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US School Curriculum to Include Online Safety?
Stony Stevenson writes to mention that the US National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) is pushing for school's to include cyber-security, online safety, and ethics lessons in their normal curriculum. "The National School Boards Association reported that 96 per cent of school districts claim that at least some of their teachers assign homework requiring internet use. But there is still no formal education on how to stay safe, secure and ethical online, despite the fact that the internet, like the real world, has threats and dangers which students may come across in the normal course of a day. These include communications from identity thieves, online predators and cyber-bullies."
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I think this is a good idea, although I would suggest making the teachers and administrators attend the class too. In most schools I've seen, most of the students know more about this stuff than the teachers do, and the teachers are a whole lot more resistant to learning about it, as they lump it in with "all that computer stuff" that they've convinced themselves they're incapable of learning.
...they push teachers to teach children basic skills like reading, writing, mathematics, public speaking, and give them a thorough knowledge of world and American history, logic, and problem solving. I suspect if you teach children how to function properly in society by giving them the necessary tools, then they won't wind up falling into these traps and will be able to make more informed decisions. Just my opinion.
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While I do understand the need for teaching our nation's children about safety, I am wondering if this should fall upon the parents to educate their children about what is on the internet and to keep their children away from sites that can be harmful. I do not think I would want my tax dollars to be spent to teach little johnny or susan about how bad people are on the internet... teaching them the proper way to do research is one thing, but security and safety is another that I don't think the education system should be involved in per se... maybe a little but not a whole hell of a lot.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Wow -- my kids also come into contact with School Buses, Sidewalks, and Cafeterias during the normal course of school. They better start teach safety courses for those too!!!!
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
there is still no formal education on how to stay safe, secure and ethical online,
Yay, sanity prevails! At least, as of this instant.
The trouble is, teaching maths, grammar and history to kids whose career goal is to be a supermodel is inherently hard. Worthwhile, but difficult and even expensive. On the other hand, teaching them 'how to stay safe, secure and ethical online' is easy. Pointless, but easy and free-as-in-beer. If you're running a school or formulating an education policy, you're going to be tempted.
Luckily, immigration policies and economic conditions are generally still such that educated people (educated in regions where the career goal is to get an education and move to the West) continue to immigrate. Yay again!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Case in point:
When I was in high school (AP Computer Science), the teacher (who knew what she was doing) would take days off and be replaced by a substitute. The only problem was that my high school classified computer programming as a math, which isn't that far off; but the substitutes would always come in and be shocked that there were computers. She would say that she was told this was a math course, and that she didn't know the first thing about programming.
This happened about once a month.
Generally speaking, American schools haven't managed to do much about good old-fashioned regular bullying for generations. Now they're supposed to solve cyber-bullying as well?
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The proposal says "and ethical" which I take to mean indoctrinating a willingness to prop up ancient and unfair art-patron business models
Schools exist for two purposes only (and the second only as a side-effect out of necessity to support the first): Indoctrination as good little corporate slaves, and socialized babysitting.
When we used to ask our math teachers "when will I ever use this", the could accurately have answered "Your future masters keep complaining that you little bastards can't make change or accurately count inventory. So stop trying to think for yourself, suck it up, and do what we say."
"Sally gives you a $10 bill to pay for 20 oranges at $1.85/lb, with four oranges to the pound. The register says to give her 75 cents change - How many quarters should you give Sally?"