Stupidity - Mobile Phones in Schools

During the always enlightening Vanessa Feltz show on Radio 4 which is basically a platform for pseudo liberals, middle class right-wingers and the criminally insane to vomit their opinion live on air. They had some teacher on to talk about the issue of whether students should be allowed to have mobile phones in school. Now this chump obviously thought they should be banned but the evasive politician in him would not admit it. Instead he talked about it being an 'ongoing issue' that was 'open to debate' which is another way of saying 'Yes I have an opinion but I don't want to piss off any parents or harm my future job prospects'.

Now I'm a firm believer that unless you are going to have courage in your convictions and say what you really think then your opinion isn't worth a damn. “You're nothing but a lot of talk and a badge” as Al Capone says at the end of The Untouchables (1987) and if you are unable to give a straight answer to a straight question you should be universally ignored.

These evasion tactics annoy the living piss out of me. It's obvious, it's tedious and it's insulting to the listener/viewer. Anyone who does it is basically calling you a cunt and even worse, a stupid cunt who will swallow whatever bullshit is thrown your way.

Truth be told there is no debate about mobile phones in schools. I worked in a secondary for the last year and a half which allowed them into the classroom and although if a student was caught using one in lesson they would (sometimes) be confiscated. The distraction was a constant problem and not a lesson went by without me having to tell a few kids several times to put away their phone. Now some fools say that banning them is an infringement of civil liberties and that parents should be able to contact their children encase of an emergency. The civil liberties argument is ridiculous and if we went down that road then students would be allowed to do whatever they liked in school be it tattooing a swastika on their forehead and wandering in the corridors in their dead grandmothers wedding dress or refusing to write in anything but pigs blood. I'm no fan of rigid rules or corporate uniform policies but whatever hinders the teachers ability to teach should not be allowed in a classroom, simple as that.

The parental emergency angle is usually brought up by stupid mothers and ignorant father. People with an extremely limited brain capacity who have to concentrate to breath. Hell let's tell it like it is. If you firmly believe that your son or daughter should be allowed to possess a mobile phone in a classroom then you're a bad parent and the best you can do is hope that you haven't passed on your terminal idiocy to your child. I have no problem with a phone being handed in to the reception at the beginning of the day and picked up at the end. Surely that simplistic common sense approach would be implemented nationwide but in my experience any suggestion of  that causes members of the senior leadership team to drool with confusion.

What should happen is that the Government should tell every school in the land that as of say, Friday, they have the power to send any student caught with a mobile phone in a classroom home. Balls to the complaining parents if they don't like it they can remove their child from the school at which point you hit them with a heavy fine for denying their child the right to an education.

Why that cannot be done is a mystery. Send a mass e-mail and save some trees. Just get the hell on with it so we can put this silly debate to bed once and for all.