Students unplugged . . . the horror, the horror!

Can it be done?

In the year 2009, in a hopelessly wired world, can a small group of willing but nervous Los Angeles 10th-graders survive one long week without using any electronic devices?

"I suspect that people will be going crazy," said student Jamila Mohedano, who doubts her own ability to go unplugged without becoming unglued.

The torture at Guantanamo Bay was nothing compared to this. Beginning today at a downtown college-prep charter school, the homeroom class of teacher Shannon Meyer will go cold turkey for seven endless days.

We're talking no TV.

No iPods.

No iPhones.

No BlackBerrys.

No computers, which means no MySpace and no Facebook.

And it gets worse.

No cellphones.

Oh, the humanity! That means -- weep if you must -- no texting.

"I like texting a lot," said Angie Gaytan, who sleeps with her cellphone under her pillow and responds immediately if she gets a message in the middle of the night.

"It's an addiction," Cesar Rodriguez said. "You don't have to use it, but you get that temptation and it controls you."

Even if you don't immediately respond, he said, you can't help but check a text message the moment you hear the electronic beep.

"You wonder who it is," he said.

This is the way her students live their lives, said teacher Meyer. They're wired to everything but connected to nothing meaningful. If she sees a student in class take a little too long searching for a pencil in a backpack, she knows what's really going on.

"They're texting," which is not allowed on campus.

Meyer had tried what she called a brief "media fast" at another school last year, but she wanted to grow the challenge this year at the California Academy for Liberal Studies Early College High School. By her rules, students can only use a computer for homework and a cellphone for an emergency, and they will chronicle their experience in journals.

"These kids are really bright, but they're quickly bored," Meyer said. She believes the constant electronic stimulation and sensory overload make kids ill-equipped to follow the slower rhythms of classroom dialogue or to interact with one another in meaningful ways.

Student Andres Lopez -- no relation -- agreed with her, so Meyer asked him to get hold of someone at an old-fashioned newspaper before print media ends up in the dark wing of a dinosaur museum. Andres, bless his rebel heart, reads this newspaper and asked if I would care to write about the one-week challenge.