If I'm remembering correctly (and this was a long time ago), when I was in school, the schools I went to had a sort-of zero tolerance policy for cell phones. Seemed a bit asinine at the time and the punishment for having one even more so. I believe it was taken for three months the first time, the entire school year on the second (the ethics of which are absolutely up for debate, but this was in the middle of redneck America so make of that what you will).
Of course as a kid I disagreed with it, but cell phones didn't offer a ubiquitous portal into all of the social ills of social media that they do today, nor do they provide an avenue to completely subvert human interaction at a stage where developing social calibration is taught as an unwritten and untaught subject.
I guess the backwards rednecks got this one right, all be it for the wrong reasons.