School Taken Nieces phone off her

[Alison]

I had to go somewhere yesterday and wouldnt be home when my daughter got in which for us is unusual as I am always here at the end of school, I was able to send her a text after school to let her know.

My mum sometimes couldn't be in when we got home so she just used to leave us a note on the kitchen table, no need for a text. I think that we've been brain washed to believe that mobiles are essential when 20 years ago I didn't know anybody who had one. In some ways we've got pretty lazy in that we don't need to plan things properly as we can always contact somebody at the last minute and then it's not helped by the papers building up paranoia that everybody is a potential child abductor / mugger. They're not, most people are, as they always were decent people and as somebody has already said, the fear of things is far more worrying than the acutal thing you're frightened of if you're not careful.

[jackie j]

My mum sometimes couldn't be in when we got home so she just used to leave us a note on the kitchen table, no need for a text. .

Thats alright if you know you are not going to be in when you go out. I thought I would be back before she was but got held up. Now she has a phone I like to know where she is and she can ring me if she wants to. No I didnt have a mobile nor did we have a land line ever. Mobiles are here to stay and we need to acknowledge that kids are going to have them, they are going to use them I wouldnt want it any other way now. When I got in from school if my mum wasnt at home I used to go looking for her.

[weekendwellies]

The schools my daughters go to have strict rules that phones should be switched off during the school day, and any breakage of the rules immediately results in the phone being removed from the student. However they are allowed to collect it from the head at the end of that day. Obviously, the head gives them a further lecture on the use of any personal equipment during the school day, which also makes them late and they miss their bus too.
I think this method is correct. I would be incensed if my girls had their phones kept by the school at the end of the day. I worry about them when they are out anyway, I would be a jibbering wreck if we had no way of contacting each other if an emergency should arise. I have also got used to texts telling me that they will be in a bit late, going to friends house for tea, going shopping in town after school, need me to buy toilet rolls, shampoo, dogfood on the way home, etc.

[pigletwillie]

Sorry....I still don't understand how a mobile phone can offer a kid security?Yep,they can use it to call home if they're going to be home later than normal and let you know they're safe but it's not going to prevent them getting mugged or kidnapped or such.

With a phone, you can delegate your childs safety to it. It will prevent accidents, incidents or worse whilst all the time keeping the parent in a comfort zone of doing all they can (nothing really) to protect their child.

Come on get real, a phone will protect your child as much as a curly wurly will. Good parenting and an instilation of responsibility and respect into the child will help them far more than a ruddy nokia will.

The school should have binned the phone and anyone who needs to ask if the school was right or wrong to keep it for a week really ought to step back and realise just what they are asking.

[Rocketron]

I find it difficult to believe that we have a two page thread on this subject. We (nearly) all grew up without mobile phones. We are still here.

[Flummery]

And I don't think life is more dangerous today than it used to be.

[weekendwellies]

It is not that a phone would save them from some terrible fate, it is just that they can inform parents when they are running late/doing something different to planned.
Its stops me going any more grey than I am already.

IE My daughter found our cat this morning, which had accidently been shut in the shed all yesterday (the cat is black and slips in unnoticed in the dark when the guineapig's food is being seen to) and she wanted to know what she ought to do.
So, besides stopping me from fretting where the cat might have got to, I now know that she has been given food, water and a warm blanket and cuddles.

[SarzWix]

The school should have binned the phone and anyone who needs to ask if the school was right or wrong to keep it for a week really ought to step back and realise just what they are asking.

I think that that would be classed as theft, so probably not a plan... In fact, them keeping it for any great length of time might be classed as theft in terms of the law:

(1) A person appropriating property belonging to another without meaning the other permanently to lose the thing itself is nevertheless to be regarded as having the intention of permanently depriving the other of it if his intention is to treat the thing as his own to dispose of regardless of the other's rights[...]and a borrowing or lending of it may amount to so treating it if, but only if, the borrowing or lending is for a period and in circumstances making it equivalent to an outright taking or disposal.

(2) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1) above, where a person, having possession or control (lawfully or not) of property belonging to another, parts with the property under a condition as to its return which he may not be able to perform, this (if done for purposes of his own and without the otherís authority) amounts to treating the property as his own to dispose of regardless of the other's rights.

Not a good example to set - if one of the kids took another's property and said 'I'm not giving you it back until the end of the week' there'd be uproar!

Personally, I'd prefer my kids to be warned & given Detention, and a letter sent home, and if they were stupid enough to disrupt a lesson in the same way again, chuck them out! I'd be more than happy to deal with the problem at home, and could virtually guarantee that it wouldn't happen again!

As it is, mine only have a 5/10 minute walk to school, and I don't go out to work, so neither of them need to take their phones to school at all.

[beefy]

I can't think of any reason why your daughter needed her phone out while in class - therefore in my opinion the teacher was right to take it off her.
If she broke the rules by having it out/ switched on in class and it was confiscated until the end of term then, if you get it back before that - I hope you keep it off her until then.

re personal attack alarms - why don't more young people have them? or is it that you can't text your mates off one of them ?
Why is it that these" just in case of an emergency phones" that kids have have cameras, web acess , mp3 players , facebook, bebo etc?

Thoughts from the head - sorry thats somebody elses tag line

[Alison]

And I don't think life is more dangerous today than it used to be.

In general it's not, the only main difference as I see it is that there is more traffic and a phone won't stop your kid being run over, but teaching them good road safety from an early age, probably will.

[matthew2riches]

If you've got the time, have a search on YouTube for "Everything is OK". There's a pacifist group who use a loud hailer to mock this climate of fear by using sarcastic commentary like asking people if they're terrorists, or warning people not to make eye-contact with strangers as it spreads swine-flu!

That is absolutely fantastic!!!

[happybunny]

At my school if we are caught with our phones they get confiscated till the end of the day at the office. Our parents are notified by the school text service.

I dunno if that's a good policy. I think it might be.

I don't think there's a point in carrying expensive phones round at school, they just get stolen or lost.

Stacey x

[petal]

Using a mobile phone in class was utterly disrespectful. if i was her mother she would have it taken away permanently. Several children I teach live in London and are not allowed phones(parents well read on link to brain damage!) they cope for goodness sake. What a naughty girl she is.

[jackie j]

From what I have been told she wasnt using it she went into her bag to get something else out and the teacher thought she was using her phone it was at the end of the day when the lesson had finished. She lives with my other sister after loosing her mum. They recently took her out of school for half a day on a friday to travel to the IOW for a family birthday and got into trouble, this is a girl who has 98% attendance record, (they dont take holidays because they cant afford to and only ever go away for a weekend and hardly ever ) very high results across the board and wants to be a pathologist.

[SarzWix]

Using a mobile phone in class was utterly disrespectful. if i was her mother she would have it taken away permanently. Several children I teach live in London and are not allowed phones(parents well read on link to brain damage!) they cope for goodness sake. What a naughty girl she is.

How rude.


From what I recall at school, there may not have been mobile phones, but there was plenty of note passing, and whispering. Unfortunately, voices couldn't be confiscated and neither could pens or paper...

It may not be the same in towns, but round here we only have one payphone in the village, and as that doesn't always work calling home means using a mobile. So my older 2 have them. I have no illusions that it makes them safer, but it does make communication easier. Which is why we nearly all have one, right?