Children’s Future: Should Mobile Phones be Banned in School

Think of the mobile phones of our generation, a smart handheld computer with loud speakers and a very fine camera capacity comes in our mind. Not only that, it does what seems to be the most important function of present times, keep us connected with our social circles. With a new smartphone launch every season (though it seems like one per month), technological innovations are spurring up. Somehow it has made children a large part of it, which has fueled debates of whether or not mobile phones should be banned in school.

Children use mobile phones for basic utility, their needs are not consistent like those of working people or adults. At most, they play games, chat with their friends, listen to music except using their phones for making or receiving calls. Parents provide cell phones to children mainly to stay in touch with them and for their security and safety. But it becomes an argumentative issue when children carry cell phones to their school.

A school is run by principals of holistic development, learning and discipline. Mobile phones are never a part of teaching methodology or a medium of it, except for their ability of usage as calculators or dictionaries. This makes mobile phones unnecessary within a school environment.

Graeme Paton, of ‘The Telegraph’, argues that allowing school children to have full-time access to mobile phones in the classroom may enhance education standards and help getting the most out of them.

Smartphones, academics say, could have a wide-range of educational use of setting homework reminders, recording lessons, creating short movies, timing science experiments and such. One can revise lessons online, log into school email system and may transfer school documents between home and school network. It all may boost motivation of students.

Though, it has its disadvantages on par, a simple example is that mobile phone use is a huge distraction in the classroom. It hinders students from paying attention to teachers. In fact, those who carry mobile phones secretly keep playing games under their desks or chat with their friends. This is a grey area in their learning process, a student needs to be totally present in class both physically and mentally. Mobile phones engage their mental interests and thus prevent them from grasping what is going on in the class.

Apart from that, there are numerous reports of cheating on exams through mobile phones. Generally, there’s a pressure on students to gain good grades on class tests and mobile phones allow them to go the easy route by using them to find quick answers. Children also use mobile phones to bully other children either by making their funny videos or taking inappropriate photos.

This is a fact that a large part of students carry their mobile phones with the permission of their parents. That makes it harder for school administration to keep it banned. Even if they allow children on certain terms, it is not assured that children will follow the guidelines like switching phones off during class or not using their camera. So the dilemma remains.

The future of children is more secure in the hands of parents than teachers. Parents can watch over their children’s mobile activities with Mobile Spy, an excellent mobile monitoring software. It works in stealth mode to monitor activities such as call logs, SMS texts, websites visited, GPS locations, chat conversations and many more features.

With this software, parents can even lock/unlock the phone remotely to ensure children are not using the device when they are not supposed to be. Mobile phones be banned or not, children remain safe that way.