OPINION: Secondary Schools students should not own smartphones
Reading is an essential tool for lifelong learning. It is important
for everyone to develop the rudiments of reading and the culture of
reading always so as to survive in life.
Reading according to Holte
(1998) adds quality to life and provides access to culture and cultural
heritage.
Due to technological development, reading habits are changing. In our
society today, while technology is slowly taking a steady control over
individual lives, the reading habit is fast vanishing into thin air. Students now lack the skill of reading. Instead they
spend more hours on electronic media. Browsing the net, playing with
funky handsets and passing non-stop SMSs seem to be the order of the
day, there by making reading a book or any other piece of written
material in a quiet or peaceful corner of a library or home become an
archaic idea for most school children and adults.
Students are rarely interested in reading for pleasure and enjoyment
instead they read only to pass examination. The declining interest in
reading culture among our children (especially those in primary and
secondary schools) is a cause for alarm and a challenge to all and
something need to be done to alleviate this yawning problem.
Unfortunately, reading is not taught or included in school curriculum.
Reading is not a subject and cannot be taught separately as most other
subjects in the curriculum rather it is subsumed in every other subject
and is regarded as a tool facilitating many other types of learning.
Nowadays, due to the rat race syndrome, parents pay little or no
attention to their children's reading ability, parents themselves lack
the skill and the culture of reading such that some do not read to their
kids.
Currently, as many as 65 per cent of children aged between eight and 11 years old own a smartphone.
Newcastle has been nicknamed the “smartphone capital of Britain” – more than 90 per cent of eight to 11 year olds own a device.
Second is Nottingham at 90 per cent.
London sees fewer young children owning smartphones at just 55 per cent.
In Brighton just four out of 10 children in that age bracket own such a
device.
“With such a huge amount of young people
owning smartphones and the acceptable age of doing so being 10, parents
need to be more aware than ever of what their children are doing
online,” Carolyn Bunting, General Manager at Internet Matters said.
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