So Who Gave Schools Permission To Put A Loaded Gun In My Child's Hand?

So Who Gave Schools Permission To Put A Loaded Gun In My Child's Hand

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SO WHO GAVE SCHOOLS PERMISSION TO PUT A LOADED GUN IN MY CHILD'S HAND?

There was a time once when all was well, after all, the Internet was created simply to inform and to educate, but that was a long, long time ago. When it first started out, the only intention in its design was to provide a network limited to communications, research, information, and education. And peace reigned. Then, some independent commercial networks were given permission for communication networking on the Internet and what was known as the Internet morphed into something called the World Wide Web, a huge set of interlinking documents, images, sounds, and other signals that allowed people everywhere to use and share data. Now you would think that in itself a good thing, and so it was but somehow, in the hands of us humans, many different kinds of abusive uses suddenly grew up. So the question is, where's it all going?

Well, the monster has grown bigger than anyone ever imagined and the downside, or perhaps I should say the dark side, has become more and more a concern. Take for example, the fact that the average kid spends around ten and a half hours each week just surfing or playing online games. Further, a whopping thirty-two percent of the games played are of the violent kind or of a sexual nature and listen to this; the World Wide Web has become the biggest global distributer of pornography. Did you know that if every pornographic page on the web was printed and stacked on top of each other, the stack would be over 15 miles high? That sure is a lot of porn. Not surprising then that the average age of first exposure to pornography is 11 years old. Eleven years old, can you imagine?

Now let me ask a question. Would you go out and buy a pornographic magazine and put it in the hands of your eleven year old child? Yet we buy PCs and laptops and say, "Here you are darling, go on, enjoy yourself" and unfortunately, an awful lot of that enjoyment is unsupervised fun'. And then there's the school. Who gave schools permission to put a loaded gun in your child's hand? None of us had or have any say in the growth of the school as a virtual learning environment over the last two decades or so, to the point where computers are now a constant in every classroom and at the centre of every child's learning programme in every subject in every school. And we as parents haven't even batted and eye-lash.

So what is the argument for computers? By and large the argument stems from the notion that Information is Power' and everything else has steamrollered from there. There are a few arguments for computers in general terms, one that it is an advantage to have computer-assisted teaching because the computer serves well in itself as a tutor. Back in 1999, a report entitled Computer Advantages: Tutoring Individuals, stated "with computers as tutors, no student will be overwhelmed because he or she is missing fundamentals, the computer will repeat material until each lesson has been sufficiently mastered" The writer, one F. Bennett, 1999 believes it gives all students in the classroom the opportunity to adequately learn through catch-up with the computer acting as tutor.

Anotherperceived advantage is that computers are a great aid in the teaching of literacy, that computers can often reach the students that teachers cannot. Well excuse me, but it seems to me that falls in literacy have coincided with the introduction of the computer in the classroom. Now I don't want you to get me wrong. I'm not in any way advocating the computerless classroom, nor am I even entering into the fray of the debate about whether or not computers should be allowed in the classroom. As an ex-media studies teacher, I recognise the value of computers as a teaching tool, but notwithstanding the advantages of having computer technology in classrooms, and I confess there are many, nevertheless they are grave concerns about the way they have been used, alongside the vast amount of monies spent on Information Technology that have taken resources away from other methodologies. One commentator, F T Boyle in 1998 even argued that information technology "may actually be making us stupid" suggesting that the computer takes more of the thinking process away from students. I don't know about that, but if we were to revisit the tenet that "Information is power", I would like to pose the alternative to this, that "social skills is power" and for me, this is at the root of my concern to do with computers in the classroom, or in the home for that matter. When it stops being a tool, and becomes the tour-de-force of teaching, then information technology has to be held responsible for much of the impoverished youngsters we see nowadays with little or no socialisation into the art of proper human interaction. No wonder then that 1 in 4 teenage girls in the US admit to meeting someone in person that they met online and 1 in 5 boys admit the same. I would suggest in the past, these same kids would have known better if approached by a stranger on the street but of course computers don't call for that same kind of social skill. It goes without saying that the more youngsters make the bulk of their contacts in the virtual space, then the less they are called upon to navigate the rigours of real social interaction. Without practice, these skills are fast disappearing, leaving a generation of kids with their guards let down and vulnerable.

While it seems clear there should be some connection between the world and the classroom, education should not merely be a reflection of the world in which it exists, but its true relevance is its capacity to help shape that world. Instead, what computers bring wholesale into the classroom is a microcosm of the world outside, warts and all and its wide-scale use simply means that our children have wide-scale access to those warts. When those warts include violence and pornography, then we have a serious problem, a ticking time-bomb. Am I suggesting that school children are able to access filth on school computers? Yes I am. Our children have grown up in this digital world. They are the digital natives, adults are really like immigrants in their virtual space, left floundering while youngsters easily navigate and manipulate new technology. Filters are not perfect at the best of times and left to determined techno-wise kids, most filters represent a challenge rather than a deterrent. Don't be fooled, no filter is perfect and kids either know or will find a way tocircumvent them. Digital disobedience merely begins with swivelling the monitor away from the teacher's prying eyes, there's a whole lot more going on. In this climate, the computer can be like a loaded gun in the wrong hands and I'm sorry to say, but in this context most teenage hands are indeed the wrong hands. As I said, kids know how to get around much of the blocking software on school computers, so teachers, and parents, need to be far more involved. How? That's a big question. As we continue in the next article in the series, we will look at some of the ways in which we can engage more with the virtual space we have foisted on two generation of youngsters, and to take more responsibility than, if we're honest, we've taken thus far.

Alan Springer

http://www.ekidz.co

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