Several months ago I read an article that addressed the safety of our children. Ironically, the article claimed that our kids today were actually more in danger of reckless behavior because of being overprotected. The author claimed that kids learn safety skills by falling and scraping their knees. Hence, parents who insist that kids not do things like climb trees or ride bikes on gravel are, in the end, doing them more harm by not allowing their brains to develop these skills. I guess it's the ol' try and fail method of behavior learning.
I think this same lesson can be applied to our theme this week in class. There seems to be a common thread in this week's discussion and focus, and that is the search for what is truthful on the Internet and how we can make the Internet safe or relevant for our students . Much ado is being made about the fact that the Internet contains so much junk - that it has become overrun with wasted pages. No one can deny that this is true. I think this is the advantage of having a free Internet. Do we really want the alternative, allowing some governing body to decide what is and is not relevant and of value? It's true that the Internet is riddled with meaningless garbage, but if you visit any of these sites, you're bound to see at least one hit. So, if we are going to support the free speech platform that the Internet is, we as educators have to be willing to accept the challenge to find the best and quickest, most efficient ways to cipher through all the junk and discover the sites that will be most useful to our students. For our younger students, I think this is very important. They need to be able to take baby steps when developing their surfing techniques. We certainly don't want 8, 9, 10 year olds exposed to the kinds of malicious, dangerous, and inappropriate material that exists on the Net.
But when it comes to our older students, filtering what we consider irrelevant or uneducational is simply not giving our students the skills they need to function on the Web. I personally think we do our older students a disservice if we insist on "watering down" the Internet to make things easier for the students. How can we adequately prepare them and instill critical thinking skills if we don't allow them to fall and scrape their knees on their own? This doesn't mean we have to expose them to all the trash, but we should at least provide them with both the good and the bad and allow them to evaluate the nature of each. Eliminating sites such as Wikipedia because we don't see the value doesn't mean there isn't any. We need to be more open-minded and willing to climb beyond our comfort level and take the chance that we may fall and bump our heads.
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Have you heard the song (can't remember the title or artist at the moment) that talks about how we survived even though we didn't wear bike helmets etc. It aligns with what you said in your intro... we definitely overprotect our students and children and because of it they are unable to cope or carry on simple conversations much less evaluate an internet site using critical thinking skills. I really like your idea about letting some of the older students sort out the good from the bad for themselves.
ReplyDeleteHi Kara (and Ann too),
ReplyDeleteI think the overprotection extends very broadly throughout child raising, but isn't it a natural consequence of the horrible things we hear about both Internet-related and non Internet-related? Falling and scraping a knee may be painful, but it is rarely dangerous whereas getting into the wrong place on the internet may be. Having said that, we educators and parents would be naive indeed if we thought we could keep our children out of such places. I guess that implies that it's our job to prepare them to deal with such dangers.
Thanks for the comments, guys. In terms of the Internet, I think we have to teach kids to follow their gut reaction. We can't possibly show them or explain every type of danger on the Internet, but we certainly can prepare them for the types of situations that could prove dangerous. Kinda like "Stranger Danger" for the Net. We have to provide the tools so that they can be prepared. In addition, for the younger ones, we have to be the supervisors.
ReplyDeleteKara,
ReplyDeleteYour post would make a fantastic topic for a faculty meeting or conversation with a library media specialist. :). I would agree that we, as educators and parents, overprotect our kids. I agree that our older kids should be given more freedom to decide the value of Web content. At the same time, trying to determine what is trash and what has value on the Internet is a grey area. We have a policy at our school forbidding anyone from showing R rated movies. Of course, numerous teachers ignore this policy and show these movies because they feel there is educational value for the students. When I think of the movie Glory, I am saddened that I cannot even show parts of it in my classroom. But if I did show it, the school would receive numerous calls about the content that I am showing to my students. There is such a wide a concerning what is consdered appropriate. Perhaps your Orwellian suggestion of having the government determine the content of the Web has merrit. Then we can blame the government for yet another failed policy, and we wouldn't have to field as many complaints by our students concerning the school's Internet filter. :)