Questões

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow.

Text

Should schools just say no to pupils using phones?

14th July 2024

Natalie Grice – BBC News

“I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing for a child never to have a smartphone. I think it’s part of a balanced life. You’ve got to live in your own time.”

These are not the words you might expect to hear from a teacher at a school that has never in its history allowed pupils under sixth form age to use a mobile phone on the premises.

But Sarah Owen, deputy head at Stanwell School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, was simply expressing a personal opinion, rather than the school’s view about a young person’s wider life.

It is clear that she and the school have very firm opinions on what is best for children while they are on school grounds.

For Stanwell pupils in years 7 to 11, that has always meant no phones. Not in lessons, not in the corridor, not at breaktimes.

It is such a long-established rule that it presumably comes as no surprise to pupils and parents when they join the school, which is starting to seem as if it may have been ahead of a growing curve.

In the past few years, a number of schools across Wales and further afield have introduced total bans on mobiles. While Stanwell only asks pupils to keep phones switched off in their bags, others require the devices to be handed in at the start of the day.

Llanidloes High School in Powys is one which has implemented this policy in the past few years and Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St Davids, Pembrokeshire, followed suit at the start of this year.

Sarah Owen has been at Stanwell School since 2000 and says that there has always been a no phone policy in the school. For Sarah, it is a question not of trying to impinge on their students’ freedom, but of giving them vital time away from mobile life, for welfare as well as educational reasons.

“We genuinely believe this is in their best interests,” she said. “Phone addiction and screen addiction and scrolling, the loss of concentration, the loss of soft skills around listening and interacting with others, that’s something we need to be concerned about as a society generally.”

“We want children to be interacting with each other, having conversations, playing football, having those connections and interactions with other people.”

Sarah also believes it gives pupils relief from the possibility of being “photographed, filmed, mocked in some way – that’s not a nice way for children to live”. She said she wanted her pupils to have “some sanctuary from the anxiety of feeling so scrutinised and looked at”. 

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles

Texto 02

Palavras, palavras, palavras

    Criadas pelos humanos, as palavras são suscetíveis ao tempo, como os humanos. Algumas mudam de significado, outras vão desbotando aos poucos, e há as que morrem na inanição do silêncio. Ninguém mais chama o libertino de bilontra, a amante de traviata ou o inocente de cândido. Depois de soar na boca do povo e iluminar a escrita, bilontra, traviata e cândido foram sepultadas nos dicionários junto as que lá descansavam em paz. Em seus lugares brotam novas, frescas e saltitantes, com significado igual - ou quase. A língua é a mais genuína criação coletiva, feita da contribuição anônima. O agito das palavras traduz as mudanças do mundo - na ciência e tecnologia, na economia e política, nas leis e religiões, no comércio e publicidade, no esporte e comunicação, nos costumes e valores.

[...]

   Faz tempo não ouço a palavra cavalheirismo. Parece que a igualdade de direitos das mulheres botou fora o bebê, a água do banho e a bacia. Lá se foram também delicadeza e cordialidade: louvadas no passado, antes de sumir viraram sinônimo de perda de tempo. Pessoa cordial passou a ser chata, cheia de frescura, pé-no-saco, puxa-saco. Cortesia não morreu, mas mudou: agora quer dizer brinde, boca-livre, promoção! Crimes tem cúmplices, mas é rara a cumplicidade entre casais.

[...]

  Se as palavras morrem ou mudam de sentido, os gestos, intenções e atitudes que designam também morrem ou mudam de sentido. Cabe indagar: que sociedade é essa que sepulta o cavalheirismo, a delicadeza, a cordialidade e a compaixão? Que gente é essa que enterra a honra? Que país é esse que esvazia valores como educação e ética e faz da cortesia um gesto interesseiro? Que confere respeito e perdão aos poderosos e impõe aos destituídos o dever e o sacrifício?

   Criadas pelos homens, palavras são do humano. Intriga sejam justamente as que dizem o mais humano do humano a perderem o sentido ou morrerem. Ou será que estamos perdendo o prazer da convivência? Ah, palavras, palavras, palavras...

ARAÚJO, Alcione. Palavras, palavras, palavras. Estado de

Minas, Belo Horizonte, 05 jul. 2010. Caderno Cultura, p. 8.

Adaptado.