As always, the underlying problem of parents&#x27; sheepish deference to authority (be it school administrators in this case, but also police, government, and &quot;experts&quot;) will not be questioned by the New York Times.<p>Look at the article&#x27;s treatment of the parent who went to the school counselor about a photo she found on her daughter&#x27;s phone. All it says is she was &quot;heartbroken&quot; by the school&#x27;s response and eventually decided to home-school her child.<p>Did the parent take away her daughter&#x27;s cell phone? Where there other reasons for pulling her daughter out of the school (perhaps the toxic culture in which a majority of students are trading nude photos of themselves)? What did she expect the school to do anyway?<p>We will not learn the answers to these questions, only that in some way, <i>the school</i> failed, not the parents.<p>The fact that parents are continually ceding responsibility for raising their own children to whoever will take it, is not at issue here. That point is taken for granted whenever one of these cases comes up.<p>I wonder what would happen if schools started banning cellphones entirely. Why do kids need them anyway--they can always make a phone call from the principal&#x27;s office. I suspect parents would complain about their heavy-handed tactics (but in reality the problem is that it makes their job harder).<p>It seems like our culture is continually interested in passing the buck to someone else, until something goes wrong, at which point &quot;something&quot; must be done. Rinse and repeat.