Message from Our Vice Principal - March 11th

Message from Our Vice Principal Everywhere you look these days, you see children and adults staring at their mobile phones, whether sitting in a restaurant or walking on the street.

Everywhere you look these days, you see children and adults staring at their mobile phones, whether sitting in a restaurant or walking on the street.

Sometimes it presents serious safety concerns while crossing a street or trying to ride a bicycle or driving a car while holding a phone in one hand.  So why are we so addicted to this small device called a mobile phone? 

One simple answer is the wide range of things that we can do with such a phone these days. Originally a phone (Alexander Graham Bell) was constructed with the purpose of conducting a conversation at a large distance, for example across the ocean.  Even with the introduction of the first mobile phones, an ability to speak to someone remained the main or only aim of using such a phone. However, the many uses of mobile phones have rapidly expanded in the last 10 years. We use them to surf the internet, to listen to music, to pay for a bill in the restaurant, to take family photos, to look at Facebook, to scan a document, to watch a film, to make an appointment at the doctor, to follow a virtual lesson in school, the list of such uses is almost endless.

So is the addiction of looking at the mobile phone correlated to this wide spectrum of uses or is it also possible that we are becoming more and more dependent on its uses?  Perhaps we live in a world where there is a constant need to check the news on the internet and to exchange messages on Facebook or Messenger. We have, unwillingly, become an integral part of a global village where our existence without a mobile phone becomes almost meaningless.  Posing a question to a student if she/he could survive for a week without a mobile phone sounds to them like science fiction.

For all the reasons mentioned above, the responsible use of mobile phones is so important.  Health and safety is a priority so students must limit the use of phones while walking or crossing the street.  TBS has a clear policy on limiting the use of mobile phones in school, recognizing that it is students’ learning and their social interaction that are most important during a school day.  The policy emphasizes zero tolerance of phone use by students in the corridors, outdoors and in the classroom. Students using a phone in school are at risk of the phone being confiscated by a teacher.

Mobile phones can enhance learning when carefully lead and guided by the teachers but their overall use in school needs to be controlled.  Looking at some older students sitting together and staring at their mobiles phones rather than talking to each other is a sad picture that we educators need to avoid and discourage, particularly now after two years of virtual learning and social isolation.

Dr Jacek Łatkowski

Vice Principal