Education forums these days have been heating up with a new topic - should parents should allow their children to use high-tech products, especially mobile phones? Some believe that these products may spoil the school environment, while others believe that these products are the indispensable in the digital age.

Last week, Thuy, a 6^th grader of Minh Duc Secondary School in district 1 in HCM City, told her father that she needed a mobile phone to be able to call her parents, grandmother and friends.

Thuy said that she has had 2.7 million dong in savings and she thinks the sum of money is big enough to buy a “middle-class” mobile phone. When asked which functions the mobile phone needs to have, she said that she wanted a mobile phone with a touchscreen, a 2 megapixel or higher camera, wifi connection and other applications, including Bluetooth.

After considering some offers on big websites, Thuy chose some models which seem to fit her needs. “I need a touch-screen mobile phone because I want to make operations quickly. I have a camera already, but “cameras do not know how to make calls”, so I have to buy a mobile phone that I can use to take pictures when I go out. I want to be able to chat with my friends at any time and anywhere,” she explained.

Though Thuy is just a 6^th grader, she knows many things about high-tech products and tends to demand the latest products.

Meanwhile, Hoang Vy, who lives in a well-off family in Gia Lai province, has only been given a simple mobile phone with which Hoang Vy can do basic operations, such as making a call or sending a message. The mobile phone cannot take photographs and has no wifi capabilities. It is cheap, priced at 500,000 dong.

“I just need a simple mobile phone, because I will use the phone only for sending messages or making calls,” Vy said. However, she said that her friends do not share her view, because there are some classmates who use expensive mobile phones valued at 5-7 million dong.

Understanding the increasingly high demand for mobile phones from young customers, mobile phone producers have been launching many new products for their potential customers.

There are many models available on the market that meet the requirements set by Thuy.  They are priced a little over one million dong. However, with this sum of money one would only be able to purchase Vietnamese products, such as MobiStar or Q-Mobile. For two million dong or more, it seems that customers can have more choices, which include products of big manufacturers such as Samsung, Nokia, Motorola or LG. All the models offered by manufacturers have integrated cameras with a resolution of at least 480 x 640 megapixels. More importantly, the mobile phones allow users to chat or connect to Facebook and Twitter. It is clear that mobile phone producers understand its young customers – school students.

More and more mobile phone products have appeared on the market. Meanwhile, now it is so easy to purchase SIM cards. The knowledge about information technology has been upgraded. All these factors have certainly led to the fact that more and more students are using mobile phones as a necessary part of daily life.

However, many parents believe that hi-tech products are spoiling the school atmosphere. A lot of video clips showing female students fighting each other or showing a teacher insulting a student have been posted on internet. This has been blamed on hi-tech mobile phones. Students used their mobile phones to take pictures and send to other people.

Ngoc Diep, a 6^th grader of Nguyen Van To School in District 10 in HCM City, related that when she told her father that she wanted a mobile phone, he simply said “no”. Meanwhile, Diep’s mother thinks that a mobile phone is very useful for her daughter.

Source: Tien phong