in the pen for a misuse-of-technology infraction. Her offense? Refusing to stop sending text messages in class after repeated requests by her teacher to cease and desist. Next came the school's police officer, who demanded that she surrender the offending electronic device; to keep it out of reach, the technology-addled adolescent shoved it down her trousers. Suffice to say, it only got uglier from there (lying to The Heat, subsequent arrest, and unrepentant court appearance for her nimbled-fingered obsession). If that weren't enough, the persistent teen figured out how to sneak back into school twice (who says our kids don't know how to problem solve?), only to get slapped with a couple of bon voyage trespassing tickets. Which all leads us to conclude: kids are quite adept at 21st century technological skills, thank you very much. Now they just need to learn where and when their application is appropriate.
"Teen arrested for texting in class," by Michael George, TMJ4 Milwaukee News, February 24, 2009