Angela Sanchezteacher at a primary school Toledo and mother of two teenagers aged 12 and 16, appeared this Thursday at the Congress of Deputies loaded with a cardboard box that stores the 63.000 signatures that in less than a month he has collected with Natalia Jimenez, also a teacher and mother of two children aged eight and 11. These teachers ask parliamentarians to draft a law that prohibits the use of mobile phones by minors in all areas of their lives. “This must be stopped. There must be limits and rules because very serious things are happening,” Sánchez said in front of the lions’ gate.
“I am not a lawyer and I come as a teacher. As a teacher I can say that, from a few years ago to now, we have observed very serious things happening among the students. We have seen bullying, and the ciberbullying He continues at home on cell phones and ends in very serious episodes. Protocols are opened daily in educational centers. There are cases of depression, insomnia and lack of attention among students, because, if you don’t show them a video, they don’t attend to the oral presentations,” said this teacher and mother, whose case was reported by EL MUNDO last Monday.
Ángela has considered that “there have to be rules and limits.” For this reason, both she and Jiménez have collected signatures on the digital platform Change.org so that the use of the device among minors is regulated “in all areas.” In the Madrid’s community,Galicia y Castilla la Mancha The mobile phone is already prohibited in educational centers. Andalusia announced this Thursday that it will “limit” its use in classrooms. Also Catalonia has urged all schools and institutes to have regulation, in one sense or another.
Ángela wants it to be banned in all autonomous communities and also in other spaces where children and adolescents move, such as the consumption of tobacco, alcohol or drugs. She also believes that she should be able to report and fine parents who expose their children to screens in public. That’s why she talks about “total prohibition.” “We want a child not to be able to have their own mobile phone,” she stressed, and explained that her proposal contemplates restricting use “until age 14 or 16, depending on the maturity of the child.”
Ángela also wanted to respond to the Minister of Education and Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, who last week ruled out banning cell phones with the argument that doing so “is like putting doors on the countryside.” The teacher has objected that “you cannot put gates on the field but, if the field has cliffs, we will have to think about it.”