by Maria C Collins

Created on: April 07, 2009   Last Updated: November 29, 2009

Mobile telephones are a part of modern life and help people to contact one another easily. However, they are a comparatively new technology and manners have failed to keep pace. Some people do not realize that there are some places where a mobile telephone is inappropriate and one of these places is the classroom or lecture hall.

Children and young people go to school or college to learn, not to play with mobile phones. To allow mobile telephones in the classroom gives students the idea that school or college is not important. School or college should be one of the most important elements of a student's life.

Use of a mobile phone in a classroom or lecture hall disturbs the lesson and distracts both the student using the telephone and the students sitting around him or her, which in turn disturbs the teacher or lecturer. A telephone ringing during a lesson disturbs all the students and teacher and disrupts the session entirely. This is disrespectful to both teacher and class and it disrupts everyone's teaching and learning experience. It is bad manners and it is inconsiderate. There is no necessity for pupils or students to have mobile telephones switched on during a teaching session.

Even text messaging disturbs students. Text messaging is also involved in cheating in examinations. Certainly in the United Kingdom, candidates sitting public examinations are not allowed mobile telephones at their desks.

Mobile phones are a good tool for working parents to keep in contact with their children, especially if a parent has leave for work before the children need to leave for school. Many schools have banned the use of mobile telephones on school premises and require them to be locked up in lockers during the school day. Some parents object to this ban and state that they must be able to contact their children in an emergency. Before mobile telephones became so prevalent, parents would telephone the school in an emergency. Any school would allow a child to use the school telephone to contact his or her parent in a real emergency.

The theft of mobile telephones is prevalent in many countries. Some students will envy those showing off the latest mobile telephone in the playground. Children lose things and teaching staff have better things to do than look for lost or stolen mobile telephones.

A very important part of educating a child or young person is to prepare them for life and for work. When children and young people go to work, they will have to realize that they are being paid for their time and attention and that an employer will not appreciate someone conducting their social life in work time. There are many places where mobile telephones should be banned, in church, during public ceremonies, at the theatre and cinema and they should also be banned in the classroom. The cell 'phone is not the crux of life but a peripheral to it.

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