The Cons of Cell Phones in School

Everywhere we turn today, the world is crowded with people busy typing messages or playing games on their Nokias or iPhones. It has become mankind basic form of communication albeit an important one and it is a wonderful convenience and fun gadget to have, but the issue of cell phones in school represents a contentious issue debated across the nation. Inevitably, students may bring cell phones to school. Even though having cell phones at your disposal may prove to be handy, the consequence of doing so may lead to other undesirable situations. In other words the cons far outweigh the pros.

From a parent’s opinion:

In my opinion, there are no pros for cell phone use in school. I admit that they are convenience for students before and after school, but while they are in class, they should not be talking to anyone, texting or playing games. Every student uses the old “I need it for emergencies” excuse. But if there is really a true emergency, the parents only need to contact the school and the student will be found in class in a matter of moments. If the student needs to call home, all they have to do is to go to the main office or guidance. Most calls done by the students are not for emergencies, they are simply for simple communication that does not need to be done during school.

Besides that, the disruptions that cell phones cause are cheatings, rude behaviors. All these involved makes the using of cell phones in school useless. Most businesses now have personal cell phone use rules and regulations. Business is done on company phones, not personal cell phones. If employees are using their cells during work hours they are reprimanded and sometimes fired. Those same rules apply to schools. Students will not concentrate at class with the present of call phone. They will play the games and texting during the lesson.

Furthermore, having cell phone in the classroom will make students a target for becoming thieves. For those who bring expensive cell phones such like smart phones will naturally become the target of the thieves and this will only add to the discipline issues in the school. Besides that, students nowadays like to compare and to compete between students to see whose phone is the best. It is more on the student who like to show off their phone and this will lead to the problem of bullying. Students will not get good result if always occur such problem.

As a conclusion, cell phones in school have more cons than the pros. School should set the rule of not allowing students to take cell phone to school. This rule will prevent all the problems from happening.

From a school principal’s opinion:

In my opinion, there are three basic reasons why bringing cell phone to school should be discouraged. Firstly, imagine if every student brings their own cell phone to school, the constant ringing of the phones is bound to disrupt the lessons and irritate those who are not involved, especially the teachers. Then there is the question of student’s concentration as he or she may be expecting a phone call anytime or reading and replying the text messages received during lessons. At the end, this situation will affect the student’s studies and performance. Eventually, the school’s reputation will also drop and got affected. School is a place for students to study, not a paradise for them to enjoy their time. Bringing cell phones to school can also deprive the student’s opportunity to achieve the required academic excellence that they wanted.

Most importantly, cell phones have been an useful form of communication tools that may be misused or used for the wrong reason. For example, students may use their cell phones to seek for answers during examination. This will lead to a situation whereby the bold and daring will inevitably benefit and the less brave ones will have to test their guts. Unfairness sets in and the school authority will be added task of enforcing and supervising.

Lastly there will be the question of security as cell phones are bound to be stolen or misplaced that will lead to ill feelings or mistrust among students. Then teachers will be given the added tasks of solving stolen cell phones and disciplining the guilty ones, thereby further reducing their teaching time. There will be no any discipline cases if no cell phones are allowed to bring to school. If there is a discipline case that can’t even be solved by the discipline teachers, then the police may even be called in to resolve the difficult ones.

In conclusion, the disadvantages of bringing cell phones to school that is mentioned above far exceeded the advantages. So cell phones should never be allowed within the school premises like it or not. As the sayings goes, “Prevention is better than cure.”

From an English language teacher’s opinion:

As a teacher, I think that cell phones should be banned at school. It will also make my job 5 times easier without needing to yell at the students to ask them to turn off their phones. Bringing cell phones to school causes the students to use their phones during the classes and not pay attention to the lessons. Even though they have turned their phones to silent mode, they’ll still use it during the lessons. Students often send message with their friends during the lessons and play with their games on the cell phone. This causes the student to not pay attention to the lessons that the teachers are teaching. We teachers have worked hard to prepare the lessons, so we should deserve the students’ full attention in the class and not to just teach while the students are all busy staring at their cell phones.

Moving on to the next reason, cell phones were supposed to be used as a communicating tool. But students used it to cheat during exams, quizzes, in-class essays and other assignment. The improved technology of having text and smart phones helped the students to cheat easily as they could silently text to a friend to ask for an answer to the questions. Besides that, they could also simply Google for answers or use their built in calculators to compute math problems. They could also store information as a “cheat sheet” in their phones.

Next, some parents’ only valid complaint was that they wanted a way to contact their kids while in school. But in my opinion, parents should not be contacting their kids when the teachers are in the middle of their lectures. It is simply ignorant and bad cell phone etiquette. If they have a real legitimate reason to interrupt in a teacher’s class, they should call the school’s main number and have the student paged. In this way, it added benefit of the teachers to track exactly what is going on so the school is not in the dark when there are family issues. The school needs to be informed when a student up and left when the parents contact the students. With the parents contacting directly to their kids and they leave will leave the teachers in a panic looking for the students.

As a result, from a teacher’s point of view, cell phones are not encourage to be brought to school and should be ban in school. Students should concentrate in their studies at school instead of texting messages or playing games with their cell phones school.

Bringing cell phones to school may have its pros and there are some who agrees with this, especially among the students, but still, from the school principal, parents and teacher’s point of view, the cons of bringing cell phones to school outweigh the pros. In conclusion, cell phones should be banned in school.

Written by,

Poh Joe Jie
Lee Jia Yan
Tung Li Shan