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."

Comments

Good idea

[eln]

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.