A section of education stakeholders calls for lifting the ban on students' mobile phones in school.
This group, including the Kenya Secondary Schools Heads Association, argues that the devices will allow the integration of technology in class. They also say mobile phones and tablets could help teachers and students to creatively make teaching meaningful.
While these arguments could be true, do the benefits outweigh the dangers? What these education stakeholders are suggesting can easily be cured with modern computer labs.
Students are then encouraged to become tech-savvy in a place where control can easily be exercised.
However, lifting the mobile phone ban is simplistic, misplaced and unrealistic. It should be rejected by the Education ministry.
Previous experience has indicated that mobile technology is an avenue for exam cheating, which Kenya is struggling to eliminate. Secondly, mobile phones have become a major distraction to teens, especially with the advent of social media.
Scientific surveys show that teens, in fact, get addicted to their phones. Everything else, including their books, becomes secondary. But even more devastating is the proliferation of pornography through the internet. With mobile phones and data, destructive porn sites are only a click away.
Let's keep phones out of school.
Quote of the Day: Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
Immanuel Kant
The German philosopher was born on April 22, 1724.
