While clicking and reading online the other day, I heard a news report about a new teenage method of getting drunk. I think that it dealt with using cough medicine to achieve the high, but I can’t be certain. Honestly, I wasn’t paying attention. My iBook was far more interesting. Why would I actually watch the news? I’m online!
Anyhow, a stuffy gentleman caught my attention for some reason. From his mouth, I heard uttered the line of thinking that I very firmly believe tears away the usefulness of online resources and prevents teachers from doing their jobs. When asked about this inexpensive way for teens to get high, he said:
Kids can just search for “cheap way to get high” and get a list of options.
Well, since my computer sat waiting, I did exactly that.
However, when I visited Google and searched for “cheap way to get high,” a recipe for poppy seed tea, a page extolling the virtues of garlic, and guidelines for home wine making were the first 3 results. The other results that followed were equally innocuous. The next page of 10 results were much the same.
In short, a search for the phrase the stuffy gentlemen said would surely lead any innocent teen down the road to illicit drug use turned up nothing of the sort.
I’ve been surfing the Web since I was a teenager. I never found anything I didn’t want to. I never “stumbled” across a drug site; I never “accidentally” discovered a site describing how to make a bomb. Yet the fear mongers continue today, as they did back then, to promote the idea that the Web is a place wayward teens run across horrible images, terrible information, and murdering strangers. And they do it all on accident because the Internet doesn’t have enough restrictions to protect young surfers. The Internet is a leviathan waiting to devour our teens who are not smart enough to navigate the waters. To these folk, the Internet is the modern equivalent of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something to steer clear of and something that holds potential for all kinds of awfulness. Do not eat that fruit, teenagers.
Schools and districts remain willfully ignorant and choose to let the fear mongers decide for them an Internet policy. Blogs? Wikis? Instant Messaging? Email? Gone. No need to consider how those tools can be used for the educational good. No need to evaluate the gray areas. The fact that the possibility for misuse even exists is enough to dismiss the tools outright. So our kids grow up in schools that are afraid to give them the tools they need in order to be successful in life.
And it’s not enough to urge school districts to forbid the use of those tools. No, no. Some districts might decide to actually make use of those tools and allow our teens access to the writhing pit of Internet traps. That’s a freedom some folks don’t want local administration to have.
There’s legislation underway that will outlaw the use of these tools. That’s right, some in the federal government want to require all school districts to agree with their interpretation of which sites promote learning. And if districts go against that interpretation, they will be in violation of a law.
I’m not sure of the punishment, but it certainly isn’t a freshly-baked batch of cookies. And district offices, those willfully ignorant folk I mentioned earlier, would often be too afraid to stand up to government policies in order to advocate for their right to choose what’s best for their students. Instead, I venture to guess that most districts would roll over and let any outside agency determine their Internet policy.
But honestly, what are the perils of surfing? With teachers in the room, using computers on campus, under constant supervision, what could possibly go wrong? Just about anything a student could chance to see online in a brief flash is probably not even half as bad as what can be heard when walking across the campus during lunch. And any worthwhile teacher would pay attention to the type of content their students are consuming. So what’s the problem? Shouldn’t teachers be trusted to teach and make use of any tools they see fit? Does this type of legislation enter the realm of legislating curriculum? Are there real perils that necessitate a federal ban on things like blogs in the classroom?