June 26, 2005
Schools face call to jam mobiles
Mobile phone signals should be blocked in UK schools to stop the growing "happy slapping" craze an MP is urging, reports The Observer.
"The government has agreed that it will 'review' the situation. But while one leading child-protection charity, Kidscape, welcomed the initiative, the chairwoman of Childline, Esther Rantzen, said it risked 'inadvertently' putting children in greater danger.
Such measures, she said, 'would make it impossible for a child to ring Childline, for example'. More than half of its calls now came from mobiles, in some cases from school premises, she said.
Rantzen said bullying was now 'the biggest single problem we deal with' and the number of incidents of violence appeared on the rise. But she felt banning or blocking mobiles risked creating a new danger to children."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2005/06/008849.htm