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Schools may ban cellphones
19/09/2006 07:53 - (SA)
Alet Rademeyer, Beeld
Pretoria - Pupils' misuse of cellphones may cause schools to forbid the instruments in future.
Education experts on Monday said such a decision was no longer far-fetched, given the increase in the number of incidents of unacceptable behaviour regarding cellphones.
Several schools on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast are considering such steps after recent incidents where pupils sent one another pornographic material.
Elsje Neethling reports that a 12-year-old Bloemfontein primary-school pupil who loaded pornography on his new cellphone and bragged about it at school, was sent to the principal's office and had his phone taken away from him.
Parents 'were most helpful'
According to the principal, the pupil got the phone a week ago, then apparently downloaded pornographic pictures from the internet.
The principal, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "It was pure coincidence that we found the pornography this week.
"I called the pupil in and ordered him to delete the pornography in my presence. He did so and his parents were called to the school that same day.
"They were most helpful and proposed that I should confiscate his phone 'until he'd learnt his lesson'."
Professor J P Rossouw, who lectures at the education faculty of the North West University's Potchefstroom campus, believed that pupils' privilege of bringing a cellphone to school could be revoked if its use caused serious problems.
This is the kind of policy a governing body could make in consultation with the school.
Cellphone abuse
Rossouw said it was a question of restricting an individual's rights because other considerations carried more weight.
Dr Rika Joubert, employed at the education faculty of the University of Pretoria, said ever-increasing cases of cellphone abuse at school were being revealed.
Pupils used their cellphones, among other things, to send pornographic material to one another, verbally bully one another and even to cheat in exams and tests.
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