Phones
King Canute trying to turn back the tide In the first two thirds of my career in secondary or high school teaching, none of my pupils had mobile phones. However, in the last ten years that changed. Phones were creeping in. My school made a policy that if youngsters were caught using mobile phones in classrooms then teachers should confiscate them. It was perhaps twenty five years ago when I was teaching a Year 8 class one morning. I was speaking to them from the front when I heard a mobile phone go off in somebody's bag. Of course this interrupted my talk and everybody's attention was diverted. A girl in the middle of the room took the phone from her bag and began to answer the call. I stood in front of her and said, "Give me that phone now please!". The girl refused and said, "It might be important. It's my mum!" And I said, "I don't care who's calling just give me that phone now!" With great reluctance and with the eyes of her cl...