Parents still have to allow their children to use mobile phones. Teachers also say they seem to be powerless to the “mobile phone addiction” of their students.

Pham Ha Thanh at No 210 Le Trong Tan street in Hanoi decided to buy a mobile phone for his son, an eighth grader at the Hanoi-Amsterdam School for the Gifted. This was a low cost mobile phone, with a black and white screen that only has simple functions.

Thanh related that by purchasing the mobile phone, she has made trouble for herself, while she really does not know what to do differently.

“My son cannot have high concentration when studying, because he is too busy playing with the mobile phone. Calls and messages come regularly when he is studying,” she complained. “After receiving calls or messages, he spends hours to SMS back to answer”.

Though the boy is still good at learning, Thanh feels unhappy when seeing him using mobile phone all the time. “I believe that there is problem with his learning style, but I cannot explain this to him,” she said.

Lan Anh, a parent who has a daughter studying at Luong The Vinh High School in Hanoi, is facing the same problem. It is the mobile phone, which causes regular quarrels between her and her daughter. Anh related that the girl always stays up late at night and she only goes to bed at 12pm or 1am. She asked the girl to turn off the mobile phone when learning, but the girl ignores the advice. She once intended to seize the mobile phone, but she gave up the idea, because she feared the girl would make react badly. Finally, she has realized that quarrels about the mobile phone will not help, because the girl will never give up the mobile phone.

Meanwhile, teachers also complain that they do not know what to do with the students’ “mobile phone addiction”. A teacher of Ngoc Lam Secondary School in Long Bien District in Hanoi, related that one day, she checked the mobile phone of a student after catching her making messages during the lesson and found out that the student sent eight messages.

Hearing the story, a teacher of the Pham Hong Thai High School uttered: “That’s of little importance! I know a student in my class who can make seven messages within the first 15 minutes of a 45 minute-period.

Students say that the messages that teachers found on students’ mobile phones are the “tip of the iceberg”. In fact, the number of messages made and sent in learning hours is much higher. It is because most students have learnt the skill of “escaping teachers’ eyes” when using mobile phones in learning hours.

A lot of students have the “special talent” of compiling messages without looking at the mobile phones. When teachers stand with their backs to students, it is the right time for students to send messages or surf on the Internet.

“Students admitted that they do not use mobile phones much to improve their learning. For them, mobile phones are used to play games, send messages, and chat with friends or crib. “In many cases, when checking students’ essays, I realized that they copy words from somewhere on Internet. However, as I did not catch them red-handed, I had to pass over the issue,” a literature teacher of Le Quy Don High School in Ha Dong district said.

Other teachers also said that students nowadays have many “tricks” to escape teachers’ eyes. Therefore, they have no other choice than to pretend that they “do not see and do not know anything”. Teachers still have to continue giving lectures, though they know that, behind their desks, students are making messages instead of listening.

Dang Dinh Dai, Headmaster of Van Xuan High School, related that, one day, a student was caught red-handed when sending messages during the lesson hours. Even after the teacher asked him to stop “playing” with the mobile phone, the student still continued his work, saying that he needs to send messages. “However, in fact, the messages were just sent to friends, and nothing was important or urgent,” Dai said.

C. V