This morning, after reading Will’s "script" for talking about safety concerns, I realized we’re looking at safety the wrong way. Hopefully, this story helps.
Last week, we took our students to the local recreation center for an all-day school-wide retreat. The focus of the day was to do some community-building. As part of the day, we allowed the students to use the various resources of the center. Some staff were in the gym, others were in the swimming pool. I was at the skate park. My choice.
Many of my students are skateboarders, and I wanted to see what they could do. I was blown away. They knew an awful lot about skateboarding. I asked to borrow a board and give skating a try (I last used a skateboard in middle school.). They were more than happy to oblige.
What the students got for their kindness was a good laugh as I took two or three immediate spills and then decided that I was done for the day. We shared a laugh or two, in fact. I was so glad that we had shared the experience.
Then one of my skate-savvy students landed wrong and hurt her wrist (a serious sprain, but no permanent damage). I was devastated. In the first few minutes of her injury, when I could tell that she was in pain, I second-guessed every decision that got the students and me within five miles of the skate park.
But then I woke up. Certainly no one would advocate removing students from all future activities involving recreation centers because a few people would be hurt. If that was the case, schools would have done away with athletic programs years ago. Too many kids have the potential to get hurt playing sports, don’t they?
That’s absurd.
Why, then, do we block websites?
Bad things might happen. So might some good ones. We can’t prevent all harm — but by preventing all use, we can definitely prevent the possibility of future success. By teaching our students about the risks and how to minimize them, we can prepare them for a world where skate parks — and online environments — exist.
It’s the only reasonable way to go. Isn’t it? #
Bud the Teacher
Inquiry & Reflection for Better Learning
The safety angle, particularly the abduction by a stranger safety angle, is pretty much a red herring as far as I’m concerned. It’s just the classic local news scare fare. In reality the bigger issue for schools is if personal blogs are becoming a distraction in the school. I’m trying to cook up a post on the issue, but it might take a while…
Protecting kids seems to come up with everything that happens in education. Whether it is teachers having to put in more and more hours of duty and extracurricular activities “for the good of the kids,” through the kinds of music we “should” be listening to with our kids in our classrooms, it seems like we are often one step (or two.. or three..) away from reality. At what point are we allowed in our classrooms to work with kids, meeting with them at their levels, with their realities? Too much protection, not enough common sense.
I am in complete agreement an just posted something similar but I wasn’t typing nearly so early.
We have to stop treating things that occur on computers as some how different than everything else. Educate the users then hold them responsible for how they use the technology. If someone scrawled threats on my wall they would be held responsible but I wouldn’t ban pens (even from that student). It wouldn’t make sense. Banning blogs and the extreme filtering that is going on at many schools doesn’t make sense either.
Perhaps it’s not being a parent, but I just don’t see the safety angle, either.
More-or-less anonymous people interact with students physically all the time: Sporting events, school plays, recitals, etc… These people are in the same physical location as the students are very able to “extract” information from them – even in the presence of their parents.
It seems to me that the danger of being tracked down in the physical world from a post on the Internet is far less.
On the other hand, the unintended consequences of something glib coming back to haunt one in the future are far greater.
On the third hand, as more and more people have these skeletons in their closets they will become less and less important – everyone will have at some point posted something inappropriate, badly written, or just plain wrong. We’ll get over it.
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