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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. "
Even good parents may not be particularly Internet savvy. I think this is a great idea, especially if at least some of the lessons are given by other kids.
I remember once helping out at a teacher conference in summer between 8th and 9th grades to help teach them (the teachers) how to use their new Macs (back around 1992).
I'm a sophomore in high school in Maryland. My school has had people give speeches on Internet safety multiple times. Typically these lessons serve more to teach inaccuracies about the internet (as the people who teach them tend to know nothing about the internet) and scare people away from the internet based on those falsehoods, then actually teach people how to be safe on the internet. Obviously my experiences are not a guarantee of what will happen in Virginia, but as I said, I have been through these things multiple times and they have never turned out well.
I'm not "Won't someone think of the children?" apologist. But, some parents are internet-illiterate. So, what's wrong with one extra source to say "Hey - There are dangers out there. Be careful." So be it. I'd much rather see parents educate themselves, but I think that calling this a MS/**AA FUD tactic is a stretch...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
This is a fine idea - The internet is a treacherous place for children.
.exe nonsense that unlike the bogeyman, is a real and demonstrable threat.
The web, in general, may be an inappropriate venue for a young child, but it's hardly treacherous. In fact, I'd say that the risk of being targeted and hunted down in some manner is probably far less than your local playground. Which is to say the risk is small enough to put aside, and hardly something that merits the exaggerated press coverage, let alone the subject of a government mandated safety policy.
Besides, if a child of any age is inclined to participate in "chat rooms", then they'll have plenty of supervisory company from law enforcement officials and TV celebrities.
What would real Internet Safety Program look like? I'd start with something that includes unhiding file extensions on Windows systems to prevent the
But I'd rather see mandatory parenting.
Agreed. But they're both working, and too busy or too tired, trying to make a living. Guess the responsibility falls on the rest of us, huh?
All non-academic lessons I've taken have boiled down to that.
Hunter saftey course (guns in general): don't be an idiot. don't point guns at people. use that organ located between your ears.
D.A.R.E: don't do illegal drugs or alcohol, most will mess you up.
Drivers Ed: Use common sense, follow the law, don't be reckless. (ironically nothing about actually driving)
I guarentee this lesson will be: "Don't give out personal information. Don't post pictures. Use fake names. All men are men, all women are men, all 13 year old girls are FBI agents or Pedophiles. Don't meet with people in real life."
I don't preview or spellcheck.
Soon schools will also have to teach kids to dress: "Now remember class, you can't wear a striped shirt with plaid pants".
It does seem that school is getting to be less about education and more about daycare (so that parents can go and have careers instead of raising kids).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'll be damned. An insightful goatse link.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
"Unfortunately, being aware of adults seeking to trick them into sexual situations is NOT an internet issue, it is a social issue"
This is absolutely correct. Not only that, it is WAY better to have your kid learn the basic rules of safety when there is a thousand miles of wire between them and the person that is trying to take advantage of them. (sexually or not) The idea that kids should learn how to deal with these people in face to face situations FIRST is just not logical.
I agree with #1 and #2, but 'Cyber Bullying' is exactly the same situation as sexual predators. Bullying is not a different situation because it is on a computer. Schools want to pretend like it is because it allows them to extend their authority and thus power outside of the schools. In a hundred years, schools have not addressed real life bullying that includes the same things that happens online as well as physical assaults. Your example of the girl who killed herself, helps make this clear. The girl never did know that the person who first pretended to like her, and then said very mean things was an adult. The fact that it WAS an adult is totally irrelevant. The fact is that boys have pretended to like girls, only to spurn them later has been happening for as long as we have recorded history of male female interactions. It is safe to assume that it was going on well before we started recording history. The same can be said of girls pretending to like boys and then spurning them, as well as adults to adults. The girl killed herself because she was infatuated and got dumped. No one would have blamed the telephone for this if it happened over the phone, or the school if a boy had done this to her there.
I would want to see the schools dealing with real live bullying before they start even considering dipping their greedy hands into my home. Heck
There is absolutely NO REASON to teach our children physics... A) Realize that no matter how many sample problems they work through, kids will still find problems that they have not seen before B) Realize many young scientists will rebel and say nothing can travel faster than light or that mass and energy are the same thing C) Realize that teaching students about inertial frameworks will just make them think they know how to solve problems that involve non-inertial frameworks D) And lastly, realize that this opens up an avenue for propaganda by CERN and the *AAS to try to squash discovery by spreading FUD about how fundamental discoveries require trillion dollar colliders!! Sure it seems like a good idea, but remember the government gave us the ATOM BOMB and most likely doesn't know anything about what the laws of nature are really like.
Have a class where the kids all get fake identities, and try to get on the network and steal the fakes from each other.
Give the kids a lesson about phish, you bore them for a day. Teach the kids to phish, and you could educate them for a lifetime.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
You're right that a lot of this overlaps with the "use common sense" lessons from other contexts. But the thing is that kids really don't all have a ton of common sense. In fact, a lot of kids demonstrate shockingly little of it at times. Maybe they have it and choose not to use it, or maybe it's just not fully developed.
It's one thing to say "don't meet strange people handing out candy." It's a good lesson and one that schools should mention since a lot of parents don't remember to. Heck, when I was in elementary school (pre-Internet) they taught us that kind of basic safety lesson.
But not all 3rd graders will extrapolate from "don't take candy from strangers" to "don't expose yourself on a webcam for a 'girl' in another state." I'm sure that any future-slashdotter would figure that one out without any help, but not all kids are above average.
If this is really just adding lessons about Internet common-sense to lessons about real-world common-sense then it's probably on the net a good thing. Kids haven't developed their common sense yet and can easily get hurt by it.
Ever consider that the reason kids have no common sense is because they are spoon fed everything they should or shouldn't do? It seems like we do everything we can to prevent young people from actually using their brains to make a decision, and then we're upset that they can't think on their own and use common sense.