Are you able to keep your fingers away from the mobile phone for just a day? If your answer is “no”, you would be speaking for the majority of primary and secondary school students as well.
It is the latest trend for the youngsters to SMS their friends using their mobile phones. Nowadays, prices of electronic products are getting cheaper and sizes are also getting smaller, bringing convenience for the user. Owing to that, a local newspaper reported that 4 out of 5 secondary school students are bringing their own personal electronic gadgets to school (The Straits Times, 6 February 2004) such as the PDA, mobile phone and handheld game console. Despite the harsh punishment implemented for leaving mobile phones on active mode, mobile phones still ring in the class during lessons causing interference. The bringing of mobile phones and other electronic gadgets into schools also brings other disciplinary problems such as cheating, hence, giving the principal and the teachers big headaches. Surely, these sorts of problems could be avoided in school. In the next paragraph, I will explain why we should ban cell-phones and other personal electronic gadgets in schools.
One of the main reasons why electronic mobile phones should be banned in primary and secondary schools is that they affect their studies. Instead of looking at the white board and writing down notes, their eyes could be on the mobile phone screen and hand on the keypad SMS-ing. It goes without saying that their school work may suffer. Moreover, the words typed in SMS is slang and Singlish which might affect the student’s way of writing English. During my secondary school days, one of my classmates who was addicted to SMS had difficulties using proper English and ended up with a fail grade in English in the GCE ‘O’ level examination.
Cheating is another problem. With the mobile phone