Dear me. The paper has been full of it all week. The pernicious and prevalent issue of sexting amongst school children.
PSHE (Personal social health education) lessons have decreased in secondary schools over recent years. Teacher training in this area is sometimes inadequate where it is perfectly obvious that careful training is required. I am all for good informative sex education, but the one question which I have been asking myself for quite some time is: why do Heads allow smart phones in schools? Why is there a need, actually, for any child to have a phone in school at all?
We have all become slaves to our mobiles. Plain and simple. Apart from the obvious distractions and delights that a smart phone offers our children, its wide spread prevalence stems from our need to reduce uncertainty.
Have you noticed how we just can't cope with not knowing what's going on at all times, or not being contactable?
We give our children phones primarily to ensure they can contact us to inform us when they will be late, or that they need collecting. Ostensibly to keep them safe. How did we manage in the old days, I ask?
Well, we made choices, used initiative, and worked out how to get around a change of plan. The safety net of the phone ensures that we hand-hold each other all day every day.
It's driving me nuts because I believe that our phones are insidiously draining our own battery life, and more importantly, harming our young population.
A starting point towards freer, more independent thinking would mean a unilateral ban on phones in schools.
Parents as well as students would howl at the prospect initially, but we all need to be weaned off this insidious dependence.
I mentioned driverless cars yesterday. This week also saw a landmark event in the contest between artificial intelligence (AI) and man, where a human champion of the game "Go" ( don't ask me, more of a Scrabble on a Saturday night person, me) was narrowly defeated by the computer. Today I read that Nike has produced self-lacing trainers...
Can't you see? I want to shout.
Hang on to your brains and shake them all about because if we don't, sexting will become the least of our problems.
I'm getting off my soap box now, to lace-up my trainers with pride... Happy weekend, and thank you for listening.
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