Mobile answer to child safety?

Two of our second class got mobile phones over the past two weeks. For themselves. For what? It gives "phone a friend" a whole new meaning. Oran told me that he has only three numbers keyed into the address book on his phone. Not enough of his friends have phones. Yet!

We haven't even got as far as banning them from school yet. We just never thought of it. It wasn't something that we reckoned would be relevant in our junior school set-up.

Dave tells us of the story his babysitter told him the other night. Even the ancient practice of scribbling notes on scraps of paper and surreptitiously passing them around the class has become obsolete, surpassed by mobile telephony. You set your mobile to vibrate instead of ring, text your crucial message (a la "DO U FNC ANNA") and forward it to as many recipients as you want from your address book. Voiola.

And so the debate rages. Sally argues that she has given her own two preteens mobiles so they can phone her when music or karate or whatever is over and she can collect them straight away rather than hang around indefinitely waiting for them.

The whole safety issue is tossed around like a hot potato - are we rearing a generation of over-cosseted softies or are we being responsible and giving our children access to a means of protecting themselves?

Tom produces a copy of a new directive from our board of management. We are to put a notice banning mobile phones in a clearly visible spot in the school. And teachers must not use their own phones within a certain distance of pupils.

And so we question our own reliance on these new gadgets. We discover that everyone on our staff owns a mobile. Two of us even have handbags with special pouches for holding them. Considering our school landline was only installed as a "luxury" in 1987, we have come a long way. Even if it's only to text the person sitting beside us to say "dis s boring". At least unlike our new cardinal, who admitted never having used a mobile phone until he was handed one by a journalist the other day, we have moved on. CYABYE!