No credit for His Master's Voice

If you are a young person, you are probably talking to someone on your mobile phone as you read this.

Young people love mobile phones. You love them more than your family. More than you love your country. More than you love the Queen, I’d venture.

(Say you’ll ring ‘em back, would you? You’ve got a long text message from me, OK?)

If it helps you to follow this post, we could make it into a ringtone for you. The ringtone will be to the tune of the British National Anthem and it’ll go like this:

I love my wondrous phone
More than I love the Queen
I love my phone
Liz, you’re also a marvel
We’ll chat, just give me a bell
When I’m a hundred
You’ll send me a text

Alright, I know that’s more of a ‘bad poem’ than a ‘ringtone’, but I am not in touch, you know. Never mind ‘having my finger on the pulse’, I hardly have a pulse.

In fact, you young people are so attached to your mobiles that during a recent ‘pastoral’ activity where you had to write down what you believed most important in life to make you happy, some of you girls wrote ‘my phone’ at the top of your list. Lads - move with the times, will you? Most of you are still writing ‘money’ at the top of your list. Money alone won’t make you happy, money's worth nothing unless you use it to buy the latest phone, is that clear?

It’s good that I know how to communicate with you, now. A lot of you won't get off your phones during lessons, so I’ve been asking your mates for your numbers, and now I won’t actually need to come to the classroom. I’ll just ring you up and try to teach you like that.

I believe the Universities and institutions of Higher Education do something similar to this, involving the internet and letters, and they like to call this ‘distance learning’.

What they don’t realise is that you kids have been innovating and perfecting methods of ‘distance learning’ since schools were invented. I have even been out at lunchtime with wire cutters to make a few holes in the fence and give you a head start.

Let’s create as much distance as possible. Then we might all find happiness.