My post today is on a topic which I have discussed before and probably will discuss more in the future. As much as we talk about reform in education, the system is very slow to change. Many of the people shouting the loudest for a need for sweeping improvements are some of the same people who are ardent supporters of the status quo. For whatever reasons they may publicly state, their preference is to keep things the way that they have been. Whether it is comfort or ease, things in a system, as large as education, are very slow to change. Even though we are educated adults, with adult experience, more often than not we hear the term “baby steps” used in conversations of education reform.
My school district for many years spent what may have been thousands of dollars each year on the first day back to school in order to provide an inspirational keynote speaker for the entire district faculty meeting to kick off the new year. It was an expense, and a practice which I always found to be a waste of time and money. There is however, one memory of one such speaker sharing an experience, which I remember lo these many years.
According to this speaker, each Christmas her family had a traditional family dinner featuring a ham for the main course. Through the decades the ham was always prepared the same way. In its preparation each end of the ham had a portion of the meat sliced away, literally inches of meat removed prior to cooking. One day, the speaker asked her mother why the removal of the ends of the ham. Her mother replied that it was always done that way, and so, it was how she learned to cook it from her mother. Since the Grandmother was still alive, although not in attendance at the dinner, a phone call was placed to inquire about the method requiring the cutting of the ham. When the question was posed, “Why do we cut the ends of the ham before we cook it?” the answer came as a shock. The grandmother explained that when they started the family dinner, decades back, they only had a small roasting pan and needed to cut the ham to fit it into the pan. Hence, the cutting of the ham continued for years without regard to origin or reason. They just did it and continued to do it, because that is how it was done.
With that as my backdrop, it is now time to get to the meat of this matter. With the beginning of the internet (sometimes attributed to Al Gore) and its incursion into education, many educators and parents were unaware and fearful of the unknown. That very fear drove the development of policies that were adopted to protect kids from the evil that was the internet. The very fears that are used as hot buttons by the media to drum up huge audiences for shows like “To Catch a Predator”. The very fears that are used as hot buttons to sell filtering software to schools to block out any site mentioning sex, drugs, or rock and roll, not to mention Facebook, and Twitter. These very same fears fostered ideas like Acceptable Use Policies limiting personal rights and academic freedom.
It would be irresponsible, as well as idiotic to say that the internet is free from any of the same dangers we encounter anywhere in the world digital or not. How we deal with these dangers is what we must consider. The subject of child predators has changed. TV and Movies would have you believe a majority of kids as victims are molested by strangers. For years we pounded into kids heads beware of strangers. We now have evidence that there is better than a 90% chance that the predator is a family member, close family friend, or even a clergyman. We have had to change or at least adjust the focus on strangers in our lecture about “don’t let ANYBODY touch you in an inappropriate way”.
It is time that we make adjustments to our internet policies in our schools as well. We need to be educated about the internet not fearful. We need to control our use of it, and not allow it to control us. We don’t need to refuse access to it, but rather educate kids how to responsibly access it in order to be responsible digital citizens. There is a big difference between signing an Acceptable Use Policy and teaching, learning and modeling an Acceptable Use Policy. Abuse of the internet is a discipline infraction and should be dealt with as such. A comprehensive code of conduct for any school must include technology abuses.
Access to, and understanding of the internet is becoming a needed skill if one is to compete in a technologically competitive society. The sooner we educate our children to be responsible digital citizens, the sooner we can hold them responsible for their actions. Internet awareness must begin on the elementary level. We cannot hold children responsible for that which we have not taught them. Education is the key to safety. Filtering eliminates the ability to teach children to be responsible. It may allay the flamed fears of parents which are fanned by software companies and TV producers, but it does nothing for preparing kids for the technologically competitive world in which they must live, compete, survive, and thrive. The educator’s job is to prepare kids for the world in which the students will live. It is not the world in which the educators lived. It is not the world in which the kids’ parents lived. It is the world yet to come. There are many pitfalls and safety precautions kids must be aware of, and that cannot be denied. Teaching rather than blocking is a better strategy to defend against these pitfalls. Fear-mongering to parents may sell software to schools, and build big TV ratings, but in the long run it does not address the issue. We cannot educate kids about content that is filtered and blocked. Subjects like Breast Cancer or sexually transmitted diseases are often blocked to those students who need the information for school reports or personal inquiry. Teachers, who are also adults, are blocked access as well. This blocks needed relevant sources that would help lessons to teach. Is this what we need for our schools? Is this what we want for our kids? I do not want it for my Kids. I would hope most parents would opt for education as opposed to the void of banning.
Until we re-examine our policies to match them to the world in which we now live, as well as the world our kids will live in, I imagine I will write similar posts in the future. Technology isn’t going away. It will continue to flow no matter how many dams we build. It’s time to ask real questions, in order to understand what we really need, and how do we get there. A small roasting pan from days gone by should not determine the education that our kids need for the future.
As always, your comments are welcomed.
Changing the language is a start . . . Acceptable Use becomes Responsible Use?
For some reason educators have allowed IT staff and legal staff – not educational staff – to determine and enforce how the internet will be used in schools. Many teachers are guilty of not taking on appropriate internet use as a responsibility and instead send requests for sites to be blocked to IT staff. This only empowers IT and legal staff to make decisions of what is of educational value and what is not. We don’t allow IT and the legal departments to make decisions on textbooks and other classroom materials. Why should they make decisions about the internet?
Here here!
The world is changing; we need to stop acting like it isn’t when it comes to educating children. The internet is not just something that people use — it is THE tool that people use to get work done. And it is only becoming more important.
If we expect children to be getting a well-rounded education when they go to school, we must expect also that they will be educated properly when it comes to technology. This, for better or worse, seems to include a lot of things that it didn’t include before.
For example, I would honestly rather see children taught how to email/text/leave voicemails/etc. properly than write in pretty cursive. I would rather see children know how to find information online than in a library. And I would rather see children know how to act smartly and responsibly online than be denied access.
well I won’t get on my soapbox yet again Tom…you know I would get rid of all filtering software if I could…waste of money and it is just once again for the adults to make it easier to monitor things…so again we have adult issues topping kids needs…those of us who have ever heard Alan November speak even once know the value of what you are saying…keep saying it…maybe they will hear us eventually…
Parents are another part of the issue. Many times when prospective parents are on tours at our school, they ask about how open our Internet is for the students. They are concerned that their children are going to see something they shouldn’t. As teachers we know that in school we can guide the students through those teachable moments.
A great article and I wholeheartedly agree. We forget that kids will be kids and when we put excessive blocks on internet use it does not mean the kids don’t get to see these things. Web addresses are swapped in the playground and via texts all the time. It just all goes underground which is far more dangerous because they do not learn that valuable responsibility.
I am reminded of a law allegedly still in force in Washington that states ” It is mandatory for a motorist with criminal intentions to stop at the city limits and telephone the Chief of Police as he is entering the town in the state of Washington. ”
Why does this article remind me of this? Because when we try to legislate to prevent bad people doing bad things it somewhat assumes they will follow the rules – as they clearly do in Washington. By definition, they are not going to everywhere else! If someone wants to abuse a child they will. Like you say, most abused children know their abuser and they may well be family or close to the family. The reason is simple – the child is the easy target.
Legislation just makes it difficult if not impossible for the rest of us to get on with giving kids the best possible education and start in life. Staff at my previous school, prior to moving to Bangladesh, all but gave up using the internet at the school for research and preparation as almost every worthwhile site was blocked as more and more words got added to the filter. Not one single BBC site could be accessed, for instance! But kids still get abused. Kids still look at stuff they shouldn’t. Not one jot of legislation has done anything to prevent that.