Highland schools mobile phone ban would help restore order
Public consultation surveys carried out by Highland Council invariably tend to swing in favour of the viewpoint harboured by the council itself.
These were most notably used to progress the "traffic free Academy Street" fiasco and the riverside "Gathering Place" debacle.
Indeed I can't recall a single instance where the council decided to drop a proposal because they were startled to find public opinion was running against it.
However it's difficult to envisage the latest planned survey - on banning mobile phone use in schools - provoking much public controversy at all.
The Courier provided a snapshot survey of its own and readers who responded were, with a couple of minor caveats, wholly in favour of it.
The survey, which will involve teachers, parents and other staff, will also include the primary and secondary school possessors of the phones themselves. Maybe their input will be the most animated and forceful of all, but that should mainly be discounted. This is a decision to be made by the adults in the room - or classroom - and those outwith it.
We know that many youngsters nowadays are attached to their phones in the way an ailing NHS patient is attached to his or her life support system. For some kids the separation may verge on being traumatic.
But the invasion of phone disruption and abuse in schools has reached a point where it has to be halted and reversed.
It has been too long coming. One Courier reader said all previous attempts she'd made to focus attention on the problem had been rebuffed by those in charge.
This may be partly understandable because of the myriad complexities flaring up in these ever-changing times, with school controversy arising where it never previously existed.
Nothing seems simple anymore.
The delay on acting against these phones is also no doubt due to the prevalence of the belief in some quarters nationally that in schools it's actually the kids that know best these days.
They walk out of their classrooms to mount an "environmental protest" in support of the now fading teen idol Greta Thunberg and are lauded for their polar bear and melting ice cap awareness.
And that's fine, if they focus on these issues in their own time. But it should not be seized on to cause anarchy in schools.
It's also impossible to escape the conclusion that standards of discipline in many schools are at an all-time low, and anything that will combat that must be welcomed.
This is one council survey at least where the outcome should be conclusive and should engender no controversy whatever.
Ban pupil phones. Get it done, get it done fast, and ensure this is the last school year where phones are allowed to disrupt and blight the educational agenda.