Students yesterday raised concerns about accountability for centralized phone storages at schools and whether school affairs councils would honor democratically reached decisions.
The students made the comments during a Ministry of Education forum on a draft policy for managing mobile phone use in schools.
The draft policy, announced last month, states that elementary and junior-high school students must obtain parental consent to bring mobile devices to school and that devices would be stored centrally by school authorities.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
High schools would be required to hold discussions with students, parents and teachers on device management mechanisms, the policy says.
The ministry invited students and youth representatives to speak at the national forum.
Department of Information and Technology Education senior analyst Pei Shan-cheng (裴善成) said the earlier guidelines on mobile phone use did not distinguish between education level or usage context.
In contrast, the new draft aims to create “phased, flexible and clear” management rules, he said.
The draft requires junior-high and elementary students’ phones to be centrally stored, while high schoolers’ phones may be managed individually, by class or school-wide, Pei said.
The rules at high schools would need to be democratically discussed among teachers, students and parents, with students comprising at least one-third of participants, he said, adding that the school affairs council must respect the consensus reached.
At the forum, a student from Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School said collective storage of mobile devices makes responsibility for loss or damage difficult to determine, adding that the collection and redistribution of phones would take time.
Many teachers at their school also use phones in class, the student said.
An Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University student said it is unclear whether the school affairs council would respect the results of the discussions, while a student from New Taipei Municipal Banqiao Senior High School said the draft policy lacked enforcement mechanisms.
Department Director Wu Ying-tien (吳穎沺) said that the ministry would review the draft in response to students’ concerns.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
The Sports Administration yesterday demanded an apology from the national table tennis association for barring 17-year-old Yeh Yi-tian (葉伊恬) from competing in the upcoming World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash tournament in Las Vegas this July. The sports agency said in a statement that the Chinese Taipei Table Tennis Association (CTTTA) must explain to the public why it withdrew Yeh from the WTT tournament in Las Vegas. The sports agency said it contacted the association to express its disapproval of the decision-making process after receiving a complaint from Yeh’s coach, Chuang
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS