Virginia Becomes First State to Mandate Internet Safety Lessons

kaufmanmoore writes "The Commonwealth of Virginia has become the first state in the nation to require that students in all grade levels receive a form of internet safety lessons. The story is scant on details about the lessons, but describes one recently at a high school where the presenter showed a social-networking profile of a convicted sex offender posing as a 15 year-old girl. "

Comments

Re:This is great but...

[Firethorn]

If the classes were a 1 hour session of someone saying "Hey kids, them thar internets can be dangerous. Don't go trusting people. Use common sense.", that would be fine.

Well, to be honest, as common sense isn't so common, I'd cover some specific issues, like how to recognize scams, internet predators, basic guidelines to protect your identity, and so on.

Of course, personally I'd fold it into my idea for a 'life studies' course - no it doesn't have much to do with biology. It's simply the best name I can think of at the moment.

Basically, it's a course designed to impart the skills generally necessary for a fulfilling life in a modern society. I started off with sex ed, gun safety, spread out to basic liability, contract and criminal law*. Not falling for scams, whether it be real world or internet. Practical budgeting, house purchase procedures, etc... In areas where it's necessary, how to properly do laundry, basic healthy cooking**. Basically, what stuff is good to know, doesn't take a whole semester or more dedicated to teaching it, and at least possibly isn't covered by existing courses, as I'm sure some rearranging could occur.

I mean, I don't know about you guys, but while my parents covered liability and such, I didn't get much of it in school, but I see examples all the time where it would have saved a lot of money, effort, and stress if they had known a bit of it. Sure, history and geography is all to the good, but I spent months memorizing maps - so I could pass quizzes that consisted of a map with the names removed and slots to put the missing names cities, rivers and lakes in. I guarantee that I performed a brain dump after each quiz. I know where Baghdad, Tikrit, and the Tigris river is on the map more because I'm in the USAF and have to worry about it. I didn't care in High School, I knew how to read a map and index even back then.

And that's just ONE example of courses that I feel were more or less wasted time when I was young. Especially given the easy reference and research source today - the internet. History courses are good, though I think there should be less emphasis(at least compared to my time) on names and exact dates.

*Possibly involving carefully selected TV court cases off of shows like Judge Judy.
**Preferably tasty, because that's the best way to get people to eat it.