During my many years in public life, I have discovered that when you say things that people want to hear, you are the best person in the world and when you do not, you are the worst person on earth.
Recently while attending the speech day and prize-giving ceremony of Combermere School, my point was demonstrated.
When the featured speaker, economist Ryan Straughn made the point that there should no longer be a ban on cellphones in our schools since “it makes no sense”, you should have heard the thunderous applause in response from the students, parents and guardians.
It told the story that Mr Straughn was saying something they wanted to hear. It is likely that was the only thing that they heard for the whole evening.
It was a point that I do not agree with because the ban should be allowed to stay in place forever when it comes to our schools.
If you remove the ban, what is going to happen when the same students go to write exams, both internal and external?
The manner in which the mobile phone can be used can be very dangerous to our schools during the exams period.
Students can use them to text to pass on information of the subject area to other students in the same examination room.
We cannot allow our students to become comfortable in the classrooms with the cellphones because we cannot trust anyone, we can only put our trust in God.
If the public is not aware, when those same students are writing the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exams, no cellphones are allowed into the exam room.
If any student manages to slip a cellphone into the room and it goes off, then the matter has to be reported to CXC and the student will fail all of his or her subjects, although the phone went off in one particular subject area.
Why should we encourage them to take cellphones to school when they will be punished at the examination level for the same phone?
As a supervisor of some CXC examinations, I speak from experience because some students have failed the examinations in the past because of taking cellphones into the exam room.
I must admit that we are living in a technological world and technology has made an impact on people and their lifestyles.
We must also admit that it is good and it can be bad as well. Let us keep the cellphones out of our schools and encourage our children to obey rules, rather they make the ban on phones the issue.
